If you’re not a vegetarian yourself, it’s always a bit of a struggle to think of dishes that will please a vegetarian guest but these two attractive seasonal ideas, which I came across in a local restaurant the other day, are actually worth abandoning meat for.

The first was a starter salad of red and yellow beets mixed with finely sliced oranges, cut on the cross, roasted hazelnuts and a light dressing with a touch of hazelnut oil: simple, colourful and fresh. It looked particularly great with the yellow beets but if you can’t find them you could just use red ones.

My favourite way of cooking them, which gives them a really sweet, earthy flavour is to scrub them, rub them lightly with oil, wrap them in foil then roast them in a moderate oven for about an hour until tender. You can then easily peel away the outer skin. You also need to make sure you remove all the pith from the oranges, both to eliminate any bitterness and to make the dish look more attractive. Simply cut it away with a sharp knife.

The second dish was an increasingly fashionable pasta dish called a ‘rotolo’ - a fine sheet of pasta loosely wrapped round a filling, (in this case) of pumpkin, ricotta and sage. It was served with what was described as ‘walnut butter’ - crushed walnuts mashed into soft butter and chilled, I imagine. The dish is quite like a canneloni but because the pasta is homemade and therefore much finer than commercial versions the overall effect is much lighter - more like a pancake.

There’s a similar recipe here (though not made with homemade pasta) and one made with spinach and Italian sausage here and with beetroot leaves and ricotta here

If you were serving the dishes together I'd choose an oak-matured white like a Sauvignon-Semillon blend which would be ideal with the salad and work reasonably well with the pasta though I would prefer an oak-aged Chardonnay with the latter. You could also drink a fruity red with both - an Italian Dolcetto would work very well.