Dinner SOS is the podcast where we answer your highly specific cooking conundrums. In every episode, food director Chris Morocco and a rotating cast of cooking experts will tackle a caller’s kitchen emergency and present two solutions. The caller will pick one, cook through it, and let us know if we successfully helped rescue dinner.

This week’s guest, Neha, is hosting a dinner for six and needs a menu that can accommodate a series of allergies and dietary restrictions. There’s her husband, who is allergic to nuts, including sesame; a vegetarian; someone who cannot eat any alliums; and another attendee who cannot eat cilantro. Neha wants to wow her guests with a fun and flavorful meal, and she’s come to the right place. In this episode Chris and food editor Shilpa Uskokovic are on the case.

To find out which recipes they suggest, which dish the caller liked best, and how the dinner party turned out, head to episode three of Dinner SOS. And if you have a dinner emergency of your own, reach out to Chris and the team at podcasts@bonappetit.com or by calling 212-286-SOS-1 (212-286-7071).

transcript

Subscribe to Dinner SOS here. You can also check out an excerpt of the podcast’s transcript below. 

Chris Morocco: What can we suggest for her? You know, I was thinking about a couple of things in the baked feta space. I feel like we have an Ottolenghi recipe on the website that’s like feta baked on top of rice with pomegranate, and maybe we could punch it up with some really fun, festoon-y kind of herbs. Basically, it’s a hands-off oven technique for baked rice that you then top with feta. You broil it, so it gets a bit of texture.

Shilpa Uskokovic: Crunchy.

CM: And then you top it with pomegranate arils, walnuts, mint—we’ll nix the walnuts. What I love about this is that aside from the nuts, you’ve got some olives in there, there’s some garlic, but I think we can offer a sub for the garlic, some other way of getting a bit of oomph.