I have a low opinion of vegetarianism as a religion. It’s not just the mindless worship that generally accompanies the R-word that’s bothersome — it’s also the fact that to deprive yourself of dead animals is to shut out a whole world of pleasure.

Now, individual vegetarians are not bad people, they’re just...misguided. I don’t really understand why one would choose to deny oneself of the splendors of meat.

Unfortunately, being misguided rarely stops people, and so I find myself with a large number of vegetarians in my life. And they occasionally need to be fed.

Last week I found myself cooking for my housemates, half of whom are herbivores. Since, sadly, a single carrot on a plate does not qualify as haute cuisine, I was forced to produce a meat-free meal in order to impress at the dinner party.

We started with a conversation on the nature of vegetarianism accompanied by a goat’s cheese mousse. The recipe is courtesy of “The French Laundry Cookbook,” written by California-born chef Thomas Keller.

Goat cheese mousse with parmesan crisps

Blend 6 ounces of soft goat’s cheese with 6 tablespoons of heavy whipping cream. Use a food processor if you have one, or a whisk and a lot of elbow grease if you don’t. Once blended (you should have something a little thicker than toothpaste — add more cream if necessary) add a little salt, freshly milled pepper and a tablespoon of finely chopped Italian parsley.

In order to show off — and remember, when it comes to entertaining, image is everything — one can present the mousse in little parmesan baskets. To make these, spread out 1.5 tablespoons of freshly-grated parmesan on a non-stick baking tray (preferably lined with parchment paper) into as many 2-to 3-inch rounds as you need. You have enough mousse for 8, but it’s best to keep spares. Bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 8 to 10 minutes.

When golden brown, remove from the oven, lift up the disc carefully (let it cool for a couple of seconds first) and press into a clean, empty egg carton. This will act as a mold, and after the cheese has cooled, you will have neat little baskets in which you can dollop your mousse and astonish your friends.

As the mousse was being devoured, we started on the thorny question of why vegetarians shy away from our predatory human nature.

The broad consensus — both from dinner and other such conversations — is that acolytes give one of the following reasons for their faith: taste (the “I don’t like meat” type), religion (“God told me not to eat animals”), health (“millions of years of evolution are wrong”), efficiency (“we need to preserve our rapidly diminishing stock of cattle”) and ethics (“the bunnies are soooo cute”).

As Hilary (one of my vegetarian housemates) related her personal voyage of self-discovery — it started with health and was completed by the forlorn lobster of the title — we tucked into course number two.

Tourain Perigourdain (also known as garlic soup)

Garlic is probably the single greatest ingredient in the culinary world...well, excepting salt and pepper, anyway. Unfortunately, this means that people — mostly the French — have a tendency to overuse it. However, sometimes such overindulgence is merited.

Making soup is easy and the end result is generally infinitely better than buying it in a can. For this dish, start by sauteeing(on low heat) one finely-chopped large onion in a few tablespoons of butter. Add a tablespoon of oil as well to prevent the butter from burning easily.

Once the onion has softened and taken on a little color, add 8 cloves of very finely-chopped garlic and let that brown for a couple of minutes. Then add 4 pints of chicken stock (vegetable if you’re cooking for the heathens. This is easiest to make by cheating and using stock cubes or powder). Simmer gently for at least an hour.

While this is going on, mix 3 egg yolks with 2 tablespoons of creme fraiche (use sour cream if you can’t find this). Once the yolks are blended, add the egg whites and stir briefly to break them up (but do not combine the egg mixture with the soup yet).

After the flavors have had a chance to develop, add salt and pepper to taste. The amount of salt you need will vary wildly depending on the stock you use. Take the soup off the heat, add a tablespoon of finely-chopped sorrel and pour in the egg mixture. Stir and serve immediately.

This recipe comes from a former French housemate of mine. He tells me that the traditional way to finish the soup is to pour in a little red wine to mix with the dregs and down the concoction.

As the conversation turned from food to politics, the meal stepped up a notch and out came the main course.

The hardest part of cooking for veggies is trying to produce something substantial for a centerpiece. Most meals are built around meat, and if you are going to replace that, you need something suitably weighty.

Once again, Thomas Keller (and this time the “Bouchon” cookbook) provided the answer — a Roquefort and leek quiche. Quiche is a marvelous dish because it’s so rich that you can easily forget you’ve missed out on the animal.

On the downside, the dish is complex. You need to be able to make pastry well, which is not the easiest of culinary skills to master. If you want to give it a try but don’t want to buy the cookbook, you can find the recipe with a little help from Google.

I, however, am almost out of space, so I’m going to move on to dessert (from Nigel Slater’s cookbook “Real Food”).

Nigella Lawson’s Sticky Chocolate Pudding

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix 1 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour, a teaspoon of baking powder, 1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa, 1/2 cup of ground hazelnuts, 1 2/3 cups of confectioners sugar and 2 1/2 ounces of finely-chopped dark chocolate in a bowl. Whisk together 2 tablespoons of melted butter, 1 egg, 3/4 cup milk and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Then add this mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until blended.

Spoon the mixture in a well-buttered, 8-inch souffle dish. Next, mix 1 cup of dark brown sugar and 1 1/4 cups of cocoa power and sprinkle on top of the pudding mixture. Finally, pour 2 cups of boiling water directly over the pudding and put it in the oven.

Let it cook for 50 minutes, and do not open the oven for the first 45. When the pudding is done, it will be firm and spongy on the top (like a cake). Underneath, however, will be a pool of sticky chocolate. Serve immediately with as much cream as your arteries can handle.

There you have it — a vegetarian feast. Whilst in general I frown upon the encouragement of deviant behavior, there as a tiny voice in the back of my mind murmuring occasionally that there may well be something wrong with eating sentient creatures. And just in case that voice gets louder, it’s a good idea to be prepared.

Now, we should be able to squeeze in one more of these before Christmas. If you would like to be fed, e-mail navins@stanford.edu with a three sentence explanation why.