Next week for two nights I'm cooking for seven or eight people. Some of them will not eat pork, prawns or mushrooms on religious grounds, and one of them is a non-piscivore vegetarian. Now there's a challenge. I'm planning a big pasta bake for one evening, gambling slightly on the fact that some veggies will eat parmesan and mozzarella in spite of the calf rennet. I won't countenance substitutes. It consists of layers of cheese, orecchiette pasta and tomato sauce (left chunky - none of that passata smoothie for me!) with a hit of chilli and basil, baked in the oven. It's one of Italy's favourite dishes. For the other evening I'm doing a bean stew, mixed beans with whatever I have to hand but definitely including cannellini and borlotti, maybe a chickpea or two, with tomato, onion and chilli, with lemony ciabatta dumplings. Plenty of parsley in there. If they don't like it they can bugger off!