This would be a good vegetarian main dish for any occasion. It’s a bit of work to make but I think worth the effort. I found this recipe on the Martha Stewart site.

Put a cup of brown rice on to cook.

Then, roast 1 1/2 cups of walnuts and 1/2 cup of cashews on a baking sheet for about 10 minutes. Then these get chopped either by hand or in a food processor.

(The directions call for dried porcini mushrooms but we couldn’t find any. If you have them they need to be soaked. We used fresh shiitake and regular mushrooms and it seemed to come out just fine. A cup of chopped regular mushrooms would probably be OK too )

Saute a finely chopped yellow onion and two garlic cloves in butter. When they are translucent, add the chopped mushrooms and saute until cooked.

Mix the sauteed veggies, the rice, the chopped nuts, 12 ounces of gruyere cheese, grated (I think swiss would work as well if this isn’t available), 8 oz cottage cheese, 4 eggs, and the seasonings which are the following herbs, chopped – 2 tbsp flat leaf parsley, 1 tbsp marjoram, 2 tsp thyme, 1 tsp sage, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 fresh ground pepper. I think dried herbs would also work and keep costs down a lot, but we sprung for the fresh ones.

Put all this in a large, buttered loaf pan and bake for an hour at 350. Let stand 20 minutes before serving. The recipe calls for lining a buttered pan with parchment paper and buttering again which we didn’t do because we didn’t have parchment paper. The outside got dark and crusty which wasn’t bad but it might cook more evenly with the paper, and would be easier to get out of the pan if you want to serve an intact loaf.

This was a flavorful and satisfying loaf. The nuts gave it enough crunch to make it interesting, and the cheese and eggs helped hold it all together. I would definitely make this again.