New Recipe - The Perfect Christmas Dinner

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Monday morning I thought about Christmas and what to serve that day. Then I read the Telegraph and found under Lifestyle/Food and Drink an article about a luxury and delicious plant-based Christmas Dinner. It was not only the perfect solution but introduced a lady to me I didn´t know. It is Chantelle Nicholson* (s. photo above) who comes from New Zealand, was lawyer, turned chef and is actually working with Tredwells in London. This is a restaurant for omnivores, BUT!!! they offer three vegan starters and three main courses plus a couple of dairy-free puddings on the menu every day. Isn´t this marvellous?

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Most people I am advising to eat healthy and plant-based think they would starve then. Believe it or not, if you have three vegan meals with potatoes, parsnips, champignons, beans, quinoa etc, you will have eaten yourself fill as if you had had roast beef with dumplings plus a heavy primer and a fat dessert. After having had a plant based menu there are many advantages: digesting is much easier and you will not get hungry too soon. – My Christmas Dinner favorite are the blinis with truffled mushroom mousse (s. photo below on the right).

Ingredients (serve 6 as a starter)

  • Mushroom mousse
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 shallots, finely diced
  • 1/4 bunch thyme
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 8 mushrooms, finely diced
  • 25 ml madeira wine
  • 100 ml plant milk (almond milk)
  • 1 tbsp truffle paste

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Heat the oil in a pan over a moderate heat. Add shallots, thyme and garlic, salt, pepper and cook for about two, three minutes.

Add the mushrooms, cook until the liquid has evaporated. Add the madeira and cook two minutes.

Add the plant milk, cook two minutes. Remove the thyme and blend the rest. Add the truffle paste.

  • Blinis
  • 90 g flour (mix buckwheat and oat)
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 60 g aquafaba (= chickpea cooking water or the liquid saved from a tin, you can also take bean cooking water, it behaves like egg white and can be whipped to a foam)
  • 150 ml plant milk
  • 1 tbsp olive oil

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Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Whisk the aquafaba until a stiff meringue is formed.

Add the plant milk and olive oil to the dry flour mix, combining well. Gently fold in the meringued aquafaba.

Heat a pan over a moderate heat and drop on spoonfuls of the blini batter. Brown lightly on each side.

To serve, pipe a little of the warm mushroom mousse on to the blinis. Garnish with black pepper and picked thyme.

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The last photo (above) and dish – it is miso roast Brussels sprouts – must be dedicated to my husband (it seems Chantelle Nicholson knows him very well). I am quite sure, I will have to make this very soon as he loves, loves Brussels sprouts.

*Chantelle Nicholson published some months ago Planted: A Chef´s Show-stopping Vegan Recipes, a cookbook I must have. The recipes and photos are beautiful and mouthwatering.

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