Vegan Christmas Dinner!

So this Christmas is actually my first as a vegan, so it will be interesting (i hope so anyway). As Reuben is going home to Auckland for Christmas this year and I'm heading back to Waimate, we decided to have our own Christmas dinner together.

The menu was simple but delicious, nutty vegetable rissoles, with homemade guacamole and salad with macadamias, olives and cherry tomatoes. The rissoles recipe was actually on the stuff website and I used it but adapted it. The salad was an experiment, but I firmly believe it's hard to go wrong with salads.

Rissoles:

275g marinated tofu (we used the NZ stuff that's grown and made in Motueka)

1/2 cup pics peanut butter

70g ground almonds

35g sesame seeds

1 red capsicum (grated)

1 carrot (grated)

2 small slices of pumpkin (grated)

1/2 red onion finely chopped

1 1/2 tsp paprika

1 tsp chili powder

1 Tbsp soy sauce

salt

cracked black pepper

First you need to mash the tofu in a large bowl, it should resemble fine breadcrumbs. Add all remaining ingredients and then lightly oil your hands and shape into patties and palce on an oven tray.

Bake in the oven for approx 15 mins on each side at 180 degrees, or cook them on the BBQ or fry in a shallow frying pan. We served them with fresh guacamole (recipe in Nachos post below), vegan organic basil pesto and fruit chutney with salad.

Salad:

Lettuce or mesclun leaves

1/2 punnet cherry tomatoes cut in half

olives cut in half

macadamia nuts (handful)

red and green capsicum chopped

1/2 orange diced

12 orange squeezed over salad

Serve with bread or just salad either way they're great. Christmas dinner was accompanied by fresh strawberries dipped in dark chocolate! However, on actual Christmas day I'll be bringing my Chocolate Raspberry cake to dinner!

Courgette fritters and salad!

Reuben and I love eating "burger" pattes/fritters and we decided to try out this recipe which was fantastic, we fried some in a pan and baked some in the oven (the healthier option obviously). Reuben ate his in bread with salad and I had mine chopped up n top of salad. Either way they're great!

Fritters:

1 cup flour

¼ cup cornflour1 tsp of baking powder
1 tsp salt

Cracked black pepper
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano (or other italian herbs)

1 ½ tsp of egg replacer
2 Tbsp of warm water, to dissolve egg replacer
1 cup of rice or soy milk

2 1/2 cups of grated courgettes
Oil for shallow frying or greasing oven tray

Mix all above ingredients in a large bowl and then drop spoonfuls into a frying pan and press flat once immersed in oil. Or drop onto oven tray and shape using a spoon. Bake or fry ensuring to flip sides. if frying in pan you'll need lots of paper towels to absorb oil.

Serve with fresh salad and or in a sandwich or burger. This recipe is really nice with fruit chutney on the fritters, we used "watties bit on the side" fruit chutney, hummus is also a great addition with the salad.

Nachos Vegan Style!

Since becoming vegan, the only dairy product I've missed has been Cheese. Which means that nachos have never quite been the same... Well until I decided to use guacamole as a cheese substitute. It worked superbly. I really didn't miss the cheese with the guacamole! So here's what I did:

Guacamole:

2 ripe avocados mashed

2 vine tomatoes chopped finely

1 small red onion chopped finely

1 green chilli chopped finely

cracked black pepper

1/2 lemon squeezed

Nachos:

1 red onion chopped

1 red and green capsicums chopped

1-2 courgettes chopped

2 tins kidney/ chili beans

1 jar of pasta sauce or tin of tomatoes and or freshly chopped tomatoes

chili powder or sauce (if not using chili beans)

tomato paste

For the Guacamole all you need to do is mash the avocados, add the remaining ingredients, mix well and refrigerate for an hour or so before serving.

You can use a lot of different varieties of vegetables in nachos depending on what's available at the time. First you fry the onion then add remaining fresh vegetables and stir fry for 5-10mins. Once vegetables have softened a little add the kidney/chili beans and sauce and cook for

15-20 more minutes until vegetables are tender.

Add tomato paste at the end to thicken the mixture and stir for 5 mins more then serve. Note the best type of chips are "mexicano natural" flavored, they're vegan and they don't take away from the taste of the nachos. Add guacamole on top of the nacho mix and enjoy!!!