What are you going to cook on Christmas? – A citrussy vegan christmas menu

Hey there!

It’s Christmas soon and well of course I’m going to be cooking something delicious for this year’s Christmas dinner with my family. As I wanted to make sure that my menu will turn out delicious and also so you, lovely people, are able to recreate it or at least take inspiration from it I decided to make a test-run and share the recipe with you.

When I started planning this I wanted to make sure it would be easy, yet still look and, of course, taste fancier than your every day bowl of pasta. To be honest, I actually thought it was quite a challenge to come up with an all vegan Christmas menu as I grew up with meat based Christmas dinners just like many of you did too, I assume. I mean I cook vegan food all day, everyday, but I’ve never had to come up with a somewhat special vegan menu. I mean I couldn’t just make a delicious lentil stew or a spicy Indian curry. Both delicious, both so not christmassy…

After loads of brainstorming and scrolling through the product range available on www.farmy.ch I finally settled for a menu. I decided that my menu should have a theme and I ended up deciding for all citrusy flavours as I personally love citrus fruits during winter, especially oranges and clementines.

I decided to go for a chickpea based entrée as I discovered those amazing balck chickpeas on Farmy. And to keep it fancy I ended up cretaing a chickpea Tatar which I flavoured with lemongrass and clementine. For my main I spotted another extraordinary ingredient, purple potatoes, I mean that says it all, they’re purple, how cool’s that? As I personally love pasta I decided to make purple gnocchi with coulourful Swiss chard, saffron and grapefruit. Last but not least I wanted to make a delicious weck jar dessert. As I went for a citrussy theme I went with an orange cream topped with the yummiest macadamia crumble, so good!

My personal favourite was definitely the entry, which might have been because of the amazing bread I served with the chickpea Tatar. I decided to use a loaf of Wholewheat bread from the John Baker bakery in Zurich. Best bread ever, seriously if you ever come by Stadelhofen station in Zurich you need to head over to John baker and get your hands on some of their bread!

Yet if you happen to not be able to ever be in the Zurich area, you can just order the delicious bread plus basically all of the ingredients I used for this dish on Farmy. Honestly, I love this shop, they’re concept’s just amazing and the products are actually of amazing quality.

So if you fancy a delicious Christmas menu with the best ingredients on the market I highly suggest you to head over to their homepage and place an order. To make it a bit easier for you I also wrote a shopping list for you so you can just click on the link and it will directly take you to the equivalent product on the Farmy website.

So here you go the shopping list and my recipe:

Shopping List:

• Black chickpeas
• 1 avocado
• 3 clementines
• lemongrass*
• 1 loaf of “Vollkornbrot mit Kernen”
• purple potatoes
• Swiss chard (preferably coulourful one)
• 3 grapefruits
• Soy milk
• 2 oranges
• Date syrup*
• Almond cream by soyana
• Macadamia nuts
• Sage
• Vebugan (vegan butter)

*Those products used to be available, yet they aren’t at this stage. I will update this post if they come back in stock.

Already in your pantry:

• Salt
• pepper
• Olive oil
• Flour
• Oats
• Garlic
• Onion
• Vanilla bean
• Baking powder

Christmas menu for 4 people

Chickpea Avocado Tatar with lemongrass and clementine:

• 250g black chickpeas, cooked (100g dry weight)
• ½ avocado, finely diced
• 1 tbs olive oil
• juice of one clementine
• zest of one clementine
• 1 clementine, segments
• salt
• 1 stalk of lemongrass, finely sliced
• 1 loaf of “Vollkornbort mit Kernen”,sliced
• additional olive oil for the bread

1. Add the chickpeas and the avocado into a bowl. Roughly mash up with a fork or a potato masher.
2. Pour in the olive oil and the clementine juice. Add salt, clementine zest and lemon grass. Mix until well combined.
3. Place in the fridge for at least one hour, so the flavours can come together.
4. Heat up some olive oil in a pan and fry your sliced bread until slightly crispy.
5. Distribute the chickpea Tatar on four plates and garnish with the fried bread and the clementine segments.

Purple gnocchi with grapefruit, saffron and Swiss chard:

• 600g purple potatoes, peeled and boiled
• 200g flour
• 400g Swiss chard
• 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
• 1 big onion, finely chopped
• 3 grapefruits (2 juiced, 1 cut into slices)
• 40ml soy milk
• 2 tsp flour
• 2 sachets of saffron
• salt
• pepper
• olive oil
• 4 sage leaves

1. Mash up your boiled potatoes until there are no clumps left.
2. Add the flour and 1-2 teaspoons of salt, knead together until well combined.
3. When you’ve got a smooth dough, flour your counter top and roll your dough into logs. Cut the logs into equally sized gnocchi (1cm).
4. Bring some water to a boil and cook your gnocchi in it. Make sure to not over crowd your pan and cook them until they swim to the surface of the water.
5. When your gnocchi are cooked add them into a bowl with some olive oil so they won’t stick together, put aside for later.
6. Chop your Swiss chard stems into small chunks and put the leaves aside for later.
7. Heat up some olive oil in a frying pan and add the onion and the garlic, ,let it fry until the onion has become transluscent. Add the Swiss chard stems and continue frying for another 3-4 minutes.
8. Pour in the juice of 2 of the grapefruits. Also mix the soy milk with 2tsp flour and pour it into the Swiss chard mixture. Also add the saffron and stir it all up.
9. Lower the heat and let it simmer of low heat until you’re ready to serve.
10. Heat up some olive oil in a second frying pan, add the sage leaves and the gnocchi and fry until the gnocchi have lightly browned. Last but not least push the gnocchi aside and add the Swiss chard leaves and lower the heat.
11. Let the Swiss chard wilt.
12. Plate up your Gnocchi. I placed them on a bed of Swiss chard leaves and topped and topped them with the grapefruit saffron sauce. Lastly I decorated it with a few slices of fresh grapefruit.

Orange cream with macadamia crumble:

Cream:

• ½ vanilla bean
• juice of one orange (150ml)
• 2tsp corn starch
• 1tbs date syurp
• 250g almond cream by soyana

1. Mix the corn starch with 2 tablespoons of the orange juice.
2. Pour the rest of the orange juice into a saucepan, add the date syrup, the seeds of the vanilla bean as well as the pod itself and let the mixture come to a simmer.
3. When the mixture has come to a simmer add the cornstarch mixture and whisk until it comes to a bubble. Let it bubble for another 3 minutes and then take the mixture of the flame and pour it into a bowl.
4. Cover it with foil and let it cool completely.
5. When the mixture has cooled completely remove the vanilla pod and whip up the almond cream. Fold the whipped almond cream under the orange juice mixture.
6. Put aside for later.

Crumble:

• 30g oats
• 25g spelt flour
• 50g macadamia nuts, roughly chopped
• seeds of ½ vanilla bean
• orange zest of ½ orange
• 2 tbs vegan butter,
• 1tbs date syurp
• ½ tsp baking powder

1. Preheat your oven to 180°C.
2. Add the oats, vanilla, orange zest, macadamias, spelt flour and baking powder into a bowl.
3. Pour in the date syrup and at the vegan butter. Crumble together with your fingers.
4. When your mixture is well combined distribute it onto a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes.
5. Remove it from the oven and let it cool completely.

Serve:

• Orange cream
• Crumble
• 1 orange, cut into segments

1. Distribute the orange segments over four little jars.
2. Top with the cream mixture and last but not least add the crumble.

Voila. Christmas cooking done! Now it’s time to enjoy this amazing meal with your loved ones. This was absolutely delicious and I can’t wait to make it again on Christmas day this year. Also make sure to let me know if you happen to recreate my menu or parts of it.

Enjoy the rest of your pre-Christmas preparation. I hope you’re not to stressed out with all the things there are to get done during that time of the year. After all it’s supposed to be fun!

 

Bisous