My best friend's hubby is a chef and he and I collaborated on Christmas eve dinner. No, he isn't vegan, but he likes the challenge of cooking vegan food. (You may recall the fig sauce he prepared awhile back, posted HERE.)
For a little over two hours, we set to work on some amazing food to bring to the family dinner: a savory "Holiday Tart" (recipe from VegNews HERE), acorn squash stuffed with wild rice stuffing (stuffing recipe HERE), and mashed potatoes with butternut squash. There are no photographs of the cooking process as we were on a time crunch and were bustling around that tiny, 800-degrees kitchen, but behold! The finished product!
Here's the tart, fresh out of the oven.
This was delicious! The filling is mostly chickpeas, walnuts, spinach, celery, onion, and garlic and some other herbs. This could be eaten without baking, and it would make a delicious dip or spread. I think it would also be great crust-less, just baked like a casserole.
The wild rice stuffing was delicious! I cooked the rice in vegetable broth, and it cooked for a very long time, and we still had to drain excess liquid, but it still turned out perfect. Instead of an apple, we diced up a pear-apple, which was fun. Pecans are great in rice dishes.
And mashed potatoes, well, you can't go wrong with mashed potatoes! (Especially garlicky ones.) The butternut squash was a great addition.
At the family dinner, everyone was eating pasta and seafood, but I was happy to share my food with everyone (we made plenty to go around!), and I got some lovely feedback!
Here's my plate:
I also made a no-bake fruit pie with So Delicious vanilla on the side, and that was warmly received, but I have no pictures of that. (I've blogged about it awhile back and the "recipe" is HERE.)
It was such a delicious meal and I was SO FULL that I couldn't even THINK about turning my new hula hoop that night! I had an amazing weekend, so full of love. I am so lucky to have such amazing people in my life.
I hope you had a lovely holiday, too! What was on your holiday plate?
That tart looks really interesting and delicious! ^^ We had lots of chickpea curry with roti wraps, roasted brussel sprouts, salad, hummus and baked donuts for Christmas yesterday. It seems that you had an equally fantastic time! ^^
ReplyDeleteoh mylanta! this looks beyond dreamy. can i go to your house next christmas?thanks. :)
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