If you ask Google what food is most often cooked at Christmas in Germany, potato salad with sausages is right at the top. But the next ones in the ranking are also very meat-heavy, as for many a festive meal has to include a roast to be called such. In this blog article, we’ll introduce you to a delicious vegan menu and share our tips for making the recipes a success.
First step: Finding the taste
At Christmas, it can be a little more effort and the dishes that usually take so much time can now be unpacked. So that you can really present a festive meal, we would like to present you with a three-course menu with which you can certainly show off to your loved ones.
To ensure that we can recommend the recipes presented here with a clear conscience, they had to be put to the test beforehand, of course. That’s why our Matacrew got together and played taster.
There are now an incredible number of vegan food bloggers. That’s why we left the recipes to the experts and chose a total of five recipes from “Eat this” for our Christmas feast, from which we created starters, main courses and desserts. They have been putting together a Christmas menu here since 2015. So there is plenty of choice. All recipes are linked in case this blog entry makes your mouth water and you want to try them too!
We have decided on the following Christmas menu:
Appetizer
Lamb’s lettuce with pear, walnut and orange vinaigrette
Main course
Seitan roll roast with vegan bacon crust and bread dumplings together with the best vegan gravy.
Dessert
Chocolate Tarelettes with Flor de Sal, Pistachios and Pomegranate
But so that the work didn’t get stuck on just one person, we divided up the individual courses in the team so that everyone had something to do. That’s also one of our tips: divide up the work and get friends or family to help you.
Let the big cooking begin.
After a bulk purchase, tested and equipped with a mask, we were in the kitchen and started first with the Seitan Roll Roast with Vegan bacon Crust. As this still had to marinate a little, we prepared it a day earlier. As usual with new – and somewhat more elaborate – recipes, the preparation time is exceeded by quite a bit.
However, the individual steps of the recipe are easy to understand and implement. Small tip: Rolling out the fourth step can be made easier by using a rolling pin. In our modest mat kitchen, we unfortunately only had a glass bottle available. The rolling pin is now definitely on the wish list for future cooking events.
When we leave the “roast” to cool on the counter after steaming, the whole room smells wonderfully spicy. The feast now has to spend another night in the fridge before we can process it further and tackle the next recipes.
The following day, the sleeves were rolled up again and cooking continued! The best comes last but is prepared first. We chose the Chocolate Tartlets with Flor de sal, Pistachios and Pomegranate as our dessert.
But since we also wanted to use the ingredients that are already available in our matakitchen, we worked with normal sugar, wheat flour and salt. After overcoming obstacles like “What was blind baking again?”, the dessert went quite quickly. By the way, this recipe is also suitable for absolute baking beginners. Even our two Mata-Backnoobs, who was responsible for the dessert, managed to create a wonderfully delicious dessert.
Even for experienced tofu eaters like us, it’s always surprising what chocolatey treats you can conjure up from silken tofu. In the end, the tartlets were put in the fridge until they were ready to be eaten.
The best vegan gravy in the world
We prepared the Sauce exactly according to the recipe and were rewarded with a wonderful vegan alternative. The only flaw in our creation? The color. As you can see in the picture, it’s a little lighter than we wanted and reminds us of … well, you probably know what we mean 😉
While the sauce was still enjoying its heat, we moved on to the Vegan Bread Dumplings. Instead of cutting, we tore the buns into approx. 1 cm pieces. A few pieces turn out too big, soak up water and change the consistency unfavorably. So here’s the tip when re-cooking: Make sure the pieces don’t get too big! Fortunately, the difference is not quite so dramatic in our case and the dumplings go into the boiling salted water in only a slightly different form.
While we wait for them to resurface, the Seitan Roll Roast is finished. After the rice paper sheets with the marinade coated the roast, it went straight into the oven. Now we had to let the heat work and could concentrate on the final step for our perfect Christmas dinner.
The appetizer. The lamb’s lettuce with pear, walnut and orange vinaigrette is just as quick and easy as described. If you cook with double portions like we do, i.e. you want to make eight instead of four, you don’t have to double all the ingredients. The salad and the pomegranate in particular can easily be doubled.
And has the effort now been worth it?
But now the all-important question: Did we like it? To this, we can only say: every dish passed with flying colors! The dressing of the Salad is phenomenal, the Roast is wonderfully spicy, the Dessert is just the right amount of chocolaty and the Sauce rounds off the main course perfectly. We are thrilled and have found the perfect vegan Christmas dinner for us.
See for yourself and try the recipes. Feel free to link to us if you share your creations on social media.
Your Matacrew wishes you a reflective Christmas, with delicacies worthy of the occasion.