Christmas Day Lunch - 25 December 2008

Christmas is all about eating, drinking and family in our household. Mum and I cook while my sister provides the ice cream. Now the rest of my family is not vegan so it is my job to cater for our special needs. However there is no shortage of family members lining up for the vegan offerings at Christmas time so I cook large quantities. Consequently we spend all day on the 24th cooking and then we cook on the 25th after lunch. We provide Christmas lunch on the 25th for my Nan at her nursing home so everything has to be portable and able to be eaten cold.

Keeping that in mind our Christmas Day menu consisted of:
• Spicy Lentil Salad
• Lentil Singharas
• Cherry Truffles
• Strawberry Cupcakes

So to start at the beginning:

Spicy Lentil Salad
This salad has quite a strong star anise and cinnamon flavour as these two spices are cooked with the rice.
So to flavour the rice/lentil mixture you’ll need:
• 220g brown rice
• 185g lentils
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 6 cardamom pods
• 1 star anise
• 2 bay leaves
• 3 cups of water
• 2.5 tbsp of olive oil
• 1 tbsp lemon juice

Put all of these ingredients in a heavy bottomed pot and use the absorption method to cook the rice and lentils by bringing it to the boil and then simmering on a low heat (covered) for around an hour or until the water is absorbed. Once this cooked whisk in the olive oil and lemon – we add extra of each if necessary.

While the rice is cooking you can cook the rest of the ingredients. The rest of the ingredients are spiced vegetables so you can really use any vegies you want but we use:
• 1 head of broccoli
• 2 carrots
• 1 capsicum
• 1 onion
• 1 cup of peas

The spices we use are:
• 4 garlic cloves
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp ground coriander

We start by steaming the broccoli and carrots until they are soft. Then we cook the onion, garlic and capsicum for 2-3 minutes. Once that is complete we add the other vegies and the garam masala and coriander coating the vegies.

Once the vegies are done we mix it in with the rice and we’re done. This salad is good cold so it’s great for a hot Christmas day and makes it easy to transport it somewhere!



Singharas
Traditionally these are made with mince but I have found that lentils are a good substitute, so almost anything that uses mince can be changed to use lentils. So these are basically little curry puffs of goodness. They should be in the shape of little diamonds but as you can see from the photos mine are little balls – and let’s face it who cares as long as they don’t fall apart when you deep fry them!

So the filling has:
• 4 ripe tomatoes (skins removed in hot water)
• 2 tbsp oil
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 6 cloves
• 1 cardamom pod
• Chillies (as many or as little as you like)
• 1 onion
• 3-4 curry leaves
• 6 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp ground turmeric
• 5cm piece of ginger
• 500g lentils
• 150g peas
• 1 tsp garam masala

Heat the oil in a pan on a low heat and then add the cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and chillis. Fry them for about 10 seconds so they start releasing their spicy goodness then add the onions, curry leaves, garlic, turmeric and ginger. Fry until the onions are soft. Then add the lentils (I have cooked the lentils on a slow heat for 30 minutes before adding them). At this stage I also add some water to help the lentils cook as I am not using meat and there will be no fat released from the lentils. Cook gently with the lid on until the lentils are at the consistency you like and the majority of the liquid has evaporated. Once complete remove the whole spices and sprinkle with the garam masala.


To make the dough to house your lentil mixture I use 250g flour and 2 table spoons of Nutalex (vegan margarine). We rubbed the dough and the Nutalex together to make a crumble and then added warm water to make it pliable. We then kneaded it for about 5 minutes and let it rest for 30 minutes.

Once the dough and mixture were ready we rolled the dough into a log and cut 12 portions. Each portion we rolled out to make flat and cut those in half. We then filled each dough sheet with some of the lentil mixture making 24 singharas. We then deep fried each ball until the pastry has gone a nice brown colour.


Now these are great hot and probably best eaten warm but they are also great cold with a little bit of sweet chilli sauce. And the best part is they are so easy to transport – just put them in a container and away you go – great for lunches and picnics.



Cherry Truffles
My family absolutely adores Ferrero Rochers but these aren’t exactly vegan. So I decided this year we should have a vegan truffle that we could all enjoy as an after lunch snack. The secret to these is to soak the sour cherries in a good quality cherry liquor for a couple of days.



The ingredients are:
• ½ cup dried cherries (soaked in liquor, optional)
• 1 cup toasted shredded coconut
• 2 tsps of Nutalex (vegan margarine)
• 1/3 cup soy milk
• 250g 60-70% vegan dark chocolate

Dice the cherries until that are at the size you would like in your truffles. Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling. Add this to the chocolate and Nutalex. This should start melting the chocolate but you may still have to get out a saucepan of boiling water and melt the remaining chocolate over that – stirring constantly to make sure the chocolate does not seize up. Once the chocolate is melted add in the cherries. Leave this mixture to set for 4-8 hours.

Once set using a spoon, scoop some of the chocolate mixture out and roll into a ball using your hands. Now this is messy!!! And then roll into the coconut – I like to dry toast my coconut in a pan before I roll the truffles in it. Once complete place the balls into the fridge to set once again.

These are absolutely fantastic as a chocolate treat at Christmas time – or anytime to be honest!!!



Strawberry Cupcakes
The last thing we prepared for Christmas was Strawberry Cupcakes. I cooked this as it is tradition in my family to have a Christmas pudding. I’ve never liked Christmas pudding so I always try to do a cake or something for me and others to eat. I though these would be perfect this year as the white icing and strawberry on top look very festive. We have put this recipe on our blog before so I won’t write it out here again. Needless to say though these little strawberry bundles didn’t last long on the table!

FRIED TOFU WITH BLACK BEAN AND CHILLI SAUCE AND FRIED RICE

After trying salted black beans in our simple Chinese feast we were hooked. So we decided to try Black Bean and Chilli Sauce with fried tofu (this is a version of a sauce by Kylie Kwong – we like the addition of red capsicums and use vegan oyster sauce). This recipe is great with fried tofu but honestly if you can’t be bothered with that it’s great on some fried rice. We cooked fried rice as a side but ate it as the main course on the second night. We’re big fans of fried rice and this sauce was great with the rice.
Ingredients

• 1/2 medium red capsicum
• 1 tablespoon peanut oil
• 1/2 red onion
• 1 tablespoon of ginger
• 2 (or more) garlic cloves
• 2 teaspoon fermented salted black beans
• 1 tablespoon dry sherry
• 2 teaspoons light soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons vegetarian oyster sauce
• 2 teaspoons white sugar
• 2 teaspoons malt vinegar
• 1/4 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 red chilli (size dependent on the heat you like)
• 1/3 water

Directions
Chop and remove the seeds from the chillies and capsicums. Chop the onion and ginger finely to your liking, we really like ginger so I try to leave some little cubes, and crush the garlic. Once you have everything measured and prepared heat the oil in a wok. First cook the onion with the ginger, garlic and yummy black beans for a minute making sure the black beans don’t burn. Add the sherry and 30 seconds later add everything else except the water and chilli. Once that has cooked for 30 seconds chuck in the chillies and cook for 30 seconds – of you remember cook each thing for 30 seconds you’re pretty right. Then chuck in the water for, yep another 30 seconds and you’re done. And this sauce is so good you'll probably eat it with tofu in 30 seconds too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lentil Pasta Bolognaise

Everyone loves a good bolognaise – well maybe not everyone cause even when I was a meat eater I never really enjoyed eating mince – so this is a fantastic (and much better) version of a traditional bolognaise. I try to keep the herbs and flavours exactly the same as my mum’s traditional recipe so the only difference is I use lentils which give it a rich earthy flavour. The only trick to this one is too watch the lentils as they are thirsty little things so if you want a runny sauce – watch the lentils or add more liquid as you go.

So you need:
• 1 cup of green or brown lentils (We prefer brown)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• ¼ cup Italian parsley, chopped
• 1/3 teaspoon oregano
• 400g can diced tomatoes
• 375ml vegetable stock
• 500g packet pasta

Soak the lentils over night so they soften up and reduce the cooking time that night. Great for when you’re in a hurry. Heat the oil in a big dish over a moderate heat, add the onions, garlic, parsley and oregano and cook until the onions are soft. Add the tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes. Add lentils and stock and simmer, uncovered, until the stock is absorbed and lentils are soft – this takes about 20 minutes but check as you go so you get the liquid consistency you want.

While you wait for you lentils to cook, cook your pasta in boiling salt water to the instructions recommended by the manufacturer.

When it’s all ready chuck your pasta in the big pot, mix and eat -DELIZIOSO!!!!!