This recipe started out in a book again, shallots were used and a small carrot, so i changed it to a brown onion, a larger carrot, and Oxo Vegetable stock and got a really nice taste! You need to use the freshest broccoli and cauliflower though. I find it easier using in a ready made twin pack but always check the quality. The carrots here again provide the sweet taste to it. We sometimes have this one at Christmas too as it was my late brother's favourite, and he also insisted on it being served in a mug not a dish. There is always one! Grab the crusty bread rolls.
This recipe started as a recipe in a newspaper. There was a large amount of tabasco sauce in it and no liquid, so when i made it it was unpalatable, but i saw the potential. Adding more mushrooms, drastically reducing the tabasco sauce content, and adding vegetable stock and more mushrooms. The resulting effect was really tasty. Guests always ask for more whenever i make this - so if you haven't tried it yet, definitely do at some stage. Don't be put off with the sweet potato, because in this recipe it tastes nothing like it does normally! Be careful with the tabasco sauce though and use a small teaspoon not a regular sized one!! And don't forget to shake up your tabasco sauce bottle before you use it. We serve this chilli with either basmati rice, chips or fresh salad.
Christmas isn't complete without Irish coffee, and you have to use proper Irish whisky as it has a mellow taste unlike Scottish. We used Nescafe because it's the best. I don't drink anything else! We also used squirty cream but you can use real cream if you want to as that's the correct way to do it! The squirty cream worked well though here too. These were served in Irish coffee style glasses too. Available here
Everyone needs a good full menu idea for a very vegetarian Christmas so we thought it would be a good idea to do this, and as anyone can say their food is good we invited a couple of avid meat eaters to sample our offerings and give their verdicts - aren't we brave! Obviously we started off with a small drink of sherry....then
For the starters we decided on melon balls or fresh fruit in orange juice.
For the soups we chose the Fresh Tomato soup or the Winter Warmer soup.
For main we chose Roast Stuffed Peppers with a fresh salad or Red Pepper and Mushroom Rogan Josh with basmati rice and Chapattis
For the sweet we chose Old School Chocolate Pudding with Mint Custard, or shop bought Panettone. If you haven't tried Panettone please do it's very good!
To finish we ended up with an Irish Coffee.
You can of course choose any soup that you want and do a traditional roast dinner with the Quorn or other slices. We did try the Quorn roast which we cooked in the oven first and (this was nice) and used onion gravy to cover.
The girls Sharon and Reena were lovely, and they gave their honest verdicts, and it does sound like they were very pleasantly surprised!
Making a burger in a bun needs to be layered out right. First you cut in half and toast slightly your bun. We like the large white baps ones. Then butter it slightly on both sides, then add lettuce, usually iceberg, and then cucumber sliced, then tomato sliced, here you can add a small dollop of mayonnaise if you like it, then your burger and then finally your slice of onion and your relish. Red onion is also good on this. We also found a good vegan mayo called OMV burger mayo in a jar. You could just use this if you don't want to top it off with burger relish. Though i do like the tomato and onion one for relish. A good side plate of chips is always an option too! For the burgers we do like the Linda McCartney mozzarella, or plain quarter pounders. Birds eye also do a good vegetable burger with sweetcorn, carrot etc inside it too.
It's always good when entertaining friends to have attractive and tasty, yet light starters. These two tick all the boxes! The first one, melon balls is done with a melon ball implement. You can get hold of one here We chose three different coloured melons for visual effect which works well here. Then we presented them in Tulip wine glasses (available here). For added pizazz we later added a sprig of fresh mint on top which we always have growing in our garden! We served these here with flavoured Marks and Spencer's yogurt, in little dip holders so that guests could take as much as they wanted.
The second starter features fresh fruit of various sorts, in fresh orange juice. Some of our older end viewers remember making a version of this sort in Domestic Science at school years ago! We chose strawberries cut up, green grapes, red and/or black grapes and blueberries for this and then simply poured some chilled fresh orange juice (not concentrated and not too much) in the bottom, of the dish just before serving. Here we like to do things in style...
Well, who doesn't like fresh tomato soup? Especially in winter. The problem is though tomatoes are out of season then, so its best to make this soup in summer when they are always ripe and freshly available. If you do choose to make this soup in winter, Christmas say like we do, always source the supermarkets' reddest and juiciest tomatoes you can find. The carrot content in this recipe replaces sugar as they provide the sweet flavour to it. If you want it more sweet shall we say, like a certain very popular supermarket brand, just add a little extra carrot than specified. But be careful!! And always serve this with a nice crusty bread roll.....
