The holidays are just around the corner, which would normally mean big get-togethers with friends and family, a lot of presents and of course, huge dinners!
This year, there will probably be no large festivities, and chances are that you won’t even celebrate the holidays like you normally would. However, despite the circumstances, we do all fancy a good meal. This is why this blogpost will provide you with recipes for a delicious three-course dinner – with ingredients that are easy to find and fit into the student-budget! Also, all these recipes are safe for my fellow-vegetarians.
Entrée
We will start this lovely winter dinner with some cheese, some sweet potato, and some flatbread!
What you will need:
- Enough dough for a regular pizza or a prebaked flatbread
- 1 medium sweet potato
- 1 cup ricotta
- 2 teaspoons fresh thyme
- 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 2 hands full of arugula
For the entire recipe and the instructions, go to www.thekitchn.com (or click on the image) and look for the sweet potato, ricotta, arugula flatbread dish. this website also has a lot of other delicious recipes that you can try out during the holidays!
Main course
In order to create a varied but extensive dinner, the main course will be a combination of two different delicious recipes.
The First recipe is a dish that contains my personal favourite herb, rosemary! It is a mix of roasted vegetables, seasoned with my beloved rosemary, olive oil, garlic, and some sea salt. To make this heavenly plate of greens (plus orange and purple), you will need:
- 2 carrots
- 4 parsnips
- 12 baby potatoes
- 1 large sweet potato
- 2 beets
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1 1/2 teaspoons flaky sea salt
- 1/4 cup fresh rosemary
- 4 cloves of garlic
For further instructions, pay a visit to www.sweetpeasandsaffron.com and search the rosemary-roasted root vegetables dish and I can promise you will not be disappointed.
Another very tasty recipe that is fitting for a Christmas dinner is a nut roast with mushroom gravy. This dish has more of a bite, but is very creamy at the same time.
The necessary ingredients are, among some others (that you definitely already have in your kitchen):
- spinach
- dried cranberries
- oloroso sherry
- chestnut mushrooms
- spelt grains
- mixed nuts
- cooked chestnuts
- parsnip
This recipe consists of three parts, namely the roast itself, the mushroom gravy and lastly the cranberry sauce. Take a look at the nut roasts on www.bbc.co.uk, to see the exact measurements for the ingredients and for all the further instructions. Or click on the picture and get redirected to the original cooking guide!
Dessert
We will end this dinner with a typical Dutch treat. I can imagine that all the internationals really miss being in the Netherlands, specifically the extremely amazing winter weather – just kidding ☺. But without any jokes, you probably miss the good holiday Dutch treats such as pepernoten, schuimpjes and maybe even oliebollen. Therefore, here are the ingredients for making your own speculaas! The baking instructions are on www.weekendbakery.com.
- 6.5 g cinnamon
- 2 g ground cloves
- 1.5 g grated nutmeg
- 1 g ground white pepper
- 2 g aniseed powder
- 1 g ginger powder
- 1/2 g cardamom powder
There are many occasions where you can eat speculaas. You can eat it as a cookie with your coffee or tea, or you can make a dessert of it. Be creative! An idea would be to serve this with a scoop of delicious ice cream, combine it with some chocolate mousse or even decorate it with wintery fruits. There are even recipes out there that fill speculaas with almond-marzipan paste. It really is your call!
Author: Renée Mötter
Editor: Gwendolyne Cheung
Illustrator: Roos de Waard