Our Three-Course Dinner!

We had a lovely time with some of our friends last night! After spending the occasional hour or two eating vegan things together, both in different restaurants and in our friends' private vegan guerilla café, we decided it was time for us to put together a full dinner evening, once at each couples' home. There's a tv show in Germany ("Das perfekte Dinner" - goes by "Come dine with me" in other countries") which inspired us to have a three-course meal, nice decorations and good drinks.

Here's what we did:

Some nice edible decoration, candles, vegan fair trade wine from the local fairtrade shop, friends, a bit of freshly baked bread with herb "butter"...

The aperitif | A Lynchburg Lemonade

1 part Jack Daniel's
1 part triple sec (orange liqueur)
1 part lemon juice
4 parts sprite / lemon soda

Serve with fresh (organic!!*) citrus fruits.



*You wouldn't want any pesticides in your drink, would you?

The appetizer | Spicy Beets and Orange Salad

Find the whole recipe here on my blog.

The Main Course | Roulades with Red Cabbage, Gravy, and Pommes Macaire

Recipe for Roulades and Cabbage [Link]

The recipe for the roulades and cabbage can be found here on my blog. Orginally, we got the recipe for the roulades from Jérôme Eckmeier's blog, but we changed it a bit.

The Pommes Macaire didn't quite work out the way we had anticipated, but they were still super tasty.
Basically, they're potato patties with herbs and optionally smoked tofu bits. We won't make them with tofu bits again, because we picked a pricier brand and didn't really feel like the tofu bits did much for the dish.

Ingredients:

• Floury potatoes
• Salt
• fresh herbs of your liking (we used parsley and chives)
• some vegan butter (something like 2 - 3 tablespoons per kilo of potatoes)
• Some oil 

Instructions:

• Cook the potatoes.
• Mash them up nicely with a fork or masher. Do NOT use a blender.
• Chop up your herbs. 
• Mix herbs, "butter," and potato mash. 
• Season with salt. 
• Knead together all of the ingredients. 
• Form small patties and fry in a pan. (We tried to put them in the deep fryer for convenience reasons (>>> cooking for six people), but the just disintegrated! So, do use the pan.)
• Serve with awesome gravy, roulades and cabbage. :)

Dessert | Mousse au Chocolat and Awesome Cakes

Mousse au Chocolat Recipe  [Link]
Cake Recipe [Link]

Oh yeah. I made batman symbol shaped chocolate pieces.

So essentially, this is a two-fold dessert. Both components work really well together.

Find out how to make the super easy Mousse au Chocolat here. I also added a drop or two of organic orange oil to the mousse.

The cake was made with the ingredients of this recipe. I made 14 cupcakes out of the recipe, but probably should have made 16 or 17, so the batter wouldn't have spilled over the liners too much. But that's okay. :) You live and you learn.
I made the cupcakes for the dessert in silicone liners so I could easily remove them from the liner and serve them without. No one needs paper liners on their plate during a nice dinner. :)



I am quite excited about the Batman chocolate! Buying that silicone mould (for ice cubes) was such a good investment. I just melted some dark chocolate in a bain-marie and poured it into the mold. Gives each meal a special look!