Open Celery! (Apriti Sedano!)

The Holidays Menu: Easy Peasy… not too easy!

Apriti Sedano! Open Celery! December 2023 Newsletter cover... The Holidays Menu!!!

Aahhh it’s December, Christmas time, again! Here we are with our Holidays Menu: Easy Peasy… not too easy! Italian Party food for a Vegan Holiday meal. What do we offer that’ll make everybody happy?

Welcome to “Open Celery!” our monthly newsletter on plant-based recipes, stories and unsolicited advice made in Italy. It’s the fruit (and vegetable) of the collaboration between ottimoblog.com and appetibilis.net
Published in Italian and English (and happily edited and translated by Orsola)… at some point, we’d like to have it in podcast as well 😀
(Cliccate qui per “Apriti Sedano!” in italiano)

Italian Christmas (and New Year’s Eve) meals are no longer those family gatherings they once were – with up to the seventh degree of kinship at the table. Yes, they can still last as long as a Neapolitan wedding party, but with some moderation.

Holidays are an opportunity to see each other again, recalling bits and pieces of Christmas past, and the flavors of grandma’s food… ahh, how good that was.

Now, however, we have upgraded to holiday lunch and dinner: now we have celiacs, people with food intolerance, allergies… VEGANS!

But did we upgrade our mother, grandmother or aunt Pina for all these special requests? No?

So, lovely people, you’ll have to think about it.

Nooooo, nothing complicated. Simplicity has its charm… always

The good news is that it’s pretty easy, but not super easy. On the other hand, if it were too easy, it would be more of an impromptu lunch and not a Christmas one. Wouldn’t be?

Holiday menu: planning, and shopping list

And now let’s get to work, by starting from the fundamentals of a successful party: planning, and the shopping list.

Let’s plan a menu that makes sense, that is fairly balanced, and that considers the preferences of our guests.

For example: My sister dislikes mushrooms and coconut. Since I love my sister, and I want to be kind and inclusive, I’m not going to make a risotto with porcini mushrooms or a dessert with coconut milk… If, however, there’s some bit of animosity, then… it’s another story.

Here are some of the staple foods to keep in the pantry, that can came handy for Christmas and New Year’s Eve, as well as for the whole year.

Here we go:

  • chickpeas and lentils,
  • some special shapes of pasta and a fragrant rice,
  • a veggie drink (milk) for basic creams,
  • spices, various type of flour, jams, and
  • lots of seasonal vegetables.

What to do with these ingredients?

An Optimum Holidays Menu!

For our Optimum Holidays Menu, let’s start with…

  1. The Entrée – Let’s serve a classic chickpea hummus, with its colourful variations.
    • When paired with crudités and tasty croutons, it will always make a great impression, winning over even your skeptical cousin Vilfredo.
    • With gluten-free, vegan, and grain free legume or vegetable creamy soups – to be offered with oilseed flours crackers – the inclusion is at its best (even without the garlic). The “no garlic” and “no onion” are an increasingly common request.
  2. Although the 80s and 90s are back, I would say that the Russian salad “la damo ar gatto” (let’s give it to the cat, an Alberto Sordi’s quote from the 1954 movie “An American in Rome”).
    • We can instead propose a modern Coleslaw – with its crunchy and round appeal all at once that, from the first bite, creates an intense mouthfeel; plus, on a grilled crouton of polenta (or wholemeal bread), it’s to die for!

Let’s continue with…

  1. The Main Course – One made of lentils and fragrant rice, it’s what we need. Excellent and for Christmas and for New Year’s Eve: in Italy the lentils are the “Good Luck” food to be eaten for prosperity at the end of the year!
    • We can make a red lentil curry (small brown lentils are fine too) paired with a fragrant long grain rice, such as basmati, possibly grown locally.
    • To create a neat presentation, let’s place the rice in a bundt shaped form. In case we miss the mold, just place a glass upside-down right in the middle of a flat plate and create a donut shape around the glass, using a spoon to press it well, so that it sits properly.
    • Decorate with fresh marjoram leaves and few slices of toasted almonds.
    • Serve the curry in a vintage tureen, or a clay pot, or an unconventional bowl that gives that special touch to the table settings.
  2. Have fun with contorni (the side veggie dishes).
    • Seasonal vegetables can be offered in countless ways. Of course, you can never go wrong with a nice vegetable millefeuille (pronounced meel-foy). Just make sure you have a mandolin slicer at hand.

And finally… The Dessert

Here’s the Dessert! Nooooo, nothing complicated. Simplicity has always its charm.

Linzer Cookies, the ultimate Christmas cookies…

  1. We are talking about the Linzer cookies, here in Rome best known as “occhio di bue“ (bull’s eye).

Our Italian Vegan Linzer Cookies Recipe

Here’s the short recipe for our Italian Vegan Linzer Cookies. Short because it implies that you already have the pastry dough. Gluten-free please!

As Nora Ephron was saying “Don’t ever make piecrust. Just buy it.” So, just buy one 😉

Ingredients, Utensils, and Directions

  1. The ready made dough comes frozen, so, remove it from the freezer and let it soften, until it feels ready enough to roll.
  2. On a floured surface – with a rolling pin – roll-out the dough and cut the cookie disks with a round cookie cutter…
    • No round cutter? No problem, just use a glass, dusted with a bit of rice flour, it’s a non-stick trick.
  3. Gather the scrap dough, roll-out, and repeat.
  4. Cut out an equal number of top disks, where you’ll cut a smaller hole in the middle.
  5. Place the disks on a tray, covered with parchment paper, (the nice shaped trims too).
  6. Bake it at 180 °C static (350 °F) for about 10 to 12 minutes, or until golden.
  7. Let it cool on a rack, and then assemble the cookies.
  8. Dust the top cookies with icing sugar, and fill the discs.
    • The classic recipe calls for apricot jam, we’ve been using a bitter orange or a sweet fig jam, both go incredibly well with the shortcrust pastry…
    • and a small cup of caffè corretto – an espresso spiked with booze. It’s an Holiday treats after all, isn’t it!

Have fun, all you have to do is to give it a try, then vary – colour and decorate as you like. Simple recipes seem plain, yet, when done to perfection, are always a sure success. The secret ingredient? It’s Love, always!

Thank you so much for reading this far, hopefully our Holiday Menu is going to be of some help.

On behalf of OttimoBlog’s Team we wish all of you “Buone Feste” (very Happy Holiday Season)! Simona and Orsola

Link all’articolo in italiano

Menù delle Feste: facile ma non troppo… Apriti sedano! e buona lettura.

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