a very vegan christmas

When you tell your omni-partner that you're going to host Christmas and he suggests you get a turkey, you know you've got a battle on you hands. Surprisingly, it didn't take much to get him to agree to a wholly vegan Christmas, which is what we did last night. A few days before actual Christmas, but mum is flying to Brisbane as I type so we hosted dinner on Saturday night instead. And it was a real hit! It was my first attempt at a lot of the recipes, but I made sure I gave myself plenty of time to make mistakes!

Here in Australia we have a popular cult magazine, The Australian Women's Weekly, which also publishes cookbooks-a-plenty. They have the best recipes, which have been "triple tested" in their test kitchen. Which is a good thing, because I don't have time to try something three times before I realise I may have bitten off more than I can chew! Anyway, the recipe for our "main course" was a stuffed butternut pumpkin (squash to you folks in the US of A) which is a vegan twist on the "turducken"- turkey, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken. We called our version a pumpleecchini (pumpkin, zucchini, leek), and boy was it delicious!

So here we go:

Ingredients:
2/3 cup water
1/3 cup quinoa
1 zucchini
1 leek
a big butternut pumpkin (squash) cut in half lengthways- I bought two half pumpkins so I didn't have to cut it in half myself (genius)
1 small onion, chopped (I used a shallot because I had one in the pantry)
2 cloves garlic, peeled
2 1/2 Tbsp oil
2 Tbsp fresh thyme
3 tsp flax meal
2 Tbsp hot water
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup hazelnut meal (I just pulsed some hazelnuts in my mini-food processor because I couldn't find meal)

Method
1.Preheat the oven to 200C/400F
2.Follow the instructions for cooking quinoa on the packet- usually double water to rinsed quinoa, bring to boil and reduce to simmer (covered) for 15 minutes. Cool.
3.Scoop the seeds from the pumpkin and cut out a zucchini sized space, keep the pumpkin flesh. Do the same for the zucchini, but a leek sized hole. Reserve zucchini flesh also. Trim the leek down to the size of the zucchini hole - just use the white bit

4.Prick the insides of the zucchini and the pumpkin. Process the flesh of the pumpkin and the zucchini with the onion and the garlic

5.Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the processed veggies, thyme and cooked quinoa, season. Cook, stirring for about 5 minutes, until tender. Cool.

6.To make the stuffing, combine the flax meal with 2Tbsp hot water in a medium bowl; let stand for 10 minutes. Combine flax mixture with the quinoa/veggie mix, cranberries and hazelnut meal.

7.Press some of the mixture into the zucchini cavity and press the leek in gently

Add the zucchini top.

8.Repeat this process with the pumpkin, gently pressing in the stuffing and then the zucchini into the cavity. It can get messy so, be gentle, and patient!

9.Tie the pumpkin with cooking string and brush with oil and wrap in foil

10.Place in a roasting pan and bake that baby!! Roast for 2 hours and then let stand for 30 minutes before unwrapping and carving

I have to say, it was a bit of work, but worth it to have such a beautiful centrepiece on the Christmas table. I served it with a variety of other roast vegetables; maple glazed carrots, vegan Yorkshire puddings, peas, roast potatoes and roast cauliflower.

Christmas is a time for giving so, why not give the gift of life and save a beautiful creature from ending up on your dinner plate

xoxo