A Vegetarian Dinner

I am not a vegetarian, but I often make vegetarian food, both because it's good for us and also because vegetables are much cheaper than meat in most places, so it's also good for the pocket book. This three course dinner will take you about two hours to make, but most of this time you are actually waiting for the bread to rise, so you can check what your facebook friends are up to in the mean time. Since I am not a vegetarian, I do add a little bit of meat to the main dish, but it's optional, if you don't want it or don't have it, just skip it.

So let's start with

Wheat Bread

I lot of people don't eat wheat these days, but if you want to have a good-tasting bread to go with dinner (or next morning toasted with marmelade) nothing tastes like wheat bread, and this is both good and very easy to make. You will get four breads from this recipe, which most ovens are big enough to take - and you need no breadpans for it.

If you have a mixer you start with the wet ingedients, if you knead by hand, start with the dry ones.

1 liter (4 cups) of luke warm water from the tap
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
3-4 tablespoons oil (I use olive oil but any will do)
50 grams of yeast that you crumble into the water (or two packs of dry yeast which you mix in the flour)
3  liters (12 cups) of wheat flour

Knead the bread till all is mixed, but not for longer than that, because the longer you knead wheat bread the "heavier" it becomes and you want it light. Cover the bowl with a clean towel or a piece of plastic and let it rise to double size in a draught free place at "room temperature". Now room temperture can be a lot of things, I have found out, so if you live in a country where one goes in to cool off, put the bowl in the oven, which you set on 50 degrees (or as low as you can get it).
When this has happend, which takes about 1/2-3/4 hour, some times a bit longer, first you put the oven on 200-210 center grades, you pour the dough out on a floored or oiled surface and devide it into four pieces which you shape into breads. The less you fiddle with this, the lighter the bread gets. Place the breads on a baking paper on a baking sheet and put a towel over to rise once more. I normally put this plate on top of the oven, because the heat from it makes perfect temperature for the rising, and when my oven is hot enough, the breads are normally ready to be baked. Put them in the oven (normally a bit lower than the middle, but it depends on the oven) and bake them for 45  minutes to 1 hour. They are done when they are light brown.

First Course: Cold Cucomber Soup

This soup is so easyto make  that it's almost embarrassing to give out the recipe for it, as I have fooled numerous people into thinking that this soupe is high level cooking. It tastes like it.

You need:
A blender or a stick mixer
1 large cucomber
4 table spoons of sour cream
1 bulion cube (or a tea sppon of powder, any kind you like)
2 cloves of garlic (or more if you like it)
Water

Cut the cucomber in smaller pieces, and put them and the rest of the ingredients in the blender. Fill up with water till it's 1 1/2 litres (6 cups)  all together. Whizz til it's smooth, pour it over in a mug and put it in the fridge till serving time. When serving, add some chopped almonds, chopped tomatoes and some chopped chives/leeks to garnish (also optional).

Main Course: Flat Broccoli Souffle

For a souffle you actually need to devide the eggs and whip the whites which you fold into the sauce before you pour it over. Then you also have to have your guests ready at the table and serve the souffle as soon as it is out of the oven. This one is less hazzle and besides it can wait for the guests to get ready and not the other way around. It even tastes good cold the next day if you have leftovers.

You need:
A broccoli (or cawliflower)
a little piece of leek (or onions)
a pice of meat or coldcut (I used an end piece of Serrano ham here, as some places sell the ends of coldcuts and hams out really cheaply)
a couple of handfuls of shredded cheese (I use a strong Swedish kind, but any kind of yellow cheese is fine, use the leftovers you might have, if you have more kinds, the better)
3 table spoons of butter
3 table spoons of flour
some milk
pinch of salt

Cut and shred all into pieces (see picture). Boil water, and when boiling, pour the vegetables in, and as soon as the water is boiling again, take them out with a slotted spoon and pour them into a oven proof dish. Pour the meat over.

Melt the butter, add the flour, and use a bit of the cooking water from the vegetables and a bit of milk to make a thick white sauce. Add the cheese, the eggs (one by one and stir a bit for each egg). Taste it now. The cheese normally adds a bit of salt, but some times you might need a bit extra. Pour the sauce over the vegetables and bake it in the oven at 200 centergrades till it has light brown bubbles on top. With this a salad tastes good.

Tomatoe Salad

1/2 tomatoe per person in thin slices
chopped onion/leeks/chives
2 table spoons of lemon or lime juice
1 table spoon of Worstershiresauce or a little pinch of bulion powder (both optional but it tastes good with the tomatoes)
6 table spoons of olive oil
a pinch of sugar (which bring the flavour of the tomatoes out)
salt/pepper

I don't think I need to tell anybody how to do this. Except that this salad also taste better if you leave it at room temperature for an hour or so before you eat it.

Dessert: Sliced Oranges with Greek Yougurt

My grandmother used to make this dessert for Christmas. It was in the days before Norway found oil and we were poor and only got oranges for Christmas. And even if one can get oranges all the time now, I still think they taste better in the winter, so this is an easy and healthy dessert with lots of vitamine C, and when I use Greek Yougurt on top of it, and not whipped cream (as my grandma), it is actually quite healthy also.

You need:
1/2 orange per person
sugar
chopped almonds
Greek yougurt (you can use Turkish or French if you prefer that, but these days I think the Greeks need us to buy stuff from them)

Peel the orange with a sharp knife (see pictures) and make sure to remove the white as well. Then cut the organges in thin slices. Sugar it to taste, about a tea spoon per orange is normally enough but it's a matter of taste.  Spread the chopped almonds over and serve with Greek yougurt that you might want to sweeten a bit with either honey, sugar or artificial sweetener. And this desert also, is better about an hour on the kitchen counter, as the sugar blends with the orange juice and turns into syrup.

P:S:

These pictures are taken an afternoon at the end of November in Norway, and as you can see from the picture below, it's pitch dark here by 4 in the afternoon. Espen, the photographer, has not used any other light than the flash on his camera, which is why the lighting on some of these pictures are not quite as he had planned. I bet you know what we mean, though!