For the first time in my life, I’ll be spending Christmas away from my parents. For the first time, I didn’t wake up on Christmas Eve to my mom playing Christmas songs, and she’s not in the kitchen making delicious, traditional food (not on this hemisphere, anyways). We don’t have many, if any, traditions in my family – but Christmas Eve dinner is the one event we treasure dearly.
I am, however, very fortunate to be spending the day with my beloved boyfriend. The poor Jewish boy will endure a marathon of Christmas movies and a handful of crying moments on my part (tears of joy, gratitude, nostalgia tend to escape on such occasion). That’s how much he loves me. On the bright side, we’ll get to snuggle on the couch and eat roasted chestnuts, along with the many treats I’ll be preparing for tonight…
Starting by the vegan pain perdu.
I made it last night, and we’ll be having for breakfast once the boyfriend gets up (according to my mom, like pizza, pain perdu tastes better the next day).
INGREDIENTS
– One baguette
– 400 ml rice milk
– 250 ml coconut milk
– Two cinnamon sticks
– Two teaspoons vanilla essence
– Vegan butter
– Powdered cinnamon
– Mascavo sugar
INSTRUCTIONS
– Preheat the oven.
– Cut the baguette into thick slices, leave them aside.
– In a pot, mix the two kinds of milk, the cinnamon sticks and the vanilla essence. Let it simmer in low heat.
– Before it boils, once the mix is hot and the cinnamon taste has started to diffuse into the milk, soak the baguette slices, one at a time, into the mix. Let it drip before setting it on a plate. Repeat until you cover the plate (just don’t put the slices on top of each other yet – if necessary, do two batches).
– Add a teaspoon of vegan butter to each slice.
– Mix the mascavo sugar and the cinnamon powder (ratio to your liking) and cover each slice with the mix.
– Place the slices in the oven. Let it grill for about 10 minutes, or how long it takes for the sugar and the butter to melt into the bread…
– Let it cool off, or not. Just eat!
For dinner there’ll be some rich rice with vegan butter and almonds, seitan (for me), duck (for him), faux gras de Gaia (for me), foie gras (for him)… and, of course, champagne.
What will be having for dinner tonight?
I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams…
P.S.: I’ll probably be taking some time offline for the next few days, so if I don’t see you before 2014 – Happy New Year! I promise I’ll be back with plenty of great stuff to share. 🙂
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