– The flounder looked very nice, I must have a kilo. Can you eat that? asks grandma. – Nope, replies Mats, and drag it on. – But did you eat fish? Mats Torsvik and grandmother Berit Tviberg Eriksen shop for food for Christmas. Mats tries to avoid buying animal products. This year’s Christmas will be the first in which he will stay away from meat. – Right now I’m driving and looking a bit at how I’m going to solve it. Maybe I’ll make my own nut roast, says Torsvik. Grandma Berit Tviberg Eriksen, on the other hand, is determined that she will eat meat on a stick on Christmas Eve. So do 37 percent of the population in Norway, according to a survey carried out for MatPrat, the information office for eggs and meat. – I would have had a problem if I had Christmas with only green. But she accepts her grandson’s meat-free Christmas. Mats has just put a package of puff pastry in the shopping basket. Butter dough is used in many recipes for nut roast. Photo: Lars Christian Wallace / news – He can cook that, it’s perfectly fine, says grandmother Berit Tviberg Eriksen. – But if he was going to eat at my place, he would have to have cooked the food himself, she says. Has lost his appetite for meat Mats agrees that he should cook his own vegetarian food. – I think that the fact that I choose to go in my direction should not affect those around me. It’s very nice if the family goes the extra mile to make my Christmas a little more plant-based, but it’s not something I demand, says Torsvik. – And when he comes to me, I don’t think he’s so fanatical that he doesn’t eat what I serve, says Eriksen. Mats has already had some kind of Christmas dinner with grandma this year. Then he ate stick meat. – It was of course very good, but I felt that I could do without it. I could cook myself a nut roast and eat just as much with it. When you have avoided meat for a while, you start to lose your desire for it, says Mats. Avoid animal products out of consideration for the climate, the animals and your own health. But he thinks it is better to eat meat than to have it thrown away. Photo: Lars Christian Wallace / news There’s more to choose from than roast beef – They were so generous with each other, says vegetarian enthusiast and cookbook author Hanne-Lene Dahlgren after hearing Mats and Berit tell about how they will celebrate Christmas. She herself will celebrate Christmas with her in-laws in Sweden. The entire Christmas dinner will be plant-based. – I’m going to make my new favourite, veggie ribs, nut roast, and have crushed boiled potatoes, brussels sprouts salad and a lovely brown sauce, says Dahlgren. Hanne-Lene’s recipe for veggie ribs Photo: Hanne-Lene Dahlgren INGREDIENTS 500 g firm tofu, not silk preferably from Helios 20-30 cloves optional 6 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce 1 teaspoon liquid smoke optional but recommended GLAZE 3 tablespoons brown sugar 2 tablespoons butter preferably plant-based 1 tablespoon dijon mustard 2 tablespoons tamari or. soy sauce 4 cloves of garlic, grated finely chopped 1 tsp chilli spice 1/4 tsp cinnamon OTHER PROCEDURE Start by pressing the tofu dry with kitchen paper, preferably put something heavy on top for half an hour if you have time. Then divide a grid over the entire tofu about 1 cm into the block, but not so that it goes all the way through. Repeat on all the tofus. If you have, feel free to put cloves in the top, as many as you want. This adds an extra good and Christmasy taste. Feel free to use a bread bag and mix soy sauce and liquid smoke in it, then place the tofu pieces with the cut side down in the bag and tighten around. Turn it well, and leave for at least an hour, up to two days in the fridge if you want to prepare. When you get close to serving, set the oven to 190 degrees top and bottom heat, and bake for 50 minutes or a little longer if you want an even drier surface. When there are 15 minutes left in the cooking time, heat up all the ingredients for the glaze, and remove the plate when it has boiled for half a minute. It gets a little thicker when it is left to stand. When the tofu is ready in the oven, remove and place on a serving plate, and pour over the glass. Enjoy straight away and serve with the accessories you would otherwise have for ribs. You can also eat it cold as a spread or anything else creative you can think of. If you love Asian flavours, it’s great with a bit of lime on top. NOTES Tip: Feel free to prepare the glass by mixing everything together beforehand without heating and store in the fridge. Then reheat just before serving so it gets the right consistency. Inspired by It don´t taste like chicken and adjusted to my taste buds. The recipe is taken from Hanne-Lene’s website vegetarentustias.no. She believes there are many opportunities to get more vegetarian into the Christmas season. – It depends a little on what traditions it has to fit in. You can increase the number of accessories for normal Christmas food. Brussel sprout salad with lentils, pumpkin and lots of flavor is great with ribs, advises Dahlgren. – So I want to make sure that at least one of the dinners at Christmas is a completely vegetarian meal, she says. Hanne-Lene Dahlgren has created her own recipe for veggie ribs. Photo: Privat It is reasonable to cook your own vegetarian food Dahlgren also agrees that it may be reasonable for those who are going to eat vegetarian on Christmas Eve to cook the food themselves, among other things out of consideration for the fact that it can be stressful to host on Christmas Eve. – If you are the one who is going to eat something other than the community, I think you should be on the most generous side, she says. She thinks you can, for example, bring Christmas food from home, which you can heat in the oven while the ribs are resting. – So let the hosts have one more thing to think about, she says.
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For Mats, it will be the first meat-free Christmas of his life – news Vestland
