It's our 5th Christmas we are celebrating together Kristóf and I, and although whole Greece is in lockdown for 2 months we managed to take out the best of it, with love, wine and of course good food.

 

On the picture the very festive plant based creation Kristóf and I treated ourselves with.

 

Ingredients: 2 sweet buns, one sweet potato white onion, four cloves of garlic, a cup of pumpkin seeds, arugula / lettuce, beautiful avocado, tofu, pickle, 1 carrot, some jam (we used orange jam), horseradish, mustard, one cooked and cute beet, half a cup of cooked chickpeas, a tablespoon of tahini, a tablespoon of nutritional yeast, a quarter cup of almond milk (or any other plant based milk), salt, pepper, a little nutmeand, cinnamon and olive oil.

 

 How did we do it: 

 

1. We preheat the oven to 180 degrees. We peeled the sweet potato and grated it on the large side of the grater, we did the same with the white onion and 2 cloves of garlic. On a frying pan with olive oil, salt, pepper, nutmeg, cinnamon and pumpkin seeds (we smashed) we fried it all. We took out the stuffing, with wet hands we made a sheep of two pretties, we put it on a baking tray and in to the oven for 25 minutes. Into to oven we put also some cloves of garlic and straps of carrot we peeled and marinad with a bit of olive oil. 

 

2. We mixed the jam with a tablespoon of mustard, and a teaspoon of horseradish (if you don't have you could simply replace it with a bit of chili of maybe Tabasco). The chickpeas we mashed and mixed with the beet and tasp of tahini with a bit of lemon, salt and pepper. 

 

3. The avocado we peeled and cut into half inch slices. The tofu we cut the same as the avocado and we wet it with a bit of almond milk and then we dipped it carefully and let it be covered with nutritional yeast. The pickles we cut to half. 

 

4. The buns we cut to halfs and we put them in the oven to get a bit burn. Then we built our burgers, on the bottom the jam, then avocado and tofu, on top of this the patty, then tahini, arugula, pickle, carrot chips, and the baked garlic. 

 

I remember as a child asking my mum every time we left our neighborhood if we are still in Israel, every time she was laughing at me, and trying to explain that leaving what I know - doesn't mean I'm at a place I'm not familiar with. Holidays are sometimes not about religion and not tradition, they are boundless, timeless, they are everywhere and always, they are spirit, they are happiness, and they are love, what could be more familiar than that?