Hello again! Christmas is creeping up (two weeks what?) So, the second thing we want to share for a Kwiek Christmas dinner is three sides dishes! One of the best things of any holiday dinner has always been the sides in my opinion. The more the merrier! And therefore these three dishes are just part 1 of the Christmas dinner, three more are coming your way in the next couple of weeks!
But, today we will share with you two of our favorite potato dishes that will look stunning on your Christmas table. The first ones are lemony Hasselback potatoes with a creamy garlic sauce. First of all, they look really cute. Second, they are very tasty! Very soft and creamy on the insides but crunchy and lemony on the outside. And paired together with the creamy garlic sauce, heaven! I might have been eating just this for dinner way too many times the last few weeks…
Ps: just keep in mind that we made created these recipes as sides dishes to a bigger dinner. If you are making these for a regular dinner, you might have to adjust the amounts.
Lemony Hasselback potatoes with creamy garlic sauce
For 4-6
8 medium potatoes
6 cloves of garlic
1 lemon
few sprigs of fresh thyme
olive oil
salt & pepper
Creamy garlic sauce
100 g cashews, soaked overnight (or add boiling water for 30 minutes).
1 clove of garlic
Juice of ½ lemon
salt & pepper
For the potatoes: Preheat the oven to 220 degrees celsius (or 428 fahrenheit). Cut the potatoes with a knife two-thirds of the way through. Make sure you don’t cut the whole way through because otherwise the potato won’t hold together. Continue doing this for each potato. Place them all on a baking tray, splash some olive oil on them, sprinkle with salt & pepper. Cut the lemon into slices and add them to the baking tray. Crush the garlic cloves and add them to the tray as well. Finish with a few sprigs of fresh thyme, leaving some behind for the end. Put into the oven for around 1 hour. Test to see if they are soft, if not, continue cooking for another 10 minutes or so until nice and soft and crunchy on the outside. Serve with some fresh thyme.
For the garlic sauce: Drain the cashews and add to a blender. Add fresh garlic or one of the cooked garlics from the potatoes in the oven (recommended!). Add your lemon juice, salt and pepper and a splash of water. Blend until creamy. You can add more water if the sauce is still too thick for your liking. Taste and season. Serve with the potatoes.
The second dish is my new favorite way to cook sweet potatoes lately. Cooking them in maple syrup and cinnamon makes me feel all christmassy! It brings out all the sweetness of the sweet potatoes and pairs together perfectly with the rest of the dishes we have coming for the big Christmas dinner! We chose to cook these in the pan instead of the oven this time. The main reason for this is that we have loads of dishes going into the oven for our Kwiek christmas dinner and it just wouldn’t fit if we also put in more potatoes. So, unless you are really good in planning and making stuff in advance, we advise you to just cook these in the pan. Cooking them in the pan with the maple syrup also sort of glazes them in the end which is super delicious!
Pan-roasted, maple & cinnamon sweet potatoes
For 4-6
4-5 medium sweet potatoes
1 tbsp coconut oil
2 tbsp maple syrup
1-2 tsp cinnamon
Pinch of salt
Cut the potatoes into 1 cm cubes. In a medium saucepan, melt the coconut oil and add the potatoes. Cook on medium heat with a lid for 10-15 until they become soft and cooked through. Add the maple syrup and cinnamon and stir well. Cook for another 5-10 minutes until the potatoes are glazed and cooked through. Season with salt.
The last dish is a kale salad. I am loving kale at the moment now that it is in season again and have been eating loads. This salad looks and tastes all festive with pomegranate jewels, walnuts, apples and a tasty balsamico dressing. Yum!
Pomegranate, walnut & apple kale salad with balsamico dressing
For 4-6
1 bunch of kale (around 400 g)
½ pomegranate, deseeded
150 g walnuts
2 apples
Dressing
6 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp balsamico
juice of ½ orange
pepper / salt
2 tbsp maple syrup
Remove the stems of the kale and tear the leaves into smaller (bite size) pieces. Wash, dry and transfer to a big salad bowl. Using your hands, massage the kale for a couple of minutes, rubbing the pieces against each other until the kale becomes darker in colour, less tough and shrinks in size.
Mix all the ingredients for the dressing together, mix well and add ½ to the kale in the bowl. Massage the dressing really well into the kale as well (I like to use my hands for this as well). Leave on the side.
Quickly toast the walnuts in a pan on high heat. Chop them coarsely. Wash and cut your apples into thin wedges. Add the chopped walnuts, apple wedges and pomegranate seeds to the kale, together with the leftover dressing. Mix and serve.
Stay tuned for the rest of our big feast. Up next: a vegan main dish!
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