Mothers Day

Yesterday was mothers day, so I treated my mum to a three-course dinner. Cooking for mum does have one tiny challenge though - she's a vegetarian. I've put all three dishes into one blog post, because I'm lazy that way.

Entree - Caulflower soup with onion and buttermilk bread

First of all the bread, it was really simple to make, just self-raising flower, chives, buttermilk, and a packet of french onion soup. I used my kitchen mixer to make the dough. But the dough was really sticky, and the resulting bread was very doughy. I didn't love it.

The soup was from Donna Hay's Seasons. It was supposed to have porcini oil drizzled over the top, but I had no luck finding porcini mushrooms. I made it ahead of time, adding the cream and reheating just before serving. I also swapped the chicken stock for vegetable stock, to keep it vegetarian. It was a nice soup, with a very subtle flavour. But it made the house STINK of cauliflower.

Main - spinach ravioli with basil oil

Another recipe from Donna Hay's Seasons, this one involved making the ravioli myself from ricotta, spinach, lemon zest, parmesan, basil and gow gee wrappers. The oil was just basil and lemon juice mixed into olive oil. Then the whole lot was sprinkled with some sliced bocconcini. It had a lovely flavour, but was a bit of a gow gee overload. It wayed my stomach down a bit, so I could only eat about two-thirds of it.

Dessert - Stewed apple and bluberries with coconut cobbler

Again from Donna Hay's Seasons (all these recipes were from the Autumn section). The filling was made up of red apples, blueberries (I used canned), lemon juice, sugar and a vanilla bean. It made my house smell like a candle shop while I was cooking the filling. The cobbler had flour, coconut, vanilla, oats and milk. I loved the fruit filling, the cobbler not as much. It didn't cook properly so it was doughy in the middle, and I think it would have been better without the vanilla. Still this was my favourite of the three dishes.

The most important thing of course was that mum loved her dinner :)