Whether you’re designing a 100% vegan menu, or you want to add some vegan elements to your dinner plan, we would love to share the appetiser we served at MoaAlm Mountain Retreat as part of our Christmas and New Year 5 course meal. As part of our celebration of Veganuary, this gives us another excuse to shout loud and proud about our plant based recipes.
We based the recipe on one of our favourite vegan bloggers, Nadine and Jorg of Eat This We made a few changes to suit availability in our remote Austrian location and because we always like to personalise recipes to suit our kitchen. Always striving to make as much as possible ‘homemade’ or from local supplies, we feel this was the perfect way to start a vegan feast for our guests, who are always a mixture of plant based and those that eat everything and who are staying on their first ever vegan holiday.
For the delicious carrot salmon, we marinated it with a good shot of our local Alpine Dry Gin, Roter Turm, from a wonderfully passionate local producer in Lienz, East Tirol. Not encouraging every meal to start with a gin base, but we think for a special occasion, this was decadent and delicious. The buckwheat blinis are basically just mini pancakes, we used a very small circular cake cutter, after we had cooked them to make them all exactly the same size. What we appreciated with this appetiser was that most of it could be made in advance, giving you time to concentrate on other elements of the meal on the day of sharing with your guests.
The appetiser at MoaAlm this year was made by Alessia. Check out her beautiful vegan inspired ideas on her Instagram page.
We have based this recipe on 18 blinis, we served 3 on a plate as part of a 5 course plant based meal.
100 grams of buckwheat flour
100 g spelled flour
1 pinch of salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp olive oil for frying
300 grams of carrots
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp liquid smoke
2 tbsp gin
1/2 sheet of nori
25 g raw beetroot
1/4 tsp olive oil
100 g Soaked Cashews
Lemon Juice to taste
10g Nutritional Yeast
1 Garlic Clove
2 teaspoons horseradish
1/4 tsp salt and some black pepper
Fresh Dill and Chive to decorate
Peel the carrots, then using a vegetable peeler, cut into thin strips. We then steamed the carrots for 5 minutes.
For the marinade, mix together the remaining salt, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, liquid smoke, gin, and the nori sheet, which has been cut into large pieces. Mix together with the carrot strips and cover evenly with the marinade. Leave to marinade in the fridge, tightly sealed, overnight at least.
Roast and peel your beets. Place in a high-speed blender, the soaked cashew, garlic, horseradish, nutritional yeast, salt, pepper and lemon. Check for seasoning, and remove half of the mixture. Add the beets to the other half, and wizz again in the blender so you have two different types of cream cheese. Chill, tightly covered, in the refrigerator until ready to serve (keeps up to 5 days).
Combine the dry ingredients and whisk together with 300ml cold water and apple cider vinegar to form a smooth, slightly runny batter.
Put some olive oil in a hot pan. Put about 1 tablespoon of batter (about 3 cm in diameter) into the pan for each blini and cook for 3 minutes on each side over a medium heat.
Spread the blinis with some of the beetroot cream and then plain horseradish cream. Top each blini with carrot salmon and garnish with dill and chive.
If you try this recipe, we would love to hear from you, report back to us and let us know if it was enjoyed by you and your guests. Also we always love to hear about any adaptations you made to this recipe to suit your location and kitchen.
A huge thank you to Abbie Merritt for our beautiful photos, who you can also check Abbie out on Instagram
#relaxinglyactive #moaalmretreat #veganrecipe #veganuary