a vegetarian dinner

"so you have become a vegetarian?"
"yes"...." and what do you eat?"

I had this conversation with a friend from home on Facebook, shortly after becoming vegetarian.
At the time it wasn't hard to answer: everything except meat and fish (translation: Pret salad/kid's cheese sandwiches; porridge, vegetables, eggs and LOTS of chickpeas). When she asked me to cook a vegetarian dinner to show her what I ate...the trouble started. because, despite my amazing vegetarian cookbook, I ended up living of steamed/sautéed vegetables with some pulses or eggs. Devising a proper vegetarian dinner was not going to be an easy piece of cake. Luckily, my friend Mareike came to save me and suggested to take a look to this amazing website, Green Kitchen Stories: I was overwhelmed with recipes and had a hard time picking one.
I ended up making their mushroom and hazelnuts loaf with minor changes and it tasted very good! So here's the recipe for you.

Green Kitchen Mushroom and Hazelnut Loaf
Ingredients:
-250 g leek
-250 g mushrooms
-200 g toasted hazelnuts
-100 g cold boiled brown rice
-4 eggs
-100 ml milk
-rosemary
-nutmeg
-salt
-pepper

What to do:
-Sauté the sliced mushroom and leek with the chopped hazelnuts and some rosemary and garlic for 30 mins on very low heat.

-In a bowl mix eggs, milk, rice with salt, pepper and nutmeg

when the measuring jug is nowhere to be found...running water bottles work well:)

-add the vegetables, after removing the garlic cloves

-put in a loaf tin (or two) and cook in the preheated oven at 180°C for 1 hour.

I also roasted some chickpeas with salt, pepper and nutmeg to serve as an appetizer:

The loaf was very good: it was crunchy to the point but not crumbly and it wasn't dry as I feared! I served it with my mum's signature ratatouille and it was great.

To round off the dinner we had a wonderful ricotta cake (like a cheesecake) that my friend made.

so good!!