A VEGETARIAN CHRISTMAS: ALMOND "MEAT"BALLS

Lately you guys have been growing in numbers. It always makes me so glad to see that more and more of you find your way here! A warm welcome to all of you <3 Many of you probably found me through other blogs. It always makes me a lil starstrucked when I see all these super cool and talented people reading and liking my blog! Lately Cashew Kitchen have been mentioned by Evelinas Ekologiska, which is one of my all time favorite blogs, the lovely Flora Wiström whom I recently discovered, Hanna Göransson with her stunning photos, brilliant Sandra Lundin and the ever so amazing Emily Dahl. I'm very grateful to be a part of such an outstanding foodie blogging community! I think I'll have to write a proper Link Love-post soon.

Mostly I cook and photograph because I can't help myself - I love it so much! I don't think I've ever found anything even remotely as creative and satisfying as food styling & photography, actually. This is something I would do even if it reached out to no one other than my mum and dad. But it does make it even more fun knowing that I might, possibly inspire a couple of more people to cook simple, seasonal and vegetarian. And these past two weeks I've been working as a madwoman to be able to share a whole range of vegetarian holiday dishes with you, to show that eating 100 % vegetarian can be both creative and varied. It doesn't have to be pasta with tomato sauce or chili sin carne every day.

For all of you that are new, here are a couple of my favorite posts from the archive that you might enjoy:

A guide to food styling & photography

Food styling & photography workshop with Dagmar's Kitchen

and My favorite recipe so far on this blog

On a different note, some of my recipes have been featured by the Feed Feed Community! <3

OK, on to today's recipe! This might be the first time in this blog's (brief) history that I've created a recipe traditionally associated with meat. Most of the time I prefer to just forget about carnivorous standards and altogether rethink what and how to eat. Often the end result of that is stuff mixed in a bowl or other stuff roasted in the oven. I put vegetables in the centre rather than protein. Because frankly, there's protein in everything, and most western people already eat way more protein than necessary.

SO, to completely contradict myself, here's a protein packed recipe for all you meatball loving vegetarians hehe :D I'll have to admit, sometimes it's nice to bite into something salty, crispy and chewy full of umami flavors. To resemble the full bodied character of real meatballs, I've packed this recipe with complex flavors from ingredients such as feta cheese, sundried tomatoes, garlic and dijon mustard. Fried in a lot of oil, my "meat"balls get an almost falafel-like texture. If using leftover pulp from nut milking, this recipe becomes ridiculously simple. If not, mix nuts in a food processor and it should work fine.

This recipe is vegetarian and free from gluten and refined sugar.

Almond "Meat"balls

makes about 12 balls

Ingredients:

• 2 dl / 0, 85 cup almonds or almond pulp from nut milking

• 3 heaping tbsp corn flour

• 1 tbsp psylliumseed husk

• 1/4 yellow onion

• 2 garlic cloves

• 6 sundried tomatoes

• 40 g feta cheese

• 1 egg

• 1 tsp dijon mustard

• 1 tsp dried oregano

• freshly grated nutmeg

• a couple of pinches dried chili flakes

• salt & pepper

• oil or butter for frying

Notes: If you don't want to make almond milk in the same round as making this recipe, you can use raw almonds instead and mix in a blender to a coarse flour.

Directions:

Finely chop yellow onion and garlic.

Mix almond pulp (or almonds mixed in blender) with all dry ingredients plus onion and garlic.

Mix sundried tomatoes in a blender or with a hand-held mixer to a smooth puree. Add sundried tomato puree to the almond mixture, along with dijon mustard, egg, and crumbled feta cheese. Let the mixture sit for about 30 min.

Cover a frying pan in a generous amount of oil or butter. Do not heat it too much or it will splatter. Fry almond balls on medium heat until golden. Add more oil or butter if the pan gets too dry.

Serve "meat"balls along with some cooked grains, salad and a good dressing, hummus or gravy, or wrap 'em up in a tortilla bread or cabbage leaf and pretend it's falafel!Store in fridge for three days or in the freezer.

xo Agnes