As part of our celebration of vegan recipes this January we want to share part of our Christmas and New Year meal at MoaAlm Mountain Retreat. Of our five course plant based feast at our beautiful four metre oak dining table, this was the second course, after serving our appetiser of Blinis with Cream Cheese and Gin Soaked Carrot. Our snowshoe and hiking guests really appreciated the delicate creamy soup, causing a pause in the animated chatter after a day exploring the mountains.
We love the combination of fennel and celeriac, together they bring a lot of flavour, especially when paired with roasted hazelnuts. We found this recipe, once again, from German food bloggers Eat This. We seem to have a healthy obsession with their website.
We have guests from all around the world, and when you try to explain the Celeriac root, it’s hard not to mention words like knobbly and a bit ugly. This seems so unfair for a vegetable that’s so versatile and has such a rich, creamy nutty flavour when roasted, made into a soup or added to a salad. Paired with fennel and potato for extra creaminess, this soup has become one of our favourites during the winter months.
The soup has added herb oil with garlic, lemon zest and another of our winter obsessions in Austria, horseradish.The soup has finely sliced radish slices, roasted hazelnuts and a few sprigs of fresh dill. We served the soup in a glass, which we think perfectly complements the earthy colours.
As it was part of a big feast, we made this soup a day ahead of time to make things easier for ourselves, making sure that we were able to have a more relaxed dinner service.
500 grams of fennel
600 g celeriac
200 grams of potatoes
2 Onions
2 tbsp olive oil
4 tsp salt
100 ml oat cream
For the herb oil
50ml olive oil
1 tbsp fresh herbs e.g. E.g. parsley, dill, chives
1.5 tsp salt
1 tsp finely grated horseradish
1/2 clove of garlic
2 tbsp hazelnuts
3 radishes
1/2 tsp black pepper
Fresh Dill for garnish
Chop the fennel, celery, potatoes and onions.Add the oil to a pan and sauté vegetables over medium-high heat for 10 minutes. Season with salt, stirring frequently. Deglaze with 1 litre of water, bring to the boil and then simmer for 20 minutes with the lid closed. Whizz in a blender and then return to the pan, adding the oat cream.
Blend all the ingredients for the herb oil.
Roughly chop the hazelnuts and roast them in a hot pan with no oil, finely slice the radish. When serving the soup, add the nut, radish, dill, black pepper and herb oil.
If you try this recipe, we would love to hear from you, report back to us with tales of entertaining your guests.
We wanted to add this recipe in support of Veganuary, a month dedicated to promoting plant based meals and recipes.
A huge thank you to Abbie Merritt for our beautiful photos, who you can also check Abbie out on Instagram
#relaxinglyactive #moaalmretreat #veganrecipe #veganuary