Just the traditional three components menu with a main dish, supplement and sauce. Suiting not only the manor but also Christmas we wanted to serve a potato roll filled with mushrooms and a strong port gravy. The ideas were ready; so far, so good. If the gas tank had not been drained to the last drop and thus not only the heating cold, but the gas stove. So we cooked on single hot plates spread in three rooms in the spacious manor. In one of the holiday apartments on the first floor the swam in boiling water, in another small kitchen the cabbages sweat in the oven, and to put every heat source to perfect use we also had pots on the wood fired ovens. In other ways as well there were odds and ends to take care of. To get everything on the table warm was quite a challenge, and this is what we love so much about our trips to the countryside. There is always something to learn, you are challenged and grow with your tasks. When finally all sit around the table, warmly illuminated by candles, and every digs into their food we are happy.
At home we cooked this dish again, this time under normal conditions and wrote the recipes down. It is a perfect main course for Christmas, yet the single components can also be arranged with other dishes as well to prepare a varied buffet for a festive table.
We’ve been to Mecklenburg quite often this year. It’s not the tranquility or relaxing which constitutes the beauty of it, but the companionship we experience there. In Rensow, you are not alone in nowhere. All around gather people who enrich this freckle of earth between the Mecklenburg Lakeland and Baltic Sea coast with their ideas. Everybody helps everybody, often you sit together with a glass of wine and ponder new projects. We are incredibly inspired everytime again. That’s why we hit the road immediately after Knut suggested that we could cook a Christmas Dinner at the Manor in Rensow.
It is routine for Knut and Christina since they cook for 20 to 30 guest every Wednesday, and we were there, too, to swing the cooking spoon. Suitable for the manor, there is always a roast meat along a large variety of vegetables and salads, which is the core of the table and which is cut by the host or a special guest. As vegetarians, this was not quite our tradition and so we welcomed Knut’s idea to transform it into a vegetarian dish. His idea was a filled savoy cabbage. Together we thought about how to fill and prepare it. Grated vegetables, legumes, seeds, nuts…there were so many possibilities! With what the cabbage was filled in the end we show you in our recipe here. However, we did not only want to create this centerpiece, but also a delicious side dish.
