Onion squash nut roast

Here is a new nut roast idea from me, as I felt like posting one again for this Christmas. This onion squash nut roast could be cooked for a vegan Christmas dinner, and I think I'll make similar ones again for the big day.

I used one of my favourite squashes, the onion squash, as the main ingredient paired with chestnuts. These were really nice little nut roasts and very easy to make. I made them as mini versions in eight silicone muffin baking cases, which reduced the cooking time and made them into a nice shape. Here's my recipe.

Ingredients for the nut roast

1 onion squash

Olive oil

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

1-2 carrots

Fresh thyme

Salt

Pepper

240 g cooked and peeled chestnuts

3-4 tbsp breadcrumbs

Served with

Roasted ruby gem potatoes

Roasted heirloom carrots

Turnip mash (3 turnips, salt, butter, 1 garlic clove)

Method

Roast the onion squash after peeling and cutting to pieces. Mash it after the roasting.

Chop the onion, garlic and carrots finely and cook them in olive oil until soft. Season the mix with fresh thyme, salt and pepper.

Combine the squash mash with the onions, crushed chestnuts and breadcrumbs and mix into an even mixture.

Put the nut roast either into silicone muffin cases or into a large baking tin.

Bake the nut roast in the oven at 200 C for about 40 minutes.

Serve with all nice veggie roast fixtures and fittings.

Your VegHog

Chestnut and shallot tarte tatin

Here comes a dish that can be a serious contender to a nut roast when celebrating a vegetarian Christmas or any other winter fest. There are small shallots and chestnuts balsamic glazed on a tarte tatin accompanied by some dried cranberries, which make such a wonderful seasonal dish together.

I found the recipe in this article: Our 10 best roast dinner centrepiece recipes and it's The not nut roast: Chestnut and shallot tarte tatin by Rosie Reynolds. Once I made the tarte tatin, I absolutely loved it!

The only devious task in this recipe is prepping 500 g of small shallots, which can take a while. Otherwise this is quite an easy recipe for a tarte tatin, as long as the turning over bit goes well.

I'm not going to repeat the recipe here, as the perfect instructions are already in that Guardian article. I would really warmly recommend you to try this dish, it's something different for a change. What do you think of this recipe?

Your VegHog

Crown prince squash spelt risotto

Crown prince squash is one of my new squash favourites. It is such a lovely rich and nutty squash, and it was the perfect vegetable choice for this spelt risotto recipe I developed. With its rough pale greenish and blueish skin it might look suspicious at first, but the skin hides a lovely and succulent squash within.

The method for making this dish is basically the same as making risotto. The only thing is that you would use pearled spelt instead of arborio rice. I'm a big fan of pearled barley, and have now also noticed that pearled spelt is an equally brilliant ingredient for cooking vegetarian dishes.

This is what you'll need:

1 smallish crown prince squash

150 g peeled and cooked chestnuts

2 shallots

2 garlic cloves

2 tbsp vegetable stock powder + 1l water

1 tbsp olive oil

1 cup pearled spelt

25 g butter

1 dl dry white wine

50 g emmental cheese

1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground black pepper

This is how to make this dish:

Prepare the squash: Peel and cut it into about 1 cm long dices and remove the seeds. Then finely chop the shallots and garlic cloves.

Make the vegetable stock by mixing vegetable stock powder with water and heating it up. You can also use any other vegetable stock.

Heat the olive oil in a large pan and lightly sweat the shallots and garlic. Add the squash dices to the pan and heat through for a couple of minutes.

Add the butter to the pan and let it melt, then also add the pearled spelt to the pan. Once the spelt has absorbed the butter, add the wine and let it evaporate. Reduce the heat of the pan slightly.

Make first addition of a few ladles of the vegetable stock and let the risotto simmer slowly under the lid. Keep making vegetable stock additions, so that the risotto doesn't dry up, stirring often.

After about 20 minutes cooking add the chopped chestnuts and the seasoning. The grated cheese can go in more towards the end, when the spelt is already nice and cooked al dente. Add more of any seasoning (or wine or cheese), if you feel that it's needed.

Then just serve warm and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Nut roast with onion gravy

A proper homemade nut roast is a rather lovely thing to enjoy in this season. I was particularly inspired to make a nut roast by the Green Gourmet Giraffe, who is a great appreciator of nut roasts. I fully agree with her that nut roast isn't a dated veggie dish that should be avoided (it seems that some celebrity chefs have been bashing it publicly!), but a wonderful addition to vegetarian roast dinners or Christmas dinners. Have a look at the Green Gourmet Giraffe's blog for plenty of nut roast ideas and enthusiasm!

So I decided to make a nut roast of my own, an earthy chestnut roast with parsnips, porcinis and cheese, and served it with a wonderful shallot and cider gravy, cranberry jelly (see my recipe here) and simple roasted potatoes. This meal is a great Christmas main course, but you can also combine the components at will.

For the gravy:

400g shallots

1tbsp flour

50ml dry cider

1tbsp vegetable stock powder

50ml water (I used parsnip cooking water)

1tbsp soya sauce

Few fresh thyme leaves

Chop the shallots into half rings and sweat them at low heat for about 45 minutes by occasionally stirring. By then the shallots will have almost melted into a saucy texture. Then stir in the flour and the vegetable stock powder and add the cider. Cook for couple of minutes so that some of the cider evaporates and then add water (I used on this occasion the cooking water of the parsnips for the nut roast for a little bit of extra flavour). Let simmer for a while longer and season with soya sauce and thyme. And the gravy is done!

For the nut roast:

240g peeled and cooked chestnuts

1-2 shallots

2 garlic cloves

2 parsnips

1 carrot

25g dried porcini mushrooms

2tbsp olive oil

100g emmental cheese

1tbsp soya sauce

Few fresh rosemary leaves

Peel the parsnips and chop them to about 2cm long pieces. Boil them in water until soft, and then mash them. Save some of the water from boiling to make the mash smooth. I also used this parsnip boiling water in the gravy.

Crush the dried porcini small and soak them for about 10 minutes. Also save the soaking water for later.

Peel the carrot and chop it into very small cubes. Then also chop the shallots and garlic cloves and grate the cheese (cheese can also be cubed).

Heat the olive oil in a pan and sweat the onion, garlic and carrot cubes for about 5 minutes. After the initial phase add the porcini mushrooms and their soaking liquid to cook it all for a further 5 minutes.

Season with rosemary and soya sauce. I used peeled and pre-cooked chestnuts that can be bought in a can or vacuum pack. Crush them between your fingers and add them to the mix.

Stir in the parsnip mash and cheese to make a moist, sticky mixture.

Grease either a large loaf tin or several small loaf tins (this recipe filled nicely four of my small round tins) and put the mixture in.

Bake the nut roasts at 180C for about one hour. Then remove them carefully from the tins and serve as a part of a vegetarian Christmas feast.

Hoggy Christmas!

Your VegHog

 

Mushroom, chestnut and potato pie

Here it goes: The VegHog's attempt to tackle a British style shortcrust veggie pie with its own ideas! This was a result of a brainstorm of what might go well together and be suitable to a pie. This will also mark the end of the British Pie Week 2013. It has been a blast but I'm also happy to eat something else for a change.

Ingredients

For the shortcrust pastry:

60g Butter

60g Margarine

100g Wheat flour

100g Rye flour

A pinch of salt

3-4 tbsp Cold water

For the filling:

200g Baby button mushrooms

8 Small new potatoes

120g Chestnuts

A bunch of spring onions

A glass of white wine

200ml Vegetable stock

Some dried porcini mushrooms

A sprig of rosemary

2 Garlic Cloves

Butter for frying and greasing

Olive oil

Method

Make the pastry first. For the special VegHog touch the pastry had to have rye in it. Put the soft butter and margarine into a bowl and add both flours and the salt. Pinch the dough with your fingers until you have it all mixed properly. The texture should be like small crumbs. Add 3-4 tablespoons water to bind the dough and keep kneading until you have a firm ball of dough. Put the dough into the fridge in a cling film and let it rest for at least 30 minutes.

Prepare the vegetable stock and put some rosemary in with it. Peel the potatoes and cut them in half. Heat some butter in a pan and first fry the potatoes there until they get some colour, then add some vegetable stock (up to the middle of the potatoes) and boil them under lid until tender. This is a similar method to making fondant potaoes. Now you can add the dried porcinis into the vegetable stock for later usage. I decided to add porcini mushrooms to the pie to get a more intense mushroom taste.

Wash the button mushrooms and spring onions. Cut the mushrooms in half and the spring onions into small rings. Finely chop the garlic. Fry the spring onions, mushrooms and garlic in some olive oil until they are pretty much done. Deglaze the pan with white wine when it's hot and let the wine evaporate. Then add the rest of the vegetable stock and let it simmer for about 10 minutes. Towards the end, put the chestnuts in. I used cooked chestnuts from a can so they don't need much boiling. Let this mix cool down before putting onto the pastry.

When the filling is ready and the dough has rested long enough in the fridge, start filling the pie. Take a pie baking tin (Ø 20cm) and grease it with butter. Take 2/3 of the pastry and roll it out thin. Place the pastry into the tin and start filling it.

First put the fondant potatoes on the bottom. Then cover them with the mushroom and chestnut mix. Roll out the rest of the pastry to a lid and place it on the top. Seal the edges and make some patterns on the lid with a pastry cutter or a knife.

Bake in the oven at 180C for 40-50 minutes. Let the pie settle before serving.

Enjoy your pie and hopefully you've had a good pie week! I can hardly wait until next year to make much better pies.

Your VegHog