How is it over halfway through January already?! This is insane! Happy new year! I hope you all had a wonderful and restful holiday break, and that it was a time of renewal, fun and relaxation with your loved ones. I hope 2014 has started well for you all.
The main reason for this post is to (belatedly) share my rather triumphant Christmas dinner! I was in charge of the vegetarian main course on Christmas Day (there were four vegetarians, outnumbering the meat eaters for a change!) which was my own invention of a nut roast, spinach, red pepper and taleggio cheese stuffed pie shaped like a Christmas cracker. There have been numerous calls on Facebook for me to reveal the recipe, so here it is! While it's a lovely festive recipe, it's also a wonderful dish to serve any time of the year when you're having a traditional roast dinner and have some vegetarian guests. It's a little fiddly but well worth it. It was absolutely out of this world.
The Absolutely Nuts Christmas Cracker
Serves 6 generously
2 x 320g sheets ready made puff pastry (I used Jus-Rol)
Nut roast filling:
Olive oil
200g (1 large bag) walnut pieces
100g (half a large bag) whole almonds
200g other mixed nuts (I used pinenuts and pecans)
1 cup sunflower seeds
2 teaspoons sweet smoked paprika
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
2 teaspoons mixed spice
Roughly 1½ cups breadcrumbs (add more if too wet)
1 egg
1 400g can chopped tomatoes, drained
2 large handfuls fresh flat leaf parsley
2 teaspoons Marmite
Juice of ½ a lemon
A little bit of grated strong Cheddar cheese (I like Davidstow, from Cornwall)
¾ of a medium red onion
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Salt and pepper
Spinach filling:
1 x 240g bag baby spinach
Freshly ground nutmeg
Organic butter or olive oil
1 garlic clove (optional)
Other fillings:
1 jar roasted red peppers (I used Cooks & Co brand)
200g taleggio cheese
Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan on medium to high heat. Once the pan is hot, toast the nuts, seeds and spices, tossing everything to coat well, until fragrant and starting to turn golden. Do not let it burn. Let the mixture cool slightly.
Add the cooled nuts and spices to the bowl of a food processor. Add all other nut roast ingredients. Blitz until thoroughly combined, or combined to your liking (it can be nice if left a little chunky). You might need to stop and scrape it down a few times. If it's too wet, add more breadcrumbs. If it's too dry, add a little water or even a dash of cooking wine.
Scoop out the nut roast mixture and set aside. You can make it a few days in advance - keep it in an airtight container in the fridge and bring out when you need it. Any leftover nut roast mixture can be used to make "meat"balls, "meat" loaf - anything you'd normally use vegetarian mince for. It's fantastic!
For the spinach filling, simply saute the spinach leaves in butter or olive oil (I would normally use cooking spray, but hey - this is for a special occasion!) and grate some fresh nutmeg over the top as you cook. You can add the garlic clove as well for extra flavour and then discard. Season to taste and set aside to cool.
If you have a baby in the house, as I did at Christmas, don't add salt to the spinach and put some of it aside for baby's Christmas dinner. My niece loved it mixed with some potato!
Drain the red peppers, slice up the taleggio cheese and set both aside.
Assemble your two sheets of ready made pastry. Cut one in half. Set aside one half for decorations and patch the other half to the other sheet. Roll it together with a rolling pin. You don't want the pastry too thin but you want roughly a 50cm long piece of pastry with enough at the sides to bunch up like the ends of a cracker. So remember to leave a roughly 5cm gap at each end when putting the filling on.
Now the fun starts!
I usually put the rolled out sheet of pastry on to a greased baking tray at this stage. Saves the stress of having to transfer the completed cracker afterwards! You can also make individual crackers but I think there's something rather special about bringing a giant one to the table and carving it.
So, put your rolled out pastry sheet on the baking tray. Then place a layer of sauteed spinach first, through the middle of the sheet, leaving 5cm on either side as stated. The filling should be a thick log roughly about 35cm long and 6cm wide smack bang in the middle of your pastry sheet (I hope this makes sense - this is why I'm not a cookery writer!)
Next, pile the nut roast mixture on top of the spinach. Then place a layer of taleggio cheese slices. Finally, cover the entire filling in a wrap of roasted red pepper. You'll find some of the whole peppers make a very convenient casing for the ends of the filling, like so:
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| This is a smaller one I made to "audition" the recipe for Christmas day! |
Then, finally, you carefully fold and seal the pastry around the filling - bearing in mind you want it to look like a Christmas cracker! - by folding over the middle first and then pinching the ends together in little bunches. You can then have fun (and disguise the folds and seals and cracks) by getting out some biscuit cutters and making decorations for your cracker. I had an absolute ball, as you can see below:
Once you're happy with your decorations, brush the pastry with beaten egg and place in a hot oven (200 C) for about 35 minutes or until golden brown. I would check it after half an hour, depending on your oven.
Let it cool slightly before carving and serve with all the traditional Christmas dinner fixins' - in our case it was roast potatoes, roast parsnips, carrots, sprouts, bread sauce and vegetarian gravy.
I don't have the words for how delicious this is. Nutty, spicy, rich, earthy, cheesy, buttery, sweet and savoury all in one. If you want to spoil the vegetarians in your life at a special dinner, this is the dish! Let me know if you try it.
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Anyway, it's onwards and upwards in these parts for 2014 so far. Lots of changes, lots of exciting things ahead. A lot has been going on behind the scenes and I will reveal all soon!
However, this week I am continuing the nutty theme by taking part in Alpro's Almond Mornings smoothie challenge, so stay tuned for some more delicious recipes!
Have a great week :)