I am, I should probably admit up front, a card carrying omnivore. I take pleasure from all sorts of dishes, regardless of what they were made of, but generally speaking, for the purposes of meal creation, it starts with meat. This is why I’m not the one who does the cooking that people pay for. Several days ago one of our frequent followers asked for a recipe for vegetarians who needed some sort of nut free roast. Apparently we do requests now.
I passed the problem to my culinary consultant by means of waving the phone while brushing my teeth on the way too bed. He nodded and communicated to me that he had something in mind. Due to timetabling restrictions in the 9-5 world we currently only seem to spend about 45 minutes of time awake together on any one given day. This had let to much of our communication being done in the form of notes left on the coffee table and varying degrees of washing up. I therefore only have the following in note form, written in handwriting that is nearly as bad a mine, and full of characterful omissions like “quantities” or “ingredients”.
On the other hand, he only gets a few hours off a day, and he left me a very nice note out when I got back, so personally I think he has a lot going for him. I therefore present, for the benefit of all and sundry, a meal that is delicious even without meat.
The Mushroom Wellington
You will need:
1 carton of mixed mushrooms
3 cloves of garlic
A glug of white wine
Half a pint of cream
Salt & pepper
A pack of puff pastry*
Baby leaf spinach
1 egg, beaten (to glaze)
1 tsp of olive oil
1. Slice mushrooms and garlic finely, then sauté until soft.
2. Add the white wine and reduce off the excess moisture until the mix is almost sticking to the pan.
3. Lower the heat add the cream and seasoning (salt & pepper), reduce again until very thick, stirring gently.
4. Set aside to cool completely.
At this point you have a short hiatus in cooking activities. You could preheat the oven at this point 210°C (Gas Mark 7). To expand on my earlier point, I have no problem with vegetarian food, I find parts of it very delicious and I am aware that I would probably not be able to kill a cow in cold blood just for fun. It would probably just stare at me, and I would panic and give it a name (Mildred). So this recipe is a lovely example of how I am wrong, and you actually can make a whole meal without killing anything much.
5. Roll out the pastry to 4mm and drape elegantly over a shallow coffee cup, pressing down gently to move the pastry to against the inside of the cup. Cut round the edges, leaving a reasonable lip of pastry round the edge of the cup, at least 2cms.
6. Line the pastry with spinach
7. Fill with mushroomy goodness and top that with spinach
8. Moisten the pastry lip with egg, place more pastry on top and cut around to match the lip. Press together in an artfully creative way to seal, making sure the to halves are well sealed.
9. Turn out onto a baking tray and glaze with egg.
10. Bake at 200°C (Gas Mark 7) for 15 minutes or until golden brown.
The chef recommens serving with a vegetable gravy, steamed winter kale and roast shallots.
It’s an absolutely delicious meal if you (as a meat eater) can get round the inevitable truth that you’re missing out on eating Mildred.
*Real puff pasty is pretty much NEVER a good time/effort investment unless you have the machinery for it. It involves rolling out wafer thin pasty and then layering it and, according to one source, “is a complete arse”.
I and my friend thank you kindly. I shall be trying this and a “lentil roast” over the week and decide on a winner 🙂
I could fill a page with what i think of vegetarianism, but for the purposes of brevity i have two words for meat retreaters:
Christmas Dinner