Source The Hairy Bikers Christmas version of Nut Roast with spinach and chard.
Back then, probably about 1980, I was starting again for the second or maybe even the third time. I'd done a lot of reading and had decided to become vegetarian.
We'd had vegetarian dishes at home, and I'd discovered delicious green lentils in a soup when I visited Spain. I wasn't sure about giving up bacon (that did take a long time and now I've gone over to the dark side: pork sausages), but I had a new independence and a new fervour. I was determined to give it a go.
Well, it was London in the 80s, and you could easily find vegetarian shops and cafes, often combined with a bookshop, usually with Smokestack Lightning rumbling in the background. The cafes would have brick-sized portions of chewy wholemeal pastry quiches and giant earthenware bowls with beansprout or lentil salad, and little dishes of sunflower seeds and chilli flakes to sprinkle on top.
I had no clue. My first recipe book was Rose Elliott's Vegetarian Cooking. It had no pictures. I came across this thing called hummus, I had no idea what it was supposed to look like. I made it for a friend who was coming to tea, we had it on toast. I can't say it was a success, we might even have gone down the chip shop afterwards.
But somewhere in this dog-eared, tahini-spattered little book that started coming adrift, I found a recipe for Nut Roast.
Roasts are a big deal in England. In those days, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding were at the top of the hierarchy, giving way to roast lamb at Easter and turkey, with gammon on the side, at Christmas. Growing up, we had a roast dinner every Sunday, roast chicken was the favourite, because of the bones, the chance to gnaw on a leg or a wing. It was quite expensive then to have chicken and the joint lasted several days, made into a pie for Monday and soup on Tuesday.
Nowadays, every hostelry worth its salt will offer a Sunday Roast dinner. Beef and turkey or chicken remain the meats of choice, but just as important are roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding, now served with everything. The real tell of quality, though, is whether you can get cauliflower cheese as a side. Friends have been known to walk out of the local Toby Carvery if cauliflower cheese was off the menu.
Although there is always a vegetarian option, it's more often a Portobello Wellington, or fillet of Butternut Squash or Celeriac and Aubergine tart. It's wonderful how restaurant food has developed from the 80s staples of Mushroom Stroganoff and Broccoli Pasta Bake, but the Nut Roast has never really found its place.
When it has made an appearance, it's veered between dry to the point of sawdust, or a gelatinous mess seeping into your roasties, both devoid of taste. I've never in public had the deeply unctuous, deliciously comforting, umami-taste of a well-flavoured nut roast. A perfectly constructed balance of chewy pieces, bound together with a luxurious, soft, caressing, deeply flavoured bread and bean concoction.
Here's my version of the classic:
Ingredients
300g tree nuts (almonds, brazils, cashews, chestnuts, hazelnuts, walnuts)
150g bread
120g butter beans
150g mushrooms
150g onion
150g carrots
rosemary, sage to taste
2 cloves garlic
1 chia egg
30g nutritional yeast, whole grain mustard to taste
vegetable stock cube, 300 ml warm water.
olive oil, salt, kelp to taste
Method
Heat the oven to 180 degrees.
Chop onion, carrots, and garlic.
In a food processor pulse, in turn, mushrooms and herbs; bread, beans and garlic; tree nuts.
Make chia egg, using 1 tablespoon chia seeds mixed with 2.5 tablespoons cold water.
Dissolve stock cube in 300ml warm water.
Heat a splash of olive oil in a heavy pan, gently sauté onions until translucent, add carrots and stir gently for a few minutes, add the mushrooms and herbs, then the breadcrumbs, beans and garlic. Stir gently from time to time. Add wholegrain mustard and stir in.
Mix the tree nuts, nutritional yeast and kelp together. Add to the vegetables, bread and bean mix. Add chia egg and stock. Stir well until everything is mixed well together. Leave to cool while you line two loaf tins or dishes with baking parchment and grease with olive oil.
Share the mixture between the two loaf tins, place in the centre of the oven and check after thirty minutes. Leave longer if desired. Plate immediately using a spoon, or leave to cool, refrigerate overnight. Cut into slices and reheat to serve.
Fill your boots with the accompaniments - roast potatoes, yorkshire puddings, cranberry sauce, some green vegetables, maybe roasted parsnips, cauliflower cheese (essential - I usually buy marks and spencers - and the perfect foil) and a well-flavoured gravy.
It's also good in sandwiches, made with sturdy bread and apple sauce or Geeta's mango chutney, or crumbled over salads or into any leftover gravy and put in a pie. You can also pick at it straight from the fridge when you're standing there contemplating what to have for dinner.
Or fried, sliced or in chunks, with an egg on the side, for breakfast.
