Lentil, Cashew and Chestnut Nut Roast Recipe

This Christmas, I searched for the perfect nut roast recipe, but couldn't find one that ticked all the boxes.  It had to be a straightforward recipe which didn't contain dried fruit, could be dairy free, was packed with flavour and was moist - not dry. Nut roasts get such a bad press with people likening them to old cardboard, the likes of which are only enjoyed by seventies throwback hippy vegans. But that is just not true. Nut roast can be a delicious, wholesome accompaniment to roast dinner trimmings and is a very versatile base for a range of dishes.  

Taking inspiration from a whole host of nut roast related ideas, I came up with my own recipe, which went down a storm on Christmas day, even with my non-veggie dad who couldn't get enough of the stuff.  I also made it again in the week after Christmas for guests, as a wellington, wrapped in puff pastry and it was equally well received.  It can be made in advance (and frozen before it is cooked), is pretty quick and easy to knock up and can be adapted to suit whatever ingredients/nuts/veggies you have, encouraging a bit of kitchen experimentation.  You can make it vegan by omitting the egg and cheese, or by using a dairy free cheese alternative if wanted.

                          

Lentil, Cashew and Chestnut Nut Roast

Ingredients (makes 2 loaves)

200g red lentils

450ml vegetable stock

1 tblspn oil

2oz mushrooms

1 leek

2 small parsnips

2 carrots

2 cloves garlic

2 slices wholemeal bread made into crumbs

100g cashew nuts

100g whole chestnuts

75g other nuts (I used Brazil nuts)

1 egg (optional - but makes loaf firmer)

1 teaspn garlic granules

1 teaspn sage

1 teaspn thyme

black pepper

75g grated cheese (optional - you can also use non-dairy cheese)

Method

Put red lentils and stock in a pan and cook gently until the lentils are soft, pale and pulpy and the liquid has evaporated.

Meanwhile put all the veggies in a food processor and blitz into small chunks.

Gently fry the blitzed veggies in a pan with olive oil for about 5-8 mins until just softened.

Chop the nuts and chestnuts in the processor.  Process until fine or chunky depending on preference.

Mix together cooked lentils, cooked veggies, nuts, breadcrumbs and seasoning. (Season to taste...get adventurous if you like and use curry spices or smoky paprika with chilli flakes instead to make the nut roast exactly how you like it!)

Add egg and cheese if using.

Put into 2 loaf tins.  I used oiled foil ones for ease.

Cook in a pre-heated oven at GM 5/190C for about 35 mins until cooked through and golden brown on top.

Turn out from the foil loaf tin and slice to serve with a veggie gravy and roast dinner trimmings.

Alternatively, omit the egg and put filling onto the centre of a rolled sheet of puff pasty.  Join the edges of the pastry to seal in the filling, glaze (use a milk alternative to keep the recipe vegan) and cook at GM5/190C for about 30 minutes until golden brown.

The lentils make a really nice and very nutritious base for the nut roast while the carrot and parsnip add sweetness and a lighter texture.  The seasonings can be adapted to suit personal preferences as can the nuts and veggies used.  You can easily adapt it to make it suitable for dairy free diets or for vegans. I'm really happy with how my experimental Christmas dinner worked out and I hope that if anyone tries this recipe they enjoy it too.

That was Christmas...Hello 2015!

After an absolutely wonderful Christmas surrounded by the people I love most in this world, I am now ready to face 2015 with positivity and determination.  I made a conscious decision to keep the laptop packed away over the holidays and concentrate on nothing more than having fun, making memories and enjoying the time spent with my family.

I was so happy to have all three of my grown-up children home over the holidays. Having all five of my children together is definitely one of my greatest pleasures.  It makes me feel complete. I love the dynamic of the relationships, the laughter and the love.

Adding my gorgeously cute little grandson Ted to the mix adds to the fun.  I was overjoyed this Christmas, to feel that little Ted had really bonded with his McDonald family. He was so happy and comfortable in our house, giving us hugs, saying our names and playing with us. He reminded me so much of Joe when he was a toddler, especially when he decimated the chocolate Santa tree decorations, searching for them among the baubles and proudly declaring that he had 'chocwot' every time he found one!  Ted also bonded beautifully with his Great Grandad.  Watching them having fun together was so heartwarming.  The oldest and the youngest member of the family united through the power of play!

We continued with  lots of festive family traditions this year.  From doing lots of arts and crafts activities in the run up to Christmas to baking lots of festive treats including our gingerbread house.

Choosing the tree that would be brought into our home for Christmas is a serious business and this year we found the perfect tree in our local garden centre and enjoyed a warming hot chocolate in the cafe afterwards.  We decorated it together using the baubles I have collected over the years, each one holding memories of Christmases past.  The children also get to choose a new bauble each year.  This year, Disney princesses and felt covered deer were added to the eclectic collection.

The gifts were spread out this year with a present each on Winter Solstice that paid homage to Ian's Scottish ancestry.  We bought McDonald tartan inspired presents for everyone, which included a shirt, a scarf, pyjama bottoms and a nightshirt.

As usual all the Christmas dinner prep was carried out on Christmas Eve whilst the South Park Christmas CD was played!  I also made a hearty, wholesome vegetable soup for our lunch.  Something healthy before the onslaught of Christmas Day excess.

Christmas Eve gifts included matching onesies for the girls and Minion pj's for Freddy along with a new mug for hot chocolate, slippers, Christmas pants and socks along with a new teddy to hug, all wrapped in a festively decorated box.

The kids designed a plate to leave Santa's snacks on and Freddy sprinkled reindeer dust in the garden.

Christmas stockings were left on the children's door handles ready to be discovered and brought into our king size bed in the morning to be opened.  The door to the living room was covered in wrapping paper for Freddy to burst through to discover all the goodies that Santa had delivered.

But before the unwrapping commenced we sat down to a breakfast of freshly backed croissants and Buck's Fizz to set us up for the day ahead.

My mum and dad joined us on Christmas day which was a real honour and made the day so special. They loved their presents and I managed to make my wonderful dad shed a tear or two of emotion when he opened a framed family photo montage that I made for them. I love doing nice things for my parents and sharing Christmas Day with them is right up there in those things I enjoy.

Dinner this year was a vegan feast including a homemade nut roast.  I looked at so many recipes but couldn't find any that really ticked all the boxes. So I made up my own recipe incorporating all the elements I liked, tweaking it to suit our needs.  So the Lentil, Cashew Nut and Chestnut Roast was born (recipe to follow soon.)  It was a huge hit, especially with my dad who ate tonnes of the stuff!  I served it with a vegan 'sausage' and chestnut stuffing, which was like a main course in its own right, and all the usual Christmas dinner trimmings (including vegan pigs in blankets).

This year we had a Big Christmas Challenge after dinner, which I had spent weeks working on.  It included questions on 2014, news, films, music, Christmas traditions, carols, anagrams, picture quizzes etc plus each family member wrote 5 questions based on their own 2014 experiences to test everyone on.  It was a lot of fun and kept us all busy in the post dinner lull!

We got to do Christmas all over again two days later when Joe, Jade and Ted visited for the weekend. My parents came back again too to see them all bringing four generations together under one roof. Ella's boyfriend Frank also came to stay and we enjoyed another roast dinner and even more presents.  We discovered that Frank is one of the most thoughtful gift givers ever and that he makes my daughter so happy...definitely a keeper!

Thankfully, the illness that has plagued me for the past 8 weeks did not spoil my Christmas in any way.  I battled through and refused to let it get  the better of me.  I'm still not 100% better yet, but feel revitalised and ready to take on 2015!

Christmas was definitely pretty chaotic and hectic this year, but it was tonnes of fun and filled with hundreds of happy moments that we will remember for years to come.  Family means everything to me and spending the festive season with my loved ones was a simply perfect end to the year.

Memories and Resolutions

Saying Goodbye to 2013 and Looking Ahead to 2014

Christmas wasn't quite the smoothly run affair I hoped it would be.  With storm damage that caused fences to fall like dominoes in our garden, to an oven that decided to give up on Christmas Eve afternoon, tripping all the fuses in the house, my plans didn't quite go to plan.

In spite of the disasters, we kept smiling.  Although we had no working oven on Christmas Day, my wonderful neighbours allowed us to pop over and cook our Christmas pie in their kitchen as they were away for the day. It wasn't the easiest way of cooking dinner, running between two houses wielding stoneware and oven gloves, but we managed. Thank goodness we are vegetarian and didn't have to worry about cooking a whole turkey!  We managed to improvise on the trimmings and knocked up a passable festive feast for twelve.  The vegan Sweet Potato, Chestnut and Cashew Nut Pie went down a treat with a host of vegetables and potatoes.

It was lovely having my parents, all the kids and Ian's sister Debbie over for Christmas Day.  Presents were exchanged and fun was had by all.  I gave my parents a photo book that I had made, detailing the story of my mum and dad's story from their childhoods through to the present day.  I loved finding old family photos, editing them to bring them back to their glory and including them in the photo book. It took me hours and hours but was worth every second of effort.  To say that my parents were delighted with it, is an understatement. I'm so glad that I was able to make it for them. My girls made me a hamper filled with fabulous things from Lakeland, so lots of baking will feature in 2014!

My son Joe, his girlfriend and my grandson Ted spent Christmas with us this year.  As ever it was great to see my son Joe enjoying being a dad to his little boy.  He is a fabulous father to that little boy.  Joe hasn't had the best time of things lately following a motorway car crash, which has knocked his confidence and left him with injuries that although minor are affecting him rather badly.  I love my son and want to see him happy and healthy in 2014.

We had some Christmas props to add to the fun and we took a load of photos of us wearing silly glasses, hats and beards!  They were the only photographs I took, due to my camera playing up and the general chaos of the day.

There is always a lot of laughter in our house, which always raises my spirits and fills me with cheer.  A hilarious highlight was when Megan and Joe managed to get a photograph of my 80 year old mum retweeted by Ricky Gervais and over 200 other people on Twitter! They re-enacted a scene from Derek where Kev puts cracker hats on the old folk that he had written rude names on.  My beautifully innocent and extremely accommodating mum became an internet sensation for the day appearing on Ricky Gervais's timeline for his 5 million+ followers to see, sporting an orange hat complete with a Sharpie marker embellishment.  So wrong, but so right, especially as my computer savvy mum understood the enormity of a celebrity retweet!

I was so proud of Freddy on Christmas day.  He is a child who does not enjoy change and thrives on routine.  He had already expressed concern about the idea of presents (as he doesn't know what was inside them) and struggled with Christmas decorations changing the way the house looked.  But with some cajoling he actually got quite excited about the concept of Christmas.  We had contingency plans in place in case he had a melt down, but bar a few inappropriate no-filter comments regarding presents that he did not approve of (namely clothing that wasn't blue and a book that wasn't a toy!) he coped perfectly well and had a wonderful day!

Ian bought a new oven on Boxing Day morning as soon as B & Q opened and installed it as soon as he got home, ready to cook a late brunch.  I love how efficient he is!

Adding to our festive disasters was the extra present delivered to us by some of our house guests, namely a rather virulent sickness bug that hit on Boxing Day afternoon, giving my three girls a night of tag teaming the toilet to be violently sick multiple times.The sicknesss bug was not fun, but the camaraderie shown by my kids as they supported each other through a horrendous night of being sick followed by a day of lying on the sofa feeling wretched, demonstrated the strength of their relationship.  It was heartwarming to see the three girls together under duvets watching their new Gossip Girl boxset together.  Plus Megan was delighted to have lost three pounds making the excesses of Christmas day obsolete.  Always a silver lining.

Megan went back to Manchester on New Year's Eve to celebrate the end of 2013 city style.  She has an exciting year ahead of her and I am extremely excited to see what 2014 brings to my wonderful daughter!

We spent a quiet New Year's Eve night eating, drinking and watching TV together.  The London fireworks were amazing to watch at midnight!

I hope 2014 brings good things to everyone.  This is the year that my Godson and nephew Thomas marries his American fiancee Ashley and starts a new life for himself in the USA. It is the year that my daughter Ella goes to university (conditional places at Salford and Manchester means she will be living in the same city as her big sister - perfect for me!)  It's Kizzy's last year at primary school before she goes up to secondary school, a huge milestone in her school life. Megan is embarking on a whole new adventure this year after re-evaluating her life. I am so proud of her! So there are some big, exciting changes coming.

On a sad note, I was devastated to discover some tragic news about a family member this week.  My thoughts and love go out to her and her family at what is a truly terrible and heartbreaking time.  Some tragedies put everything into perspective and make me reassess what is important and what really matters in this world.

With this in mind for 2014:

 I resolve to become the best version of myself that I can be.  
I resolve to be the best wife, mother and daughter that I can be. 
I resolve to look after myself and be as healthy and as happy as I can be.  
Everyday is precious and I resolve not to waste any more time through apathy or disillusionment.

Sweet Potato, Chickpea and Nut Roast Pie #vegan

I'm starting to think about Christmas food! This year is going to be quite challenging...not only am I catering for 11 people, I'm also planning a vegan Christmas dinner. So I'm trying out a few ideas with a plan to make something yummy enough to appeal to the carnivores, vegetarians and vegans alike, without compromising on taste.  I was very inspired by our visit to the Toby Carvery which offered two vegan dishes that could be eaten with all the carvery veg, yorkies and gravy. 

This is my recipe for an open pie that will work really well with all the roast dinner trimmings.  It is easy to make and really quick to put together if using ready rolled puff pastry.

Sweet Potato, Chickpea and Nut Roast Pie

Ingredients

1 bag of frozen sweet potato (Morrison's NuMe Sweet Potato Chunks)

4 carrots grated

1 parsnip grated

1 vegetable stock pot (Kent's Kitchen)

boiling water

1 can chickpeas

handful of walnuts and cashew nuts

ground pepper

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon garlic puree

1 teaspoon mixed herbs

mixed seeds

1 packet of ready rolled puff pastry

Method

Put sweet potato, grated carrot and grated parsnip into a pan.

Cover with boiling water and add stock pot and garlic.

Simmer for 20 minutes until soft.

Drain off any excess liquid.

Mash the vegetables and add seasonings.

Stir through chickpeas and nuts.

Place the pastry onto a baking sheet.

Score the edge about an inch from the edge.

Place filling onto the middle of the pastry.

Fold up edges and pinch corners together.

Sprinkle seeds on top.

Pop into hot oven GM 6 for about 25 minutes.

This was really delicious with a nice gravy and roast trimmings.  For Christmas I am going to add chopped chestnuts to the mix for a festive twist.  It's an experimental recipe, a work in process if you will, but this first attempt was really good!  It was good cold too.

I am now feeling very positive about making a yummy vegan Christmas dinner for the family!