Comforting Vegetarian Cuisine

As I may have mentioned not only do I collect cookbooks I also collect recipes…. Also did I mention that I was a vegetarian for about 14 years?

I was talking to the guys in my local vegetable shop, The Farmer’s Gate, about recipes we could give their customers that use produce from the shop. So I went back through my recipe notebook for inspiration and came across this one for Savoury Vegetable Crumble. I think the original came from a vegetarian magazine way back when I was dedicated to the cause. It’s been adapted a bit over the years and here’s the latest version.

You can use any mix of vegetables for this dish but winter root vegetables work really well. Tonight I used leeks, celery and carrot as they were in my vegetable rack. I also added a red pepper for colour.

What you need:

1 onion, diced
1 red chilli, finely chopped
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1 cm ginger, finely chopped
1 tbsp tomato purée
Mix of vegetables – such as 2-3 carrots, few sticks celery, 2 parsnips…..
500 ml vegetable stock
1 400g tin cannelloni beans
75g/3 oz spelt flour
50g/2 oz butter
75g/3oz Kilbeggan Porridge Oats

What you do:

Sauté the onions and the chilli until soft but not coloured.
Dry fry the cumin and coriander seeds for a minute then grind in pestle and mortar with the other spices. Then add to the onions and chilli and cook for a few mins.
Add in the purée, cook for another minute, add vegetables and toss to coat in the spice mix.
Finally add in the stock and the beans. Bring mix to the boil and then simmer over a low heat for 15-20 mins.