Midwinter Christmas part II – Vegetables are good for you

Like generations before me, I didn’t much like eating half the vegetables I was given when I was small, largely because my parents didn’t cook them they way I (later discovered) I liked them. Newsflash, Grandma, cabbage tastes fine without being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment in the pressure cooker. Also, brussels sprouts are now and shall ever be rank and disgusting. It took me a while out of my meat eating home to be convinced that you don’t have to have dead animal in most meals and the halls of residence didn’t much help. While something like a Christmas nut roast is a bit beyond my ken (also, who wants to pay for a pound of brazil nuts?) past flatmates have shown me the light re: hearty wintery meat-free food.

Field mushrooms, when roasted or barbecued, taste wonderfully meaty and rich – when cooked in garlic butter and a few drops of soy sauce they often taste better than many mysterious meat-dusty sausages (see: Sizzlers) or burger patties. A couple of these giant stuffed mushrooms can easily take the place of the meat course in a roast, and they don’t much resemble their 70s throwback cousins. Hopefully my future hypothetical children won’t disown me and my cooking and decide that the only good sort mushrooms are the sorts they found in Rawhiti Domain.

Roasted stuffed mushrooms

As with most of these recipes you can adjust quantities or ingredients without too much to worry about – for instance, if you hate capsicum, replace it with some courgette. If you hate dairy or want to kiss a vegan, swap the butter for marg and the (admittedly expensive) ricotta for (not as expensive) hummus, cut out the cheese and don’t use Worcestershire (it has anchovies in it, ew).

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• 6 of the biggest, widest flat mushrooms you can find
• Soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce
• 3 tablespoons softened butter
• Two cloves of garlic
• Half a red onion
• Half a red capsicum, without the seeds (they make you sick)
• A handful of rocket or spinach leaves
• A small handful (10 or 12 leaves) of basil – adjust to taste – or a teaspoon of dried (but it won’t be as nice)
• 1/2 cup of fresh breadcrumbs
• 1/2 cup ricotta or cream cheese
• 1/2 cup grated cheese
• a little grated cheese or extra breadcrumbs

Sort the mushrooms: Preheat the oven to 200°C Finely dice the garlic and mix it with the butter in a little bowl or on a saucer. Remove the stems from the mushrooms and arrange the mushrooms top-down on a baking dish – it’s helpful to have some baking paper underneath. Juices will run from the mushrooms so prior warning, a tray might get a bit messy. Dot the mushrooms with lots of drops of soy or Worcestershire sauce and little blobs of the garlic butter, saving a small amount.

Make the stuffing: Chop the mushroom stems, the red onion and the red capsicum as finely as you can. Cook them very gently in a frying pan in the remaining garlic butter until the onions start to wilt. Mix it all in a bowl with the basil and spinach. Add the ricotta / hummus and mix it all up – you might need to use your hands. Add the breadcrumbs slowly until you get a good stuffing-y consistency. Divide the stuffing mix between the mushrooms and sprinkle a little grated cheese or some more breadcrumbs on top. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes, until the tops look lovely and golden and feel a bit firm.

Rosemary and garlic roasties

You don’t have to cook roasties at the same time as everything else – they’ll be just fine if you precook them then pop them in the oven for 10 minutes before serving. You can also prep the whole thing the night before, just cover it up with a tea towel to keep critters off. Leftovers can be used on top of pizzas, in toasties or in roast veggie lasagne.

• Your choice of lovely wintery vegetables - potatoes, kumara, swede, pumpkin, yams, parsnip, carrot, beetroot and onions 
• Oil 
• Rosemary (fresh sticks of a large pinch of the dried stuff) 
• Garlic bulbs

Chop the veggies into pieces that are around about the same size, with the exception of the onions (these should be twice as big as everything else) and the parsnip (they take forever to cook and should be a bit smaller). This can be anything from small ice cube sized bits to big quarters or chunks. Arrange them in the largest roasting dish you have available to you – you don’t want all the veggies squished up together. I usually base my quantity of vegetables on what dish I’m using.

Break a head of garlic into cloves and throw as many as you like in with the vegetables, the insides will go sweet and almost creamy upon cooking. Arrange or sprinkle the rosemary over the top. Give everything a small drizzle of oil and shake it about a bit. You don’t want it greasy, just lightly coated. Finish it up with a big crack of pepper and some salt (that smoked salt from the Riccarton markets is ace). 

Cook at whatever temperature you’re cooking your roast, or 180°C if you’re doing this solo. Give them a shake or a stir once every 20 minutes or so. Depending on how large your pieces are, you will need to take anywhere between 40 and 70 minutes to cook – give them a poke with a knife and pull everything out when the knife passes through smoothly, or, when a piece you’ve snuck out tastes about right, watch for burned tongue though). If you’re also cooking meat (and have no vegetarians to cater to), you can spoon some of the roast juices over the veggies for the last 15 minutes.

A word about breadcrumbs: these are a bloody annoying ingredient I’m afraid. The bought ones are dry and mealy and only good for sprinkling on top of pasta bakes before cooking. To make your own, leave slices of white or wholemeal bread out overnight or toast them lightly, then remove the crusts and very lightly grate them until you have the right amount of stuff. You can also grate a stale baguette. If you are fancy and have a food processor to chop with, then make sure your bread is very dry or you will get Bread Lump (TM). If this is all too hard, use those awesome Japanese panko ones.