This Week's Wonders

Again, due to my shift pattern, I haven'thad much time to blog so I'm now going to do a run down of what you've missed this week.

I made a nut roast for the first time last week. I loved nut roasts, even though I'm not a vegetarian. I know nut roasts might seem like the 'token vegetarian dish', but if done right I think they can be really nice. This is what I did to make mine.

 I dissolved some Marmite in water...

...and then added chopped mixed nuts (Brazil nuts, walnuts, pecans and almonds)...

...breadcrumbs...

...chopped onion...

... and seasoning...

...and mixed it all up!

 

I baked mine in a ramekin as I was only doing the one portion (a mistake, I could have eaten that many times over!), but the normal recipe is done in a loaf tin or oven proof dish. However, even if you are doing this for more than one person, it would be a little but different to do it in individual ramekins. Saying that, I do like it sliced as well... so I'll leave it up to you how you do it!

 

 

And Freestyle Friday #17. This week, I had a bit of leftover roasted butternut squash from this recipe. I also had quite a few general salad bits. This is what I came up with.

 

These are two of the massive leaves you get on the outside of whole lettuces. I have seen quite a few recipes that use various types of leaf to wrap things in so I thought I would do something similar.

I roughly mashed the squash and divided it equally between two leaves so I would have the oppurtunity to do two different fillings.

The two I decided on were crumbled blue cheese, and sultana mixed spice. I came up with blue cheese because there is a dish that I absolutely LOVE called Butternut Squash and Blue Cheese pasta, so I knew the combination would go well. As this type of squash is slightly sweet, I tried a sweeter filling for the other wrap.

To keep them together, I had to wrap them in the clingfilm straightaway, hence the horrible picture! I can promise though, they tasted a lot better than they look here. The sultana spice one I had as a sort of 'pudding' after the blue cheese one. It wasn't too sweet though, just right. I had originally planned to use cinnamon, but I didn't have any, and I think it would have been sweeter if I'd used it. That is a combination to try another day!

 

 

I am cooking my meals a little differently this week, and I'll be posting soon about the how and the why...