Christmas Wellington

My favourite Christmas dinner is a nut roast or veggie wellington. I’ve been served everything you can imagine over the years for Christmas dinner, including lasagne, stuffed peppers and fish. These were always delicious meals, but to me, Christmas dinner should be accompanied by heaps of stuffing and slathered in gravy. I am a Northern girl after all.

You can buy very good nut roasts and wellingtons from the supermarkets now, but they’re usually quite expensive and the portions are very small. I’m the only non-meat eater in my family, so I get the entire thing. But if you’re a family of veggies or vegans, you must struggle to get a decent sized veggie option. The Quorn Roasts taste great, and do come in a generous size, but they’re not a show-stopper table centre piece are they? They actually don’t look that great at all – a lump of processed something pretending to be meat.

So a few years ago, I decided to combine all the best bits of a veggie Christmas dinner to create an option that tasted fantastic, but also looked great and would feed more than one small child. I combined the fruits and nuts of a nut roast, the meat substitute of a Quorn Roast and rolled it all up in flaky puff pastry to create my veggie Christmas Wellington. This is now my favourite part of Christmas dinner, and it tastes great covered in gravy.

This recipe creates 2 wellingtons. I make 2 at a time so I can use a whole Quorn Roast, a full packet of chestnuts etc. Once cooked, I slice 1 into portions, wrap it in tinfoil and pop it in the freezer. Then, When I fancy a roast dinner, I take out a slice and heat through in the oven for 15-20mins. You could, of course, half the ingredients if you like and just make the one.

If you can’t get hold of the Quorn Roast, any decent meat substitute will do.

Ready in 1 hour (30mins prep, 30mins bake) – Serves 8-10 (1 on its own serves 4-5)

Ingredients:

1 Quorn Roast, or other meat substitute of our choice, cooked according to packet instructions and allowed to cool
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 large red onion, diced
100g of mushrooms, washed and diced
1 packet of chestnuts (about 180g)
75g of walnuts
About 85g of sage and onion stuffing
200mls of cold water
2 sheets of ready rolled puff pastry
8 tablespoons of cranberry sauce
Enough milk or egg for an egg wash

Method:

Put the oil and onion in a large pan over a medium heat.
Sweat the onions for 5mins, or until soft, then add the mushrooms.
Cook for about 5mins, or until just starting to colour.

Chop the Chestnuts and walnuts up roughly and add them to the pan.
Cook for a further 5mins then add the stuffing and water.
turn the temperature down so the mix doesn’t stuck to the bottom of the pan.
Mix well and cook for 5mins, or until all of the water has been absorbed and the stuffing has swollen up a bit.

Dice the Quorn Roast it and add it to the pan.
Mix well and take off the off the heat.

Preheat your oven to 200c / 180c fan / gas mark 6.
Unroll 1 sheet of puff pastry but don’t take it off the baking sheet that is comes on. (This way you wont need to flour a kitchen surface)
Spread half of the cranberry sauce over the pastry.

Spread half of the nut roast mixture over the cranberry sauce.

Using the greaseproof paper to help lift up one side of the pastry, pull the pastry off the greaseproof paper and roll it up.

Repeat with the other pastry sheet and the rest of the ingredients if using.
Place the greaseproof paper and the wellingtons onto an oven tray then brush each wellington with egg or milk.