I made this recipe as a main dish for our Vegan daughters Christmas meal. The pastry I made from scratch but most shop bought Puff Pastry is vegan so its easy to use that too.This is what I did.
Pastry
Ingredients
250g strong white bread flour
200g Vegan block (must be hard/solid, I bought mine from Sainsbury)
1 Tsp lemon Juice
1 tsp salt
150ml chilled water
(extra flour for dusting/ rolling)
Soya milk (for brushing to seal and glaze)
Method
Pre heat oven 20 210c
Place flour, salt, lemon juice into a mixing bowl. Chop the vegan block into dice and add to the flour. Stir it around to coat with flour. Add about two thirds of the water and mix to form a soft dough, add more of the water if needed. At this point we do not want to blend the vegan block into the flour. Just ball it all up with cold hands, wrap in film and place in th fridge for half an hour.
Remove from fridge onto a well floured surface and roll out to about an A4 rectangle. keep dusting the pin and surface to stop it sticking. Keep the edges neat. Fold the top third down and the bottom third up to cover the top. Wrap in film and chill for half an hour.
Repeat the above twice more. Then keep in the fridge while you prepare the filling.
Filling
1 peeled and chopped onion
3 Portobello mushrooms sliced
1 Tbs oil
1 tsp Marmite
salt and pepper
Half a peeled and diced butternut squash
2 sweet potatoes unpeeled and diced
1 pouch cooked lentils
1 pouched cooked chestnuts (chopped roughly)
2 tsp chia seeds
1 cup pumpkin seeds
1 grated nutmeg
fresh sage and rosemary chopped
zest and juice of 1 orange
1 Tsp English mustard
2 Tbs balsamic vinegar
1 small jar cranberry sauce
Method
Preheat oven to 180c
Soften the onions and mushrooms in a frying pan in the oil, add marmite and salt and pepper.
Roast the butternut squash and the sweet potato until tender.
Remove from the oven and place into a large mixing bowl, add the onion and mushroom mixture and all the other ingredients. Stir well and chill.
Assembly
Remove the pastry from the fridge and roll out to a large rectangle about 5 mm thick. Using a pizza roller cut the pastry into two strips horizontally. The base bout a third of the pastry and the top about two thirds.
Place the base pastry on a greaseproof sheet on a baking sheet.
Mound the filling along the pastry leaving a cm uncovered all the way around.(a margin) Spread the cranberry sauce on top.
Brush the pastry margin with soya milk and the lay the top pastry over everything. Press down well to join the bottom pastry to the top and crimp with your fingers and a thumb using both hands. Brush the whole thing with soya milk and place back in the fridge to chill for about half an hour. Brush again with soya milk and bake for about 40 minutes until golden and puffed up. Any bits of pastry left can be place on the wellington before cooking as decorations.
