Mini Mushroom and Walnut Roasts

Mini Mushroom and Walnut Roasts

I have been experimenting with simple nut roast style dishes this year. Here’s one I made a few days ago that went down a treat, I’m planning to add it to the mix at Christmas.

I used a food processor to make this dish but don’t worry if you don’t have one, you can use a knife to finely chop the ingredients and a rolling pin to crush the nuts. In the final stage of the recipe you will have a nutty mixture to bake in the oven. The more finely you chop the ingredients, or the more time they spend in the food processor, the smoother the texture will be. A typical Nut Roast has little chunks of nuts visible to the eye, very crunchy! whereas a smooth nut roast will end up feeling a bit like a falafel. Smooth and silky!

Ingredients

• Handful of Walnut halves
• 1 x 400g tin of either cannellini beans or butter beans
• 250 g button mushrooms chopped
• 1 large red onion chopped
• 1 egg (can be left out / swapped for olive oil and breadcrumbs if vegan)
• salt and pepper
• 1/4 cauliflower head chopped very finely so that it looked like rice.

Steps

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and choose a dish to bake your mini nut roasts in. I use a cup cake tray, but you could also use little paper cupcake cases or a plain metal tray. 
2. Add the walnuts to the food processor and blend until they are the perfect consistency for the type of Nut Roast you’d like – fine or crunchy etc. 
3. Then remove from the food processor and put to one side in a little bowl. 
4. Next add the chopped onion, mushrooms and cauliflower to the food processor and blend until either fine or chunky. 
5. Next, add the walnuts to the food processor on top of the mushroom mix, adding also a tin of white beans and an egg. Again, blend until the egg and beans have mixed. Keeping the mix to the consistency you prefer. 
6. Now grease the cake tin bases a little.
7. Next, using a teaspoon and clean hands create little balls from the mixture and place hem in their rounded shape in the cake tin. My mixture made 15 mini nut roast bites. 
8. Bake in the oven for 20 – 30 mins checking regularly to see they are thoroughly cooked but not burnt.
9. Et voila! Serve 3/4 balls, with greens, potatoes, carrots and gravy for a veggie twist on a traditional English roast dinner.