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
- 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.
- 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.
- Then remove from the food processor and put to one side in a little bowl.
- Next add the chopped onion, mushrooms and cauliflower to the food processor and blend until either fine or chunky.
- 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.
- Now grease the cake tin bases a little.
- 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.
- Bake in the oven for 20 – 30 mins checking regularly to see they are thoroughly cooked but not burnt.
- Et voila! Serve 3/4 balls, with greens, potatoes, carrots and gravy for a veggie twist on a traditional English roast dinner.
