This roast loaf will not win any prizes for beautiful food. But, it is tasty, easy and cruelty-free – which makes it good in my books!
Let’s begin with the actual roast loaf.
You’ll need:
- 250g cooked chickpeas (or 2 cans)
- 2 shallots – diced
- 1 onion – diced
- 1 leek – thinly sliced
- 6-7 medium sized mushrooms – peeled and sliced
- 1 big handful of walnuts
- 2-3 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 big tablespoon parsley (or finely chopped spinach would also be good!)
- 3/4 cup pre-made vegetable stock (either home made, cube or powder)
- 1/4 – 2/3 cup nutritional yeast (if desired)
- salt and pepper to taste
In a much-too-big saucepan and a small amount of oil, saute the shallots, leek and onions until translucent. Take off the heat and set aside.
In a food processor, very quickly wizz up the chickpeas – you still want to have a fair amount of whole and half chickpeas. To this add the walnuts, parsley, and a small amount of the olive oil and wizz a bit more – keep adding oil until the mixture is very well combined. It’s not very important for all the chickpeas to be mushed up – having some whole chickpeas can be advantageous!
Add the vegetable stock to the onion mix, then add the chickpea-walnut mix and the nutritional yeast. Stir over a low heat until the two are well combined. Spoon the mix into a lined loaf-pan and bake in a 180 degree oven for about 45 minutes. If you like, you can take the roast loaf out at about 30 minutes and invert onto a flat baking tray to finish off the last 15 minutes. Doing this will have two results: first, it will crisp up the outside of the loaf and, second, you’ll have to wash up a baking tray on top of everything else.
After you take the loaf out of the oven, invert (if you haven’t already) onto a serving plate and slice. It’s designed to be very moist and a bit ‘sloppy.’ The slices won’t stay in very nice little rectangles unless you are very careful when plating up.
Now, the sauce! Well, to be honest, this is not exactly a sauce and more of a ‘topping’ but, it’s still good!
You’ll need:
- 1 leek – diced
- 1 onion – diced
- 4 medium mushrooms – thinly sliced and cut into halves
- 2-3 tablespoons of Nuttelex or similar non-diary ‘butter’
- 1/4 cup water
- 1-2 teaspoons of vegetable stock powder or a bullion cube (alternatively, replace water with home made vegetable stock)
The easiest way to dice your leek is this: cut the leek in half lengthways and pull out the little center bit. You’ll then be able to flatten out the rest of the leek into ‘sheets’, cut lengthways into thirds and then cut those long strips into squares.
To begin the sauce, melt a decent spoonful of Nuttelex on a fairly hot heat. Once melted, put the diced onion and leek into the saucepan and stir constantly for 2-3 minutes, remembering to scrape down the sides fairly regularly. Once the mix is well coated and starting to look translucent, add 1/4 cup of water and 2 teaspoons of stock powder (or 1/4 cup of pre-made vegetable stock). Put the mushroom in, turn the heat down a little bit and put a lid on the saucepan and let it simmer away, stiring or shaking occasionally. Once the mushroom has softened up take off the heat, and let rest with the lid still on for a few minutes. It will thicken up a bit, but not heaps. Serve either on top of or on the side of your roast loaf.
The loaf is great with roast vegetables. Last night we had ours with crispy roast potatoes, parsnips, sweet potatoes and pumpkin with peas. Tonight, we had the loaf with mashed potato, peas and carrots. S also had chips from the fish and chip shop – but we won’t talk about that…
Tags: chickpeas, leek, mushrooms, roast, S, walnut