As we settle into the slow rhythm of midwinter, many of us are finding that healthy, nourishing comfort food is just the thing to lift our spirits. In this regard, The Happy Pear are on hand as always – we love their delicious recipes! Please enjoy these recipes for a cauliflower curry bake and a berry and apple crumble, taken from our Winter 2020/21 issue.
Local Flavours
Indulge in hearty comforts
by David and Stephen Flynn
This batch of winter recipes call for us to eat in season and support local producers. There is a major focus at this time on buying local, helping Irish growers and food producers to thrive during a time of challenge. With this in mind, we’re thrilled to share these two wonderfully hearty recipes below!
Cauliflower Winter Curry Bake
This is a really delicious one-pan bake, in which we simply prep all the veg, put them in a pan along with a sauce and bake them in the oven. That’s it – delicious dinner ready! It goes great with rice for a great family/celebratory dinner. We use a potimarron pumpkin. If you can’t source one, simply replace it with butternut squash or sweet potato.
Serves: 6 people
Time: 10 minutes prep and 40 minutes in the oven
Ingredients:
1 head of cauliflower
1 leek
500g pumpkin/sweet potato/butternut squash
100g mushrooms of choice – we used oyster mushrooms
6 store bought vegan sausages (ensure they’re defrosted if from frozen)
Small bunch of fresh herb of choice to serve
50g baby spinach
1 Tbsp Tamari
2 tbsp oil
Generous pinch of coarse sea salt
Sauce:
2 cloves of garlic
1 small thumb sized piece of ginger
1 onion
½ chilli
Juice of ½ lime
1 tbsp maple syrup or liquid sweetener of choice
1x 400g tin of Coconut milk
400ml veg stock
1.5 tbsp medium curry powder
1 flat tbsp of aromatic spices – cinnamon/cardamom/clove/star anise powder
½ tbsp salt
2 tbsp tamari
Instructions:
1. Preheat the oven to 200C.
2. Your first step is to make the sauce. Peel and roughly chop the garlic, ginger and onion and add to a blender along with the rest of the sauce ingredients and blend until smooth.
3. Finely tear/chop the mushrooms. Peel and finely chop the pumpkin/sweet potato/butternut squash. Chop the sausages into bite sized pieces and slice the leek into nice bite sized rounds (ensuring that you give it a good wash, as sediment often hides inside the green of the leek). Remove the rib from the kale, and roughly chop if using. Add all these veg into a large deep oven casserole dish along with the sauce and mix.
4. Chop the cauliflower into 4 equal sized ‘steaks’, chopping it from the top to the bottom. Place the cauliflower steaks on a separate baking tray, along with any smaller pieces of cauliflower that fell off, and also the cauliflower leaves (chop the wider pieces into thin strips so they cook through). Spray/brush with 2 tbsp of oil oil, drizzle over some tamari and sprinkle some coarse sea salt.
5. Put both trays in the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the pumpkin is soft and cooked through.
6. Roughly chop the fresh herb of choice
7. Remove from the oven and garnish with the roasted cauliflower and chopped fresh herbs. Enjoy!
Berry and apple crumble
This crumble recipe is dairy, gluten, and refined sugar-free and it is super-tasty too! Be careful, if you start trying it, you might end up eating half of it in one go!
Serves: 8 people
Time: 30 mins
Ingredients:
Stewed fruit:
500g Raspberries
300g blueberries and cranberries
160g apples
5 tbsp maple syrup
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
4 tbsp water
Crumble:
150g oats (can use gluten-free oats)
50g ground almond
3 tbsp pumpkin seed
3 tbsp sunflower seeds
75ml sunflower oil/coconut oil (5 tbsp)
90ml maple syrup
Instructions:
1. Cut the apple into bite-sized pieces and put it into a pot, together with the berries and the other stewed fruit ingredients.
2. Bring the fruit mixture to the boil and then reduce to a simmer. Stirring occasionally, stew the fruit for about 20 minutes, or until all the fruit has properly broken down.
3. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 170?.
4. If using coconut oil for the crumble, melt it first by heating up in a pan. Thoroughly mix all the ingredients for the crumble together in a bowl, including the oil.
5. Once the fruit is stewed down, add it to your crumble dish and spread it out evenly (we used a 30cm ceramic dish).
6. Spread the crumble top evenly over the fruit and put in the preheated oven for about 25 mins at 170? or until the top of the crumble starts to go golden. Enjoy!
