I often promise myself I will cut back on eating meat, and that I will start preparing vegetarian meals more often. But apart from some hummus-and-falafel-bingeing, my promises never get me far. After a while I can’t resist the delicious pork sausages, the perfect steak, and the superb lambchops I see at the butcher’s shop. Sigh. I do buy organic meat though, so at least I can feel as if I bought off my guilt, does that count for anything?

But I’m currently on a new vegetarian-streak, and this time I’m using The Cranks Bible by Nadine Abensur. This cookbook is just perfect: the recipes are delicious, she doesn’t just insert tofu everywhere in the hope people won’t notice the meat is missing (a lot of vegetarian cookbooks do that, why?), and she uses a lot of seasonal vegetables. One of the recipes which caught my eye a long time ago was the recipe for a mushroom Wellington, a play on the recipe for beef wrapped in pastry. But since the recipe begins with the ominous words: “There’s no way around this. Mushroom Wellington takes time and you need a good food processor, the blade of which still has some zip to it.”, I put it off for a long time. However, three weeks back I finally conquered my fear, I geared up my trusted Magimix, and I turned out two beautiful loaves!

So, without further ado, the recipe for mushroom Wellington:

(the recipe serves 12 to 16 people, so you can halve it to get less sizeable portions, but the loaves also freeze pretty well)

• 500 g. of puff pastry, defrosted
• 60 ml. sunflower oil
• 675 g. onions, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 450 g. chestnut mushrooms, whole
• 2 tbsp. fresh tarragon
• 4 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp. Marsala wine (optional)
• 320 g. cashew nuts
• 175 g. fresh breadcrumbs (I used white, but wholemeal can also be used)
• 320 g. almonds
• salt and pepper
• 1 egg, beaten, for glazing

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celcius.

First of all, you’ll need to roll out the puff pastry into two rectangles of about 30×23 cm. I put the rectangles on some baking parchment to prevent it from sticking, and it makes it easier to transfer the final loaves onto a baking sheet. In the meantime, heat the sunflower oil in a large pan and fry the onion with the garlic for about 20-30 minutes, until they are a deep golden-brown colour. Don’t turn the heat too high or they will stick to the pan! Take the mixture out of the pan, and add the mushrooms to the pan with half of the tarragon. Now you’ll have to turn up the heat and cook the hell out of those mushrooms! After about 5-7 minutes, add the soy sauce and the Marsala (if you’re using it), and continue cooking. When the mushrooms are fully cooked, season them with salt and pepper. Use your food processor to crunch the cashew nuts and almonds, and then add the mushrooms (plus the liquid from the pan) to blend it to a very smooth purée. If it is not smooth enough, add a little water. Take this mixture from the bowl and then blend the onion mixture. Add everything together in a large bowl, and add the breadcrumbs and the remaining tarragon. Now comes the fun part: you can use your hand to mix everything together. The mixture should hold its shape when you form it with you hands.

Put the mixture on the pastry rectangles, shaping it with your hands to make a long rectangular shap about 28 cm long, 6 cm wide and 5 cm high. With a sharp knife, make diagonal cuts at a 45 degreea ngle, starting from the left-hand corner of the pastry to the mushroom mixture. Repeat on the other side. You’ll end up with a flap of pastry on the front and back of the loaf: fold this upward, and then fold in the strips on the left and right side one at a time, crossing them over. Do this for both loaves.  If you’ve made two, you can choose to freeze one at this stage, and glaze the other one with the beaten egg. Otherwise, glaze both of them. Put the loaves in the oven for about 35-45 minutes, and check them quite often, because they can cook faster than you expect.

As you can see here, I had some mixture left over and I turned it into some mini-loaves, which would be excellent for a dinner party! I took all the pictures with my iPhone (oooooh, fancy me), so that explains the quality….

Finally, I have to thank my partner in crime Anne, whose hands you see in the pictures. She’s truly excellent in shaping Mushroom Wellington!