Another Welly

I like to cook vegetarian and vegan food, and also substitute meat for something interesting. This next wellington IS NOT vegetarian because I still used standard paté and prosciutto. I could have researched/source veggie options or alternatives for the pate and prosciutto, and you could do so to make this dish veggie or probably vegan, but the main aim of this was to substitute the main protein, making the overall dish cheaper.

I found a butternut squash wellington recipe online, and the squash looked amazing, a burst of sunshine amongst crispy puff pastry.

For this experiment I followed the recipe for the pork fillet wellington, omitting the pork and sealing of, then followed the butternut recipe for preparation of the squash. I also added a touch of yeast extract when cooking the mushrooms to replace the umami that sealing the pork adds.

I cut the long – and very solid – neck section from 2 squash then peeled. The lovely thing about this recipe is that the squash neck is left whole, it looks so pretty. I kept the rest of the squash for soup.

I seasoned and charred the squash on the griddle pan before roasting for 30 minutes then cooling. Once cool I plonked the two pieces on top of the puff pastry sheet and prosciutto that I’d spread with half of the mushrooms and spinach then tried to pat the rest over and around the top and sides of the squash. Lastly I laid a puff pastry sheet on top after brushing the edges of the bottom sheet with water to seal. I used a fork to seal and cut off the excess pastry, scored the top gently and brushed the lot with egg wash and sprinkled with nigella seeds before baking for about 35 minutes, until the pastry was golden brown and crisp.

I know the pic isn’t great, but you get the idea, maybe I could call it sunshine wellington! And I will definitely make this again.

Next up on my welly experiments is a mushroom wellington, again not veggie, but it was amazing, delicious cold too!

My non veggie butternut squash wellington