1st Bloggiversary!!! Colourful Vegetable Quad Bake

1st Bloggiversary! Colourful Vegetable Quad Bake

THANK YOU! 🙂 Yes…YOU!!! 🙂 Without ‘you’ I wouldn’t have made it this far! Without ‘you’ there would be nobody to share my recipes with! Without ‘you’ there was no reason to invent, create, test, tweak, retest, photograph and post over 150 recipes! Thank you all for your likes, shares, comments and follows! Life Diet Health blog is ONE year old today! 😀

1st Bloggiversary! 🙂

So now you’ve made it so I ‘know’ I can blog, I guess that means I need to do some more work! Special thanks to Elaine for becoming one of my great blog friends and always sending positive and cheerful messages offline :). Some of you may have noticed that I have recently changed my theme (I know Sophie did) and I am working on a few other changes too. When I started this blog Milica for one was astounded that I managed to post every day – I understand that now! 😛 The last few months I have only managed to post once a week but carefully selecting my dishes and taking them to Deborah’s #PlantBasedPotluckParty I’ve been fortunate enough to have several dishes featured! 🙂 That’s encouragement to keep posting! 🙂

I was going to make a cake for today! It is a bloggiversary after all! Then I thought ‘it is January and everyone is still trying to work off all the festive treats’ and also I am trying to reduce my sugar (natural) intake even further (I’m reading four great books at the minute)! So I invented you this amazing colourful vegetable quad bake! This took some careful engineering to get all of the flavours balanced (and the colours)! and I think you’ll agree this is absolutely delicious! It goes without saying that this is vegan and therefore dairy and egg free, also gluten free, sugar free and so healthy being packed with proteins, vitamins, minerals and a few carbs in there too! Even hubby had seconds of this vegan meal!!! 😀 Yes indeed! Meat munching hubby didn’t even ask where the meat was! 😀

Please don’t worry that the ingredient list looks long! I’ve split it into the four (quad) separate layers so  that it’s easier to see what’s in each part – seasoning is added and therefore listed in each layer ! Here’s the recipe…

Gather

Orange Layer:

• 250g split red lentils
• 750ml boiling water
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• salt to taste (I used pink Himalayan)
• 200g baked sweet potato flesh (2 small)

Green layer:

• 500g frozen spinach
• 200g frozen peas
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon black pepper

White layer:

• 500g potatoes (chopped & steamed)
• 250g celeriac (chopped & steamed)
• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• salt to taste (I used pink Himalayan)

Red layer:

• smidge of oil (I used coconut)
• 1 medium onion diced
• 4-6 garlic cloves diced
• 2 tablespoons tomato puree
• 400g tin red kidney beans drained
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 200ml water
• salt to taste (I used pink Himalayan)

Topping:

• Pistachios – grated (optional)

Prepare

Depending on how you are for multi-tasking this is quite easy to prepare all the layers at the same time! If you’re not comfortable juggling 4 pans at once, just do one layer at a time! I would start by steaming (or boiling if you prefer) the potatoes and celeriac and baking the sweet potato.

1. Orange Layer: Put the lentils in a pan and cover with boiling water. Cover and leave to simmer for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat, add pepper and season with salt to taste. When the sweet potato is cool enough, peel and add to the lentils. Mash with a fork to combine the ingredients together.
2. Green Layer: Put the spinach in a pan with the peas. Heat gently and stir as necessary when the vegetables start to defrost.  When the water has almost all evaporated add the nutmeg and black pepper. Turn off the heat.
3. White Layer: Mash the potatoes with the celeriac and nutritional yeast. Try to make this as smooth as possible. Add salt to taste.
4. Red Layer: Melt the oil then add the onion and cook until starting to brown. Add the garlic and cook for a further minute. Stir in the tomato puree followed by the kidney beans. The mixture will be quite thick at this stage. Sprinkle the paprika over and allow the beans to cook for 2-3 minutes (check they don’t stick). Add the water and gently combine until you have a uniform consistency sauce. Simmer for 5-10 minutes until the beans have absorbed most of the sauce. Turn off the heat. Add salt to taste.
5. Assembly: This is a versatile recipe so you could make one big family sized dish, make individual portion sized meals, fill a loaf tin or assemble using a food ring. Try to make each layer level before adding the next. Bottom layer is beans (red), followed by spinach (green), then lentils (orange) and topped with potato (white). Sprinkle the top with pistachio, then bake at Gas Mark 6 (400f / 200c) for 20-25 minutes until browned.
6. Spoon and serve or slice and serve!
7. Enjoy!

Serve & Store

• We enjoyed this on its own as it has everything you need all in one dish!
• Maybe add your favourite green leaves or a mixed seasonal salad.
• Eat straight from the individual bowls, spoon onto plates or cut slices.
• Grate over additional pistachios or drizzle with your favourite sauce (try this balsamic dressing)
• Store covered in the fridge and consume within 3 days.

Slices of vegetable quad bake… is one slice enough?!

Life Diet Health blog is ONE today! 6th January 2016

Lovely layers – red, green, orange and white.