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Vegetable Pizza Squares – the perfect Christmas party snack

If you’re looking to make a quick and easy snack for a Christmas party, these vegetable pizza squares would make the perfect healthy option. You will need:

– 1 pack of refrigerated crescent rolls
– 1 pack cream cheese
– 1 green pepper, chopped into squares
– 1 red pepper, chopped into squares
– 2 finely chopped carrots
– 1/2 cup chopped green onions
– 1/2 cup chopped fresh broccoli
– 1 ounce Ranch style dressing mix

Now, follow this simple method:

1. Preheat the oven to 190 C

2. Place the crescent roll on a piece of non stick baking paper flatten to a rectangular shape

3. Place the flattened crescent roll in the oven for 10 minutes, or until golden brown. When this is done, allow to cool.

4. Place the cream cheese in a bowl and mix it with half of the ranch dressing mix, adding the rest slowly until it tastes right

5. Spread the cream cheese mix onto the cooled pastry and place the vegetables on it

6. Cut pizza into small squares and leave in the fridge for approximately 1 hour

The perfect roast veg

 

 

Perfect roast veg

With Christmas approaching, many dinner parties will ensue. This recipe, using ingredients bought from the Farmers’ Market, is the perfect side dish for any meal.

Serves 6 as a side dish

1 medium onion
1 medium or 2 small carrots
1 zucchini
1 eggplant
2 small potatoes
5 small tomatoes
1 red or yellow pepper
2 cloves of garlic
Salt and pepper to taste
Dried herbs (sage, thyme, rosemary, wild fennel are all good choices – either individually or combined in some form)
4 to 5 tablespoons of olive oil, plus more to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 375 F (180 C). Quarter and slice the onion thinly. Dice all the vegetables into pieces that are approximately the same size (no larger than 1/2 inch). Pile the vegetables into a baking dish so that the vegetables lie a few inches thick. Season with salt, pepper and herbs to taste and then pour the olive oil over the vegetables. Mix thoroughly but gently – you don’t want to destroy the tomatoes before the dish goes into the oven. Now check the vegetables to make sure they are well-coated and glistening with oil. If need be, add more oil.

2. Put the dish in the oven and cook for 45 minutes to an hour. Halfway through the cooking process, remove the dish from the oven and very gently stir the vegetables so that the ones at the bottom come to the top. Towards the end of the cooking process, stir a second time. Remove from the oven and let cool slightly. Check for seasoning and serve.

 

Whole baked cauliflower with tomato & olive sauce

Head down to the Farmers Market to purchase fresh vegetables to make this delicious dish!

“This unusual but flavoursome cauliflower dish is cooked in a delicious Italian-inspired sauce”

Ingredients:

• 1 red onion, peeled and sliced
• 5 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
• 1 large head cauliflower, outer green leaves discarded, stalk chopped
• olive oil
• 1 handful black olives, stoned
• 4 good-quality salted anchovy fillets in oil, drained and sliced
• 1 handful fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves roughly chopped, stalks finely chopped
• 2 x 400 g good-quality tinned plum tomatoes
• red wine vinegar

Method

This is a great way to cook cauliflower because it half steams and half boils in the delicious sauce. It’s really nice served at the table in the pan it has cooked in, as it looks so different to any other conventional way of cooking cauliflower, but if you prefer you can serve it in a dish like I did in the picture. Even though I made this recipe up, it feels quite Mediterranean in style to me.

First of all, find yourself a pan in which your whole head of cauliflower will fit, leaving an inch around the outside of it – this is important, otherwise it won’t cook in the way it’s supposed to. I use my regular porridge-for-four-people pan and it works a treat! Add the onion, garlic, chopped cauliflower stalk and a lug of oil to the pan and slowly fry for 10 minutes until softened and with a little colour. Add the olives, anchovies and parsley stalks and fry for another couple of minutes. Add your tomatoes, then half-fill one of the tins with water and add that to the pan, with a good swig of red wine vinegar. Stir everything together, breaking the tomatoes down with a spoon to make sure there are no big lumps, and bring to the boil.

Take your cauliflower and gently push it down into the sauce. If you’ve got the size of your pan right, half of the cauliflower will be in the sauce, half above it. Drizzle with olive oil, put the lid on and let it tick over on a low heat for 50 minutes. Serve sprinkled with the parsley leaves. Again, this is a pretty well-behaved dish when it comes to cooking it in advance and then reheating it just before you want to serve it. Lovely with roast lamb, and it’s also a delicious main course for a vegetarian if you leave out the anchovies.