Roast winter vegetable pudding .

Take the very best winter vegetables and roast then set them in a vegetarian suet pastry and bake, yes bake a very jolly Christmas vegetarian alternative. But with this one I hope that you will get a layer affect that will be very satisfying indeed.

You will need the following 

For the suet pastry case

200g/7oz self-raising flour

50g/2 oz vegetable suet

50g/ 2oz butter

pinch salt

1 tbsp whole grain mustard

Good pinch of freak thyme

Good pinch of fresh rosemary

Good pinch of fresh sage

120ml/4fl oz water

For the filling

olive oil

Honey

Lemon juice

8 small shallots

6 garlic cloves

3 goos ized carrots

3 beetroots

3 parsnips

1 butternut sqwash

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

For the sauce

A slash of oil

1 lager onion

1 Glass of wine

¾ port

1 tsp Tomato puree

1 tsp redcurrant jelly.

A little butter

Slat and pepper to taste

To stat make your suet pastry . Now for this you just make it like you would ordinary pastry but you add all the herbs and mustard to it as well.  Sieve your flower in to a bowl then add the butter and suet. Work the fat in to the flower until you get a fine breadcrumb consistency.  Then add the chopped herbs, no stalks just the leaves, and the mustard and mix this in to the mix.  And finally add the water so the whole thing comes together then set it to one side to rest.

Now take your selection of vegetables, you do not have to use the ones on the list but together they all have a really good flavour combination when cooked together.  You might not want to use the beetroot as you can image it can bleed colour in to the other vegetables and pastry but to me it does not really matter if it does, I can live with that. 

Cut the vegetables up to the same  sized pieces the same as the shallots. Now is the boring bit you have to take each vegetable individually cook them. Start by dressing them in oil, honey, and lemon juice and seasoning well.  Then roast them, you do not want them fully cooked but still hard as you are going to bake them in the pastry and that will finish the cooking process.

Now line a pudding basin with the pastry, the in to that layer the vegetables. Once you have a layer of each of the vegetables then seal them in with a lid of pastry and bake the pudding in a preheated oven set at  180c/350f and bake for about 45 to 50 minutes.

Now for the sauce take the lager onion and slice it as fine as you can ad add it to a saucepan with a little oil and start to cook the onion. What you want from the onion is it to cook right down and caramelise as if you was making French onion soup. Once you have got it nice and dark add the wine, tomato puree and redcurrant jelly. Let this reduce by half . then add the port and a little butter and let this reduce some more till you have a nice red wine sauce.

Turn the pudding out of the basin and spoon some of the sauce over the top and then serve straight away .