Christmas Nut Loaf

Ingredients:

  • 1 medium leek
  • 2 medium carrots
  • 3 field mushrooms
  • 1 red pepper
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • 175 gm of dried apricots
  • 2 tbsp of fresh finely chopped sage
  • 1 tbsp of fresh, finely chopped rosemary
  • 1 tbsp of dried oregano
  • 1 tsp of ground or grated nutmeg
  • 4 tbsp of milled flaxseed / Chia seed mixed with 150 ml water
  • 75 gm of almonds 
  • 75 gm of brazil nuts **
  • 75 gm of hazelnuts
  • 100 gm of buckwheat flour / Bread crumb/ all purpose flour
  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • salt and pepper

Recipe:

  • Mix the milled flax seed / chia seed ( I used Chia) with 150 ml of water and leave for 10 minutes.
  • Grind all nuts together in the into coarse. Try not to over blitz the nuts and turn it to the powder/ flour. You do want to have bits of nuts in your loaf. ** I did not have brazil nut so I substituted for 50gm of cashew nut.
  • Chop all the vegetables in quite small pieces (I grated my carrot to avoid big chunks in the loaf)
  • Finely chopped all herbs.
  • Chop apricots in quite small pieces too.
  • Heat the oven to 180C (200C non-fan). Oil a 23cm-long loaf tin, or line it with baking parchment.
  • Now in a large saucepan, add 3 tbsp of olive oil. Now add garlic and cook it for 20-30 seconds. Don’t let the garlic burn. If the oil is too hot, cool it down before adding the chopped or mince garlic.
  • Now add grated or finely chopped carrot and cook it for 3-4 minutes. Make sure to stir them to avoid them sticking to the base of the saucepan.
  • Now add rest of the vegetables (leek, mushroom and pepper) and apricots.
  • Mix everything well and cook for 2-3 minutes. You can now take the saucepan off the heat or turn the heat down to really low heat
  • Now add fresh herbs, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and flour or breadcrumbs. I used breadcrumbs.
  • Mix everything really well to make sure all ingredients have mixed well. This will probably take 3 to 4 minutes.
  • Now add soaked chia seed mixture and mix everything well.
  • Now scoop this mix to the already prepared loaf tin. To help compress the nut loaf into the tin before baking, press the mixture with a spatula or something.
  • Cook the nut loaf in the oven for 30 minutes. Take the loaf out of oven and leave it to stand for 10 to 15 minutes.
  • Good thing is this is a recipe that you can easily make day before, and just pop it in the oven on the Christmas day!
  • I usually serve this recipe like roast chicken with vegetable gravy, roast potato and vegetables!