Vegetarian Winter Crumble

Recently my parents came to stay for the first time since I moved house and we invited my boyfriend's mum over for dinner for the first time as well. She's vegetarian so I turned to a book called the Creative Vegetarian I picked up recently in a charity shop, in the hope that it would have some more interesting recipes. It's not illustrated so it's hard sometimes to imagine what a particular dish might be like, but this one caught my attention - it's basically a root vegetable pie, but instead of a pastry or mashed potato topping, it has crumble - like you'd have on an apple crumble, but savoury. It turned out to be really nice; the root vegetables are perfect for this time of year. It was filling and the cider sauce had a lovely flavour.

I did make one significant change from the recipe, as it called for a tin of black eyed beans which I just didn't think went with the English root vegetables, so I left it out. I also adjusted the quantities for the sauce as it didn't seem quite right. Finally, the last stage of the recipe after you have done the root veg and made the sauce - before you spoon over the topping - is to add some sliced tomatoes and I completely forgot! But I don't think the recipe needs them at all (you may disagree), so this is what I did.

To serve 4-6, you need:
90g butter or marg
120g flour
60g rolled oats
120g vegetarian cheese, grated
280ml cider
175ml vegetable stock
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp cornflour
2 parsnips
2 carrots
1 head broccoli
1/2 head cauliflower
1 stick celery

Preheat the oven to 175C. Make the topping by rubbing the butter into the flour to make breadcrumbs then mix in the oats and the cheese. Put to one side.

Peel and slice the parsnips and carrots, place in a pan of slightly salted water and bring to the boil. Add the broccoli, cauliflower and celery and parboil until slightly softened but not fully cooked.

In another pan bring the cider and stock to simmering point and add the sugar. Mix the cornflour with a little water and stir into the pan; keep stirring the liquid as it simmers until it has thickened. Remove from the heat.

Spoon the vegetables into a large casserole dish and pour over the liquid. Spoon the crumble topping evenly over the top and place in the oven for half an hour until the topping is crisp.

I served this with potato wedges but really it's a one-pot meal in itself, which you can prepare in advance and finish off in the oven later.  It's great for a winter's day!

I'm sending this to the Vegetable Palette challenge, hosted by Shaheen at Allotment2Kitchen, as the chosen colour this month is white vegetables and parsnips and cauliflowers are white.

She is also hosting the Eat Your Greens challenge which asks for recipes using green veg which this also includes.