Hello you lovely people! I'm gonna give you an epic satisfying veggie bake. It's from my new
cookbook Together, and in this dish we get five of our daily fruit and veg in one portion. So,
let's get going. Three onions, I've peeled these up, just finely slice the onions like that. In
the casserole pan add yourself a nice little slug of olive oil. I'm going to add the onions in, and
we want to get the sweetness out of these. Guess how many garlic? Three. Right, so we'll finely
slice some garlic. Pan, oil, garlic, onions. With pepper, a little seasoning with salt. I'm gonna
use coriander, but guess how many teaspoons? Three goes in. Also what I'm going to add is tapenade,
three heaped teaspoons of tapenade goes in. The next thing I'm gonna do is start kind of
scalding and toasting these veggies in a dry pan, no oil. Cut the sweet potato carefully in half,
and basically chop it into three-centimetre chunks. Get these going in the pan,
and as these get done I'll add them into here and then replace them with the next vegetable.
Just give it a nice little toss, like that. So I'll cut these courgettes exactly the same size
as the sweet potato, three-centimetre rough chunks. So if you have a look at the onions
you can see they've shrunk down massively, that means you've concentrated the flavour.
The sweet potatoes go in, and we go in with the courgettes, and we do exactly the same.
In the meantime we'll get our peppers out. The way I prep them is just get my thumb,
push it down where that stalk is, we'll get rid of the seeds. We have the peppers, exactly the same,
three-centimetre chunks. Then on the mushrooms we're just gonna take these off and break them.
These courgettes they're charred, they'll go in, and to replace those we'll go in with the peppers.
So look, all the veg is in there now, you can see how it's kind of reduced in volume.
This pan here just wipe it clean, that's good to go. And what we're going to do now,
is now introduce the wet stuff. So we're going to go in with some lovely tinned tomatoes. Just put
them into your pan, I put them in my clean hands and I just crush them up. And what you do is you
get a nice kind of broken up tomato. Fill up two of these tins with water and I'll simmer that now
for about half an hour. So here's the stew, it's had it's half an hour simmering it's all cooked
beautifully, it's seasoned up good, and it's cooled down. Let's put it together now. It has
got that kind of vibe of a lasagna, but instead of pasta we're using filo pastry. Get a nice tin and
I'm gonna get a herb - I'm using oregano - and I'm gonna dip that into oil like that, almost like a
brush, and I'm gonna lubricate this tin. Just push the filo into the corners like this. All but two
sheets of filo, we're going to put in and around. So just take three or four sprigs of the oregano
like that. This I will save to put on the top at the end. So first layer, 300 grams of basmati rice
goes in, uncooked. We're also going to go in with one tin of drained beans, I'm using butter beans.
And then we're going to go in with our veggies here. In we go, so push the veggies around.
I'm going to take one or two layers of filo, just lay them over like that, then take the
little edges and kind of tuck it in to bed, right? And that is going to be a beautiful thing. What
I might do is just use that oregano and the oil again. So we're going to cook this at 180 degrees
Celsius which is 350 Fahrenheit. Let's get that in the oven, I tend to put it down the bottom. So
our epic satisfying veggie bake is about to come out the oven, it's looking great smelling great,
I want to show you the easiest white sauce ever. I use one tub of gorgeous yogurt, 500 grams,
and get that in a bowl. Then three eggs go in lovely free-range eggs, and then 100 grams of feta
cheese, break it up, fairly chunky. We're just going to beat this up and as soon as the eggs,
yogurt, and cheese have mixed that's it, it's that simple. So now is the fun bit. Let's get
that incredible bake! Okay golden, smelling amazing, get your little spoon
and I want you to break it. And you're creating all those amazing little shards,
and then you simply get your incredible white sauce and pour it over.
Oh my lord, it's going to be so good! Take the spoon and just push it to the edge. And then the
rest of this oregano we can just sprinkle on top. So this goes back in the oven now,
still at 180 degrees Celsius, 350 Fahrenheit, but we're going to put it in the middle of the oven
for about half an hour to 40 minutes until this is gorgeous and golden and lovely. So let me show you
this beautiful dish, it's ready, it smells absolutely amazing!
Look at that - gnarly, golden, gorgeous, and it's got layer upon layer of texture and flavour.
I like to let it sit for about 10 minutes. Let me show you how to portion it up, just go to
the middle and cut quite accurately all the way down to the bottom. Get your little fish slice
and then pull it out, come on! And that's all yours, a beautiful generous portion of our humble,
exciting, satisfying veggie bake. That in the middle of the table,
nice big old salad, glass of wine, happy days! Let's try and get a little bit of everything.
It's absolutely joyful, it's super super good value to make, you can feed eight people
really generously, and give them something that they've never ever had before. Enjoy!