Friday Fun Food: Creamy Broccoli and Cauliflower Crumble

Vegetarians, this is for you! Meat lovers who also love veggies, this one is also for you!  I swear, with this recipe, you wouldn't miss not having meat to accompany these veggies!

I love veggies but I normally would want it accompanied by even just a little meat. But when I tried this recipe, it didn't matter that it has zero meat in it. It was DELISH! It's all veggies but doesn't mean low in calories though... It has bechamel sooooo I need not say more.

Since I was really surprised of how it turned and hubby and I reaaally loved it, I decided to do it again and this time, I'd like to share it.  The recipe I used is for Thermomix but I believe it can be done perfectly without it.  A food processor or grinder can help though.

So, here we go.

Ingredients:
     For the crumble:
          30g Cashew
          Fresh parsley
          50g grated cheddar cheese  (I used matured cheddar cheese but any type should be ok)
          50g oatmeal (I used quick cooking but I believe it doesn't matter)

     Veggies:

          Water
          350g cauliflower
          350g Broccoli
          Salt

     For the bechamel
          30g olive oil extra virgin
          50g butter
          60g flour
          500g milk
         100g grated cheddar cheese
         1 tsp of Dijon mustard
         1/2 tsp of salt
         Pinch of freshly ground pepper
         Pinch of nutmeg

Instructions:

1. Prepare the crumble. Using food processor or grinder, process/grind the cashew until it becomes into small tidbits. You'd want to have nice little chunks and not a fine powdered cashew. No food processor? nor grinder?  Do it tradditional way. Use mortar and pestle or put the cashew inside a bag and pound it using rolling pin or even a strong glass bottle.

2. Chop the parsley and mix it with ground cashew. Mix in the oatmeal and the grated cheddar cheese. Mix well then set aside.

The crumble

3. Wash and cut the broccoli and cauliflower and steam for about 20mins.  You can also boil it if preferred but steaming is a healthier option.

4. Make the bechamel: Pour the olive oil in a heated sauce pan and add the butter. Stir until the butter is all melted. Put in the flour little by little and stir continuously until the mixture becomes homogenous. 

5. Slowly pour in milk while stirring (Bechamel is a lot of stirring so have patience. But it's all worth it I promise). You might need to try and press the lumps of flour to help blend it in well. Then pour in the rest of the ingredients: cheese, nutmeg, dijon mustard, ground black pepper and salt. Keep stirring until the whole mixture becomes thick and perfectly homogenous.   This is nice workout for your arm ;-)   See, this ingredient is really healhty.

Thermomix can really come in handy on this part as it will do the stirring for me. You get a perfect bechamel.

6. Put the broccoli and cauliflower in a glass baking pan, season it with salt according to your taste.

7.  Pour in bechamel on top of the brocolli and cauliflower

8.  Sprinkle the crumble on top.

9. Put the whole thing inside a pre-heated oven to 180 degrees celsius and bake for 20mins

Beautiful!

The result is this! And did I say it's delish?

It is good as appetizer if you will be serving more than 4 people but it can also be served perfectly as main dish.  The recipe says this is good for 6 servings - I say it can be galped down by 4 people easily :-D

Ok wait, I gotta tell a secret. The pictures of the recipe here is from the second time I did the recipe and I was out of cashew... the other choices I have in my kitchen were peanuts, pistachios, walnuts, macadamia nut and in the end, I chose pistachios but left out the parsley. I thought pistachios already have a distinct taste so parsley might not be a good match for it. The result? Superb!

So you can even change what the crumble contains but I must say the oatmeal is a must and a very healthy option :) 

Enjoy and happy almost-weekend!!

Homemade Fiber-packed Yummy Crackers - what else can you ask for?

This is what I love about blogging.  One can get inspired in so many ways and learn about so many things.  It's like travelling the world!

A long time friend has started blogging, yay! as I visited her blog, I came across one Mia who posted a recipe inspired by another blogger, Faith.  The wonderful recipe is for making a homemade rosemary crackers.  Ah, I love crackers.  In the Philippines, we have a lot of different crackers with different flavors and I love of them.  As I stumble upon this post I immediately said I must do this.

For one, it is healthy, easy to make and the ingredients are all available in my kitchen.  Plus, I was hoping the little one who needs a lot of fiber would love this.  Then I know I can play with the ingredients using different flavor, etc.  But for the first time trying this, I followed the original recipe.  I was too excited, I did this the following day after I read the blog :-D

So, below is how I followed Faith's recipe :)

Ingredients:

1/2 cup of oats

1/2 cup of almond meal*

~tablespoon of rosemary (dried or fresh)

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 ounces grated sharp cheddar cheese

1-2 tablespoons water (I ended up using 3 tablespooons water)

I used toasted almonds because it's what I have in my kitcchen.  The recipe calls for 1/2 cup almonds meal so I just put the peeled almonds in my measuring cup.. I let it overflow and then processed it.

Until it looks like this.  Maybe a few more seconds of processing wouldn't hurt.

Then the oatmeal. I used the traditional one.  Processed it until there's no more whole grain.

I used matured cheese. If you live in a country like I do that uses grams instead of ounces, 3 ounces is about 85 grams. I used about 95 grams of cheese. I love cheese! I grated these babies and mixed put together with the rest of the ingredients.

Then I just mixed all the other ingredients minus the water.

I slowly added the water while the blades are spinning.  I ended up using 3 tablespoon of water.  I think the consistency was just right.

Sorry I didn't have a photo of the dough after it was processed but it's very similar to what Faith has:

Only that mine looks finer. I think I processed the oats and the almonds too finely.

Then I put it on a baking sheet ocvered with parchment paper.  I flattened it a little bit with my palm and then covered it with another parchment paper then proceeded to flatten it even more with a rolling pin. My rolling was too big though for my baking sheet and it's just couldn't roll on all sides so I ditched the rolling pin and took a round glass and used it instead.  After working on it for some minutes, I think it turned out fine.

It is important to make sure that dough is evened out well otherwise, it will not get cooked evenly. Like what happened to mine.  Part of it got burned more than the other parts.  See, I was to in a hurry to get it done... patience is a virtue I must remind myself a little more often.

Put it in the oven preheated to 350ºF or 180ºC and cook for about 15-20 mins.  15mins is too short for me.  The dough was still soft to touch so, I added 2mins then added another 4 minutes which I think is too much.  It does seem like my crackers were cooked more than it should but they're still good anyways.  Next time I do this,  I'll probably let it sit in the oven for 18mins tops.  Then let it cool and see if it will harden more.

The output!!

Sorry I don't have a nice presentation like Faith and Mia does as I am kind of multitasking when I was doing this yummy crackers.  But I swear on my long beautiful legs (I kid!) that they are really good!

They also taste really nice with cream cheese, marmalade, peanut butter!

Experiment with them! Experiment with the ingredients!  You can use other herbs, lemon zest, maybe other dried fruit similar to almonds?  Use your favorite cheese! Doesn't have to be only cheddar.  Next time I will try to use local cured or semi-cured local cheese here.  Spain has a lot of yummy type of cheese :)

 Go ahead, try this - there'll be no regrets.