How To Make Vegetarian Carrot And Parsnip Loaf In The Microwave

Hi, I'm Jennipher Marshall Jenkinson, chairman of the UK Microwave Technologies Association and author of the prize winning cookbook "Microwave Magic: The Art of 21st Century Cooking". I've got in this dish here, I've prepared already 450 grams of carrots and 375 grams of parsnips and all I've done to these is to peel them, wash them thoroughly and as you can see, what I'm doing is chopping them up into very small pieces. To that, I'm going to add 75 milligrams of water, a couple of cloves of garlic that I'm going to crush.

There we are, and 50 grams of butter. Now, I'm cooking that in an oven-proof dish with a good tight sealed lid on it. That's going to cook there for 10 minutes.

I'm cooking that until the carrots and the parsnips are really nice and tender because what I'm going to do is mash them together so it makes a really nice blended mixture. So here's our carrots and parsnips, and garlic and butter mixture that's had 10 minutes cooking time on high power. Now, just going to double check that they're all cooked together which is very nice.

Now at this point, if you want a smooth loaf, you can actually put this whole mixture in the blender or as I'm going to do now, just roughly mash it with a potato masher, just so that we get it fairly fine, but with lots of lovely chunks and that helps give the loaf a lovely bright color. So you've got chunks of white, chunks of yellow all through it instead of a rather opaque looking thing if it's gone through the blender. Just mashing this very lightly together until they're all partially combined.

That will do there nicely. Now I'm going to add three eggs, and 125 grams of edenvale cheese, grated, a teaspoon or so of mustard just for taste and a nice great sprinkle of black pepper. Now, I don't add any extra salt to this.

Firstly, I don't add salt to most of my cooking. I let my guests add the salt as they want to taste, but there's also quite a bit of salt in Edenvale cheese, so I actually think it doesn't need it. Give all this a good stir together.

Now I'm going to put this into a microwavable loaf tin. The best way to grease a loaf tin that goes into the microwave is just to use a butter wrapper. What could be easier.

There we are, just pour all the mixture into the loaf tin and I'm going to cook this on a medium power. Anything with eggs in doesn't need a high power because we don't want to zap the food itself. So I'm cooking this for 12 minutes on a medium power setting.

There we are just even out all the vegetables. Put that in the oven. I'm cooking that on medium for 12 minutes.

There we are, and let that cook away. I've actually already made a loaf already and I've got one here prepared. I've just turned this out and allowed this to cool.

You'll see again I've mashed these carrots and parsnip instead of putting it through the blender. It's a beautiful loaf for a vegetarian meal, it's absolutely great if it's served hot, maybe with couscous or a savory rice or if you're not a vegetarian, it just tastes as lovely with a roast dinner. It's a great accompaniment.

Carrots and parsnips are always served great with a rice dinner or off coarse. If you allow it to go cold, whether you're a vegetarian or not, it's a great accompaniment for a salad.