Winter Vegetable Cobbler

Having vegetarians for dinner? Don't panic.

I actually married a vegetarian. When we first got married I had about five things I could cook for dinner that didn't include meat. Most of these things were pasta dishes with the meat left out.

This is a great one and can be modified if your dinner guests are vegan by leaving out the cheese and changing normal milk for soy milk.

1 small swede - (rutabaga if you're from the US)
2 parsnips
2 leeks
2 carrots
broccoli bunch - broken up into florettes
1 cup of whole cranberries - fresh or frozen (I almost always forget to add these and nobody misses them)
1.5 litres vegetable stock - you can make this up from vegetable stock cubes
1/4 teaspoon of all spice - very important!
butter or margarine
plain flour

Peel and dice the swede and parsnips.
Peel and slice the carrots and leeks.

In a large stock pot, make a roux out of approximately 2 oz of margarine and 3 tablespoons of plain flour. (The thing is, I never measure when I'm not baking so a lot of this recipe I've had to go back and measure out or weigh the amounts that I normally put into this recipe.) Cook the roux for 2 minutes but don't let it brown. Beat in the vegetable stock until it has all been added and add in the all spice. You've now got a pretty good runny gravy. Leaving the broccoli to one side (you'll need that for later), place the prepared vegetables into this vegetable gravy. Cover the stock pot and let it simmer away on LOW heat while you prepare the scones. Don't forget to stir this from time to time so that it doesn't stick and burn. (I let this happen once, but it wasn't badly burned and was salvagable)

The Cheese Scone or baking powder biscuit topping.

8 oz or 2 cups plain flour
2 big teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 oz or 1/2 cup grated sharp cheddar
5 oz or 1/2 cup margarine
5 oz or 2/3 cup milk (soy milk for vegans)

Mix the flour, salt, baking powder in a bowl, add in the margarine and blend together until you have it looking like breadcrumbs. Add in the grated cheese and the milk. Make a dough that is not too soft to roll out. If it has become too sticky, just carefully add a bit more flour. Don't worry about the lumps of cheese. Roll out the dough and cut out the round scone or biscuit shapes.

Place the broccoli florettes in a pan of boiling water for half a minute to blanche them. They'll look funny when you bake them otherwise. Then drain the broccoli.

Now go back to your vegetables that have been simmering away and remove the pot from the heat. Please be careful with the next step because it's hot.

Dump it all into a very large casserole dish and arrange the uncooked scone shapes on top of it all. Place the broccoli florettes between the scone shapes, stem side down. You can choose to grate a bit more cheese over the top at this point if you desire.

Pop this into a medium oven (approximately 180 C or 350 F) for about 40 minutes or so. The scones will have risen and become golden brown.

Remove from the oven, let it set for a few minutes to cool down and then serve!