winter vegetable strudel

Last week the Co-Op members' magazine dropped through our letterbox, and I discovered inside a tasty recipe for roasted vegetables in tomato sauce all rolled deliciously up in puff pastry. I promptly mislaid the magazine but thought I'd remembered enough of the recipe to make it up as I went along, so armed with a block of shop-bought pastry, some vegetables that needed using up in the next couple of days, the bottom of a bottle of red wine and a star-shaped cookie cutter I got busy in the kitchen and came up with the following version of Winter Vegetable Strudel!

1 block or sheet of ready-made puff pastry (or home-made, if you're clever - unlike me!)

1 can chopped tomatoes

1 vegetable stock cube

a generous splash of red wine

salt and pepper to taste

plain flour

a selection of 6-8 diced vegetables, perhaps including potato, red pepper, courgette, carrot, swede, red onion and aubergine

olive oil

a beaten egg

baking sheet

pyrex dish

star-shaped pastry or biscuit cutter 
 

Preheat the oven to 220*C. Roast the vegetables with the oil and a little seasoning in the oven until they are soft inside and a little crispy at the edges (about 30 minutes, depending upon your oven). In the meantime, put the chopped tomatoes, wine and stock cube in a pan and heat gently, stirring occasionally, until mixed thoroughly together. Add a little plain flour in order to thicken the sauce, and stir until the whole mixture is uniformly textured and without floury lumps. Roll out the pastry into a rectangle and trim the edges so you have enough left over to cut out 6-8 pastry stars. Mix together the tomato sauce and roasted vegetables, then spoon onto the centre of the pastry and press the ends together to fashion a strudel on the baking sheet. Cut out as many pastry stars as will fit on your strudel, brush with beaten egg and bake for about 30 minutes or until it is golden brown. Enjoy with chips, roasted potatoes or crusty bread and a glass of wine in front of the fire on a cold winter's evening!