DAY FOUR: Cheese bake with crispy oat topping

Oats make fabulous, fill-you-up, healthy sweet snacks, but they can also work extremely well in savoury recipes. This is an area in which I need to do some more research and investigation as I am typically more comfortable with ‘sweet’ oat based baking…still so much to learn, all in good  time.

I love the way oats are so hardy and robust, with most recipes simply calling for them to be ‘mixed through’ or ‘mashed in with’. They never cause a scene or disappoint…oats are a dependable friend!

Today I have a savoury recipe. You can use this topping for anything vaguely savoury, though its best serves as a baked topping over a sauce…but  filling and the sauce itself are totally up for grabs. Throw in some spices to compliment, and you’re well away.

If you change up the spices and flavouring you would also have a sweet bread or streusel topping, the key things is to make sure the chickpeas are well mashed and flaky otherwise it’s a dead giveaway as to what the topping contains! The consistency you are looking for is a coarse crumbly flaky one.

It’s Day 4 of MOFO and I feel as though I’m missing out…I’m currently on holiday in Turkey and as I write this post before I leave (Sunday morning scheduled for two days time) I’ve got no real idea how much internet access I’ll get…hopefully all will be fine and I’ll be able to log on and get involved…but it’s always best to be safe, right?

Recipe: Cheese bake with crispy topping

Serves 3

Ingredients

Equivalent 3 cups cooked chopped veg of choice- I used broccoli, cauliflower and peas.

Sauce:

¾ cup soy milk

6tbs nutritional yeast

1 tbs coconut oil

1 ½ tbs cornflour

2 tsp Dijon mustard

¼ tsp garlic powder

½  tsp salt and pepper

Topping:

½ cup mashed chickpeas

½ cup oats

1 tsp dried mixed herbs (I used Italian herb mix)

2 tbs nutritional yeast

2 tbs crushed nuts

Method

Cook the veg until just cooked using steaming or boiling.

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Meanwhile make up the sauce. Melt the coconut oil in a small pan over the hob. Whisk the flour and milk together in a separate bowl ensuring there are no lumps. Add the milk mixture plus all remaining ingredients to the pan and whisk well. Simmer and whisk for approx. 5 mins until thick.

In a medium oven dish place the cooked veg in an even layer and cover with the cheese sauce so that all vegetables are fully coated.

Mix the topping ingredients so that you have a coarse slightly sticky mixture and crumble over the sauce giving an even covering.

Bake at 180C for approx. 20 minutes or until the topping is nicely golden.

What Vegan MOFO means to me.

For further guidance on making gluten free choices please see this post.

For tips and info on recipe measurement conversions, ingredients, substitutions and the methods behind how I do things.... check out my 'baking tips' tab at the top of the page.