Veggie pate recipe (vegan, gluten-free)

by Dr Jocelyn Land-Murphy

This recipe came about from trying to emulate a delicious (but pricey!) veggie pate we bought in a health food store. This popular recipe is now another lunch staple for us – our kids love them so much they call the “pate cookies”! These can be made two ways – in the oven for a softer, spreadable pate, or in the dehydrator for a chewier, more portable snack (that also keeps for much longer!). We make up a double batch every month of the dehydrator version (the one in the pic) and snack on them daily. It is one of the more time-intensive recipes, but it well worth is in terms of getting a great stock of snacks with vegetables, protein (via the seeds), and b-vitamins (via the nutritional yeast).

Time: 1 hour (plus time to bake or dehydrate)

Yield: two cookie sheets

Ingredients:

• 1 onion
• 3 carrots
• 3 celery sticks
• 1 red pepper
• 1 head of cauliflower
• 1 Tbsp curry
• 1 Tbsp salt
• 2 Tbsp coconut oil
• 1.5 cups sunflower seeds
• 1.5 cups pumpkin seeds
• 1.5 cups water
• 1 cup of sundried tomatoes, chopped
• 1.5 cups of red star nutritional yeast
• 1.5 cups brown rice flour

Directions:

• chop onion, carrots, celery, pepper, and cauliflower roughly
• fry up all the veggies with curry, salt, and coconut oil until soft
• remove veggies from heat, blend with a hand-blender until similar to chunky baby food
• in a separate bowl/blender, mix together the sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and water, blend until smooth-ish
• add in seed mix to the veggies, along with chopped sundried tomatoes, red star nutritional yeast, and brown rice flour, mix well
• Oven version: pour/scoop pate mix onto oiled pans (cookie sheets or cake pans), bake at 350′ until at desired texture (cooked but still spreadable with a knife – an hour or more depending on the thickness of the pate), remove from heat, slice into squares, store in fridge for up to a week
• Dehydrator version: pour mixture directly onto dehydrator trays lined with parchment paper; dehydrate at 135′ for 4 hours, flip the pate over and score halfway down in desired square size, dehydrate at 135′ for another 4 hours (remove parchment paper at this point for faster dehydrating) or until at desired texture,  break into squares, store in freezer for as long as needed (until they are all eaten up!)