Now pre-heat the oven to gas mark 5, 375°F (190°C), and put the potatoes on to steam. Next, roughly chop all the vegetables, pile the whole lot into a food processor and process until chopped small. Next, melt the butter in a large frying pan over a medium heat, add the vegetables and cook gently for 10-15 minutes, stirring now and then until they’re softened and tinged gold at the edges.

Blanch the beans, potatoes, carrots and cauliflower by placing them in a pan containing 13/4 pints (1 litre) of boiling, salted water. Cover and cook gently for 6 minutes, then drain, reserving the water. Now heat the oil in a pan and fry the onion until softened. Then stir in the turmeric, coriander, cumin seeds, ginger and garlic, followed by the lentils, and stir until everything is thoroughly combined before pouring in the reserved vegetable water. Now bring to the boil, cover and cook gently for 40 minutes, or until the lentils are just tender. Weigh this down with a heavy object (like scale weights) and after 30 minutes quite a bit of water will have been drawn out. Dry them really thoroughly in a clean cloth and then they're ready to cook. Heat the oil in a frying pan large enough to hold the courgettes in one layer (otherwise do them in two batches), add the crushed garlic and sauté the courgette slices to a nice golden colour on each side. Next arrange layers of courgettes, cheese slices and sliced tomatoes in a heatproof gratin dish so that they overlap each other slightly like slates on a roof. You can watch how to skin tomatoes in our Cookery School Video. Lastly, I try the recipe that inspired this column in the first place, Kate Young’s vegetable-based “not-sausage rolls” from her new book, The Little Library Christmas. They are, as she promises, deeply savoury, with a base of sauteed leek and mushroom mixed with spinach, breadcrumbs and various umami-rich seasonings – in short, they’re deliciously moreish, but they don’t feel very Christmassy to me.Then, first add the garlic, chilli and red onion and fry for 1-1½ minutes, or until the onion is tender, then, keeping the heat high, add the soaked dried shrimps and the prawns and fry for a further 2 minutes, or until the prawns have turned pink and are cooked. After that add the fish sauce and the lime juice, then stir this around for just a few seconds before adding the noodles. Roll the filling up in the pastry like a bug in a rug, as Young recommends, rather than folding over in the more traditional but also more fiddly fashion, then brush with milk or egg, sprinkle with a few seeds to make it party ready, and you’ll have a sausage roll that everyone but the dog will enjoy. Perfect vegetarian sausage rolls Mix the ricotta with the toasted pine nuts and about three-quarters of the pecorino. Season to taste.

Now you need to place a small frying pan over a medium heat, add the pine nuts and dry-fry them for about 1 minute, tossing them around to get them nicely toasted but being careful that they don't burn. Then remove the pan from the heat and assemble the lasagne. To do this, spread a quarter of the sauce into the bottom of the dish and, on top of that, a third of the spinach mixture, followed by a scattering of toasted pine nuts. Now place sheets of pasta on top of this – you may need to tear some of them in half with your hands to make them fit. Now repeat the whole process, this time adding a third of the grated Mozzarella along with the pine nuts, then the lasagne sheets. Repeat again, finishing with a layer of pasta, the rest of the sauce and the remaining Parmesan and Mozzarella. Caldesi also makes a tomato sauce along with her bechamel, while Hazan, Stewart and Smith use bechamel only, and the Silver Spoon goes for a mixture of ricotta and tomato puree.Begin by preparing the aubergines: to do this cut them into ½ inch (1 cm) dice leaving the skins on. Next add the blanched vegetables to the lentil mixture along with the yoghurt, tomato puree and just ½ teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Stir well, and try to push all the vegetables below the surface of the liquid. Now bring to simmering point, cover and cook for a further 20 minutes, or until everything is tender. Taste and add a further ¼ teaspoon of cayenne, if you prefer a hotter flavour, and season with salt. The obvious solution, of course, is to use a plant-based meat substitute, and Mob Kitchen recommends a pea, rice and soy protein-based brand for their recipe, which is mixed with sage, onion, chopped chestnuts and apricots, and nutmeg to produce something that looks much more like the fillings with which I’m familiar. The problem is that plant-based meats are incredibly low in fat, and cook to a crisp, leaving the filling sadly dry and, in this case, bland – I can’t detect much in the way of flavour from the “mince”. It might work better with another kind, but then you could also encase meat-free sausages in pastry without any guidance from me.

When the aubergines and peppers are cool enough to handle, scoop out the flesh of the aubergines and mash up any large pieces. Peel the peppers, remove the seeds and finely chop the flesh, then add to the aubergine. The same goes for the chestnut puree in Rose Elliot’s version from her Vegetarian Christmas book: though the chestnuts feel festive, the texture is similarly mushy and the flavour similarly sweet. It’s a clever idea, especially because chestnut puree is now fairly easy to come by in large supermarkets, but for me it needs more than onion, garlic and seasoning to compete with sausage meat. To do this, wash them under cold, running water and discard any broken ones. If it is convenient, soak them overnight in 2 pints (1.2 litres) cold water. If you need them today and haven’t got time to do this, simply bring them up to the boil (using the same quantity of water), boil for 10 minutes and leave them to soak for two hours before draining. Now put the drained beans into a saucepan with the split peas and lentils. Add 1¼ pints (725 ml) boiling water and some salt, cover and simmer gently for 50-60 minutes, or until the pulses have absorbed the water and are soft. Then remove them from the heat and mash them just a little with a large fork.

Delia Smith’s veg sausage rolls: cheddar, breadcrumbs and cream. Thumbnails by Felicity. The ‘meat’ First make up the stuffing by melting the butter in a small heavy-based saucepan, then add the onions and cook them for about 6 minutes or until they are transparent. When the roulade is cooked, turn it out on to the hazelnuts and carefully peel off the base paper. Spread the creamed parsnip evenly all over the sage and onion stuffing. Then roll up the roulade along the longest side, using the greaseproof paper underneath to help you pull it into a round (it's not difficult, it behaves very well).

In a bowl mix the wine, tomato purée and cinnamon together, then pour it over the vegetables. Add the lentils and the chopped parsley, season well and let everything simmer gently while you make the topping. All you do is place the milk, flour, butter and nutmeg in a saucepan and, using a balloon whisk, whisk until it comes to simmering point and becomes a smooth glossy sauce. Season with salt and pepper, remove it from the heat and let it cool a little before whisking in the ricotta followed by the beaten egg. Almost everyone suggests buying vegan puff pastry, which is certainly the easiest option, but, while all pastry is good, it’s hard to deny the fact that homemade pastry is usually better, and Smith’s flaky pastry always is. (Rhodes gives a vegetarian suet version, but that involves palm oil, so I’d prefer to steer clear.) It all depends how much time and patience you have. Finally, sprinkle over the Parmesan and bake the pie on the top shelf of the oven for 20-25 minutes, or until the top is lightly browned.If you have the time, salt, drain and dry the sliced courgettes: layer them in a colander, sprinkling each layer with salt, and place a suitably sized plate on top. While we're on the subject of texture, baked pasta dishes such as lasagne are apparently not intended to be served al dente – they should tend more towards the "custardy", which is certainly not an adjective I've ever heard applied to any other kind. This is perhaps why Hazan and Stewart insist on the use of fresh pasta.