Eat Your Greens July Round Up

It has been my pleasure hosting Eat Your Greens again this month, and now it's time for the round up. I was happy to see that quite a few recipes were shared regardless of the holiday season, or maybe there is also more time for cooking due to the holidays.

So let's see what vegan and vegetarian dishes my fellow bloggers created this month and what greens they used.

Ray from The Humble Lentil shared a Handvo recipe with us. Handvo was a new acquintance for me, which is nice, as it's always good to hear about new dishes. So it's an Indian lentil and vegetable cake. This one contained brown basmati rice, chana dal, courgette, spinach, coriander and fenugreek creating a beautifully vibrant green Handvo. This looks so nice. I really want to make one myself now!

Sadhna from Herbs, Spices and Tradition made a Coriander Chutney and wrote more about the herb in question and its health benefits, coriander/cilantro, in her post. This sort of chutney is a very important component in Indian cooking, and is often served on the side. Coriander is one of my favourite herbs these days. I wasn't always very fond of it, but once I realised the beauty of it, I've been eating it by the truck load. I think that this chutney would be very lovely.

Johanna from Green Gourmet Giraffe cooked beautiful looking dish of Fried Rice with Tofu Scramble. I'm always up for fried rice, and this combination with scrambled tofu is just inspired. I like tofu too, and always look out for new ways of using it. Peas and spring onions are the greens in this recipe that is full of other veggies and warming spices as well.

Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen and my Eat Your Greens co-host delighted us with a Roasted Courgette Layered Lasagne. I very much like the idea of replacing the pasta with thin courgette slices, as that makes a veggie lasagne lighter and more suitable as a summer dish. The courgettes aren't the only greens here. Shaheen also used curly kale in the recipe and spiced the lasagne with oregano. The combination of Cheddar and Ricotta must also be so comforting. I would be happy to eat this dish anytime.

I made a Green Courgette Quiche, and yes, courgettes were also the green of my choice this month together with some leeks and new season onions with their green stalks, and I also used some basil leaves. This was real summerly comfort food for me.

Nice and green wasn't it!

Shaheen will be hosting Eat Your Greens again in August, so please keep those beautiful green recipe posts coming!

Your VegHog

Copenhagen life by the water

As the Botanical Gardens post pretty much is the only Copenhagen related post I've managed to write in nearly two months, I had to make another photo post now. Otherwise it will be winter before I can share these photos with you. I can't believe how time flies and I don't get anything done.

For this post I chose the theme of water, as there's water everywhere in Copenhagen: canals, lakes, ponds and the sea. I live close to a place called The Lakes, which is a wonderfully serene spot in central Copenhagen. I walk past some wonderful scenes every morning when going to work and I do consider myself lucky every time. There is such a variety of water birds and people are doing water activities everywhere. Especially now in the summer this is great. I hope you enjoy the photos, which I have collected from different spots in Copenhagen.

I'm also hoping to write soon more about Copenhagen, especially the vegetarian food scene here (there is a very exciting street food scene!), and probably also the beer drinking scene, which is very vibrant.

 

Take care and have a wonderful weekend!

Your VegHog

Seitan sandwiches

How is everyone? It's quaint summer weather here in Denmark: it's quite warm in general, but often cloudy and rainy too. For example this morning 7:30 am was so hot and sunny, and in the afternoon by 2 pm we were in an extremely dark thick cloud and the rain started. There were no heatwaves or anything like that here yet, but I've been quite happy about the generally surrounding warmth. That's better than nothing.

My partner will join me here this weekend, so we can properly start our new life in Denmark. I very much enjoyed my initial familiarising period with the city on my own, but it's going to be even better now with someone to share. I can't wait to show him some of the places I've already detected. I will also soon get my own computer and cooking stuff here, which should improve the quality of life (and probably also this blog). However I'm not looking forward to all the unpacking.

Now to the sandwiches that I recently made, and that this post is actually about. I'm so happy that some of my nearby shops sell seitan products. I found that stuff so hard to come by in Britain (unless you would make it yourself), and now I can get it from normal small supermarkets! Only sky is the limit now with my seitan cooking.

If you're not familiar with seitan yet, it's wheat gluten that has a chewy texture and can be used in cooking in a versatile way. The flavour is mild, so it needs a bit of spice whatever it's served with.

These thin seitan slices were very handy to use and tasty for making such sandwiches. It was perfect quick weekday grub. To make these sandwiches, I took some seedy wholemeal buns and stuffed them with pan fried seitan pieces, fried onions, grated carrot, tomatoes, lettuce and chilli mayo. But I think that you can use basically any vegetables that you have available, and they would be tasty.

Your VegHog

Tacos nórdicos

I made tacos in Nordic summer style. This means that the main component were new potatoes, and I also used some new season peas and onions.

I liked this combination very much, with flavours bound together through fresh coriander and chilli mayo. I think that potato tacos exist as a concept, so perhaps I wasn't as adventurous here as I thought. However I will surely be making similar dishes in the future.

Ingredients

Taco shells
New potatoes
Fresh peas
Sweetcorn
Tomatoes
New onions with stalks
Olive oil
Fresh coriander
Chipotle mayo

Method

Boil the potatoes and cut them into smaller pieces.

Prepare the vegetables by cutting them into suitably sized cubes.

Heat some olive oil in a pan and quickly sautée the onions, potatoes and the rest of the vegetables in there.

Assemble the tacos and enjoy!

Have a good Sunday!

Your VegHog

Green courgette quiche

I can't pronounce the title of this post very well, or at least not repeat quickly in succession, so I'm glad I can only write it down and don't have to say it outloud in public.

Anyway, you might already see from the pictures that it's time to cook green! This recipe is my own Eat Your Greens contribution for July. I normally take turns hosting with Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen every other month, but now she has been hosting for the two previous months during my relocation. I'm glad to be back, and can't wait for the round up at the end of July to see your wonderful recipes.

Remember that there's still plenty of time to take part in the challenge. Read the more detailed instructions here, if you're interested.

So I cooked with courgette again, as it's nicely in season, and once my partner arrives in Denmark, my courgette and quiche cooking days are over. Well, maybe not fully, but he doesn't like either of them much. I enjoyed this simple green dish very much, and there was enough for me for a couple of days.

Here is my recipe for a Green courgette quiche

Ingredients

1 courgette
2 new season onions with greens
1 leek
1 garlic clove
2 eggs
100 ml cooking cream
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp lemon pepper
Handful of fresh basil leaves
150 g grated Emmental cheese
200 g puff pastry / shortcrust pastry

Method

Slice the courgette, onions, leek and garlic. Use all the lovely green stalks of the onions and leek. Those are the best part!

Whisk the eggs with the cream and seasoning.

Spread the pastry on baking paper in a pie tin. Blind bake the pastry for a while in the oven so that it doesn't get soggy later.

Place the courgette slices, onions, leek and garlic on the pastry, and cover them with the egg mix. Sprinkle the grated cheese on top.

Bake the quiche at 200 C for about 35 minutes or until done, set and baked golden brown.

Have a nice week!

Your VegHog

University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden

It’s time to post something from my area in Copenhagen, as I haven’t come around to it too much yet. I live very close to the Botanical Gardens, which is just brilliant, and I go there for spontaneous walks a lot. They have many greenhouses and a large park around them. It’s a nice haven in the centre of the city.

There is a very interesting flora and fauna there. One greenhouse is more spectacular than the other, and the outdoor area comes in full bloom in the summer. I love water lilies, and there are plenty of those there. It’s a shame that the giant water lily indoors isn’t blooming at the moment, as I’m sure that that is a true spectacle.

What was blooming recently (and maybe still is?), was the Protea cynaroides (large pink flower below). It was so impressive and pretty, and I went to see it a few times.

Another favourite of mine is the cactus and succulent house. There are so many spiny plants there, some of them are quite hedgehoglike.

I was very surprised to bump into that turtle and its several friends! I wouldn’t have thought that they can survive like that in Denmark, but at least now they seemed very happy in their pond. Of course there are also a lot of birds, squirrels and fish to observe. That’s one of my relaxing hobbies.

Here are some photos from the gardens, from the greenhouses and the outside. Everything is just perfect there, even when the weather is a bit cloudy, it’s a good place to escape to.