My Legume Love Affair #114 Round up

I was privileged to be able to host the last My Legume Love Affair challenge for 2017, and here is the round up of the #114 edition. I appreciate each and every entry very much, as I know that you’ve all been very busy this month. Let’s have a look at the beautiful vegan and vegetarian dishes now.

Archana from The Mad Scientists Kitchen shared tempting looking Fried falafel served with hummus. You’ll always get me with a good falafel, and homemade ones are quite special. She added some extra legumes by serving the beautiful falafel with hummus.

Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen posted a dish with Pomegranate Molasses Bulgar,Chickpeas, Red Chard and Seitan 'Meat'. The dish is full of good and hearty ingredients, and it’s just right for this dark and cool season.

Sowmya from Tuma’s Tongue Treats cooked healthy Panchkuti Dal/Panchratan Dal/Panchamel Dal. This dal looks so tasty and it’s fully of protein goodness and all sorts of pulses.

Sadhna from Herbs, Spices and Tradition shared a warming Black-eyed beans curry. It really does look very comforting.

My own recipe was a Hummus and lentil mac'n'cheese. I got curious about using hummus as a base for the mac’n’cheese sauce, so I developed this dish. I also used lentil pasta to make it even more rich on legumes.

Thank you everyone so much for your recipes! I wish you all a healthy and happy 2018!

Your VegHog

Lentil shepherd’s pie

Here is my rustic lentil shepherd’s pie. It’s vegetarian, but also very easy to veganise by just substituting the butter in the mash. I think that this kind of pie could be also nice for the Christmas table.

I used black garlic in this recipe, but also normal garlic would be fine. Also the broadbean crush can be substituted by more lentils or other pulse crushes. Have a look at the recipe below, if I got you interested.

Lentil shepherd’s pie

Ingredients

500 g potatoes

25 g butter

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup beluga lentils

1/2 cup red lentils

1/2 cup dried broadbean crush

2 carrots

4 onions

4 cloves of black garlic

2 tbsp rapeseed oil

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp vegetable stock powder

1 tbsp vegetable stock extract

Method

Boil the potatoes until done and mash them with butter, salt and little of the potato cooking water. Set to side.

Chop the onions into half rings and caramelise them in the rapeseed oil until they are very soft and brown.

Chop the black garlic finely and add it to the onions.

Peel and cut the carrot into small pieces, and also add it to the pan.

Add the seasoning and the vegetable stock extract, and some liquid.

Add the lentils and broadbean crush. You can also cook the beluga lentils separately for a while, as they take a bit longer to cook than the other pulses.

Let simmer until everything is cooked nicely.

Place the lentil mix into an oven dish and cover it with the potato mash.

Bake at 180 C for about 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Roasted vegetables & Getting into the Christmas spirit

Are you fully getting into the Christmas spirit? I'm slowly getting there, although I've been very busy and there is still one toilsome day at work ahead. Then tomorrow evening we will be heading to Finland to celebrate Christmas with my family. Let's hope that there will be a lot of snow. I would love to hear what your plans are for Christmas?

I'm a little bit sad to leave my cosy Christmas nest behind, but it'll also be nice to be home and relax. I've got two trees in the apartment that we will be keeping well into January as per the Scandinavian tradition. One is only a tiny table tree, but it makes such a great dinner table centrepiece. We also got a slightly bigger tree, which is still quite compact. It has been decorated with diverse animal ornaments in a quite rustic way. Of course there are plenty of hedgehogs on there!

Then over to the food. 'tis the season for roasted vegetables, if any. I made this small platter of roasted potatoes, carrots and brussels sprouts and served them with hummus. I'm still a little bit indecisive, which vegetables I should roast for Christmas. Are you having them on the side and what mix are you going with?

Have a lovely festive season!

Your VegHog

Farewell Copenhagen Street Food

Copenhagen Street Food market on Papirøen will be closing this week. These are indeed very sad tidings, because I absolutely love that place. Their rental contract simply ran out and the city has new development plans for that prime location. Luckily the street food market has found new premises a couple of kilometres away from the original location, so there is hope for us Copenhagen foodies. Of course it won't be a copy of this market, so in this shape and form, the market will never come back.

I paid a sad last visit to the market and had food from some of my favourite stalls. Few years ago, when I visited the market for the first time, I had coffee first of all, and today I ended my round at the very same stall. I was very emotional. How can food do this to us! I have some very good memories from that place and I hope that there will be a worthy follower.

Anyway, I wanted to share some photos with you from the good times I had there. Some are from yesterday, and some are a bit older. 

 

These Colombian vegan happy burgers are so great, crispy quinoa patty or pulled seitan with crunchy fresh veggies with beautiful sauces. What's not to like!

Il Matterello's fresh pasta dishes were my favourites from the very beginning. They have opened a new restaurant just around the corner from my house, so I'll need to visit them soon.

 

The vegan and vegetarian pizzas from Madenitaly are wonderful. The selection is never boring and it's hard to choose a favourite. This time I had a very tasty potato and truffle pizza and my partner had a seitan ball pizza. Both were amazing, and I could have chosen so many more. I really hope to see this company around in the future.

Falafel platter from Fala Fala was just amazing, too much good stuff on there.

Hummus and lentil mac'n'cheese

This legume-based mac'n'cheese made a wonderful weekday dinner on a busy day this week. I had been thinking about this kind of recipe for a little while, and as I seemed to have all ingredients at home, I tried this out.

I got an idea for using hummus as the binding agent for mac'n'cheese from my lovely blogging colleague Johanna from Green Gourmet Giraffe when I was looking for alternatives. I recently used mashed squash, which was also a good variant. Johanna commented to that post saying that she had used hummus in lasagne and would be tempted to try it in mac'n'cheese as well. I can tell you that it worked very well and made a really nice and smooth batter for the bake. My partner who refuses to eat milk-based mac'n'cheeses was very happy.

This dish is easy to veganise by using vegan cheese, and this lentil pasta is also gluten free and very rich on protein. I think it would make a very nice side dish as well, but this time it was my dinner on its own.

Hummus and lentil mac'n'cheese

Ingredients

250 g lentil pasta

100 g hummus

150 g grated cheese

1 tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

1 red onion

1 tbsp rapeseed oil

½ cup breadcrumbs

Method

First prepare the toppings that they are ready to go once everything else has been cooked. Cut the red onion into rings and fry them in the rapeseed oil. Measure the breadcrumbs.

Cook the lentil pasta in water until done and save about one cup of the pasta cooking water. Drain the pasta and mix gradually the hummus in and some of the pasta cooking water. Keep adding the water until you have the right smooth texture. Then also add the grated cheese and seasoning.

Put the pasta mix into an oven dish or smaller ramekins and put the breadcrumbs and fried onion rings on the top. Bake at 180 C for about 10 minutes and enjoy!

I'm sharing this simple recipe with My Legume Love Affair #114, which I'm hosting this month. It's a legume-centric cooking challenge started by Susan from The Well-Seasoned Cook and hosted by Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen. I hope to see many more recipes with pulses there, so keep sharing your recipes!

Your VegHog

Veggie sausage pasties

It has been another hectic week here and Christmas is approaching almost too fast. I'm going home for Christmas, but need to get all the presents sorted before I leave. I also want to decorate our apartment here in Copenhagen more, so I think that we'll buy a small Christmas tree today.

These open and closed veggie sausage pasties could be something for Christmas. I played around a little bit with my hedgehog cookie cutter, and this was the result. I think that these would also look nice made with Christmas cookie cutters like stars. We scoffed these cheesy sausage rolls away in no time, they were so tasty.

Ingredients

1 onion

1 garlic clove

1 tbsp rapeseed oil

4 vegetarian sausages

½ tsp smoked paprika

½ tsp sea salt

80 g grated cheese

200 g puff pastry

1 egg

Method

Chop the onion and garlic finely and cook them in rapeseed oil until soft. Add the cut vegetarian sausages and seasoning. Also mix the cheese in.

Prepare the puff pastry. Roll it out thinly and cut rectangular pieces from it, and corresponding lids with holes made with a cookie cutter. You can use the pieces that were cut off as decorations for some closed pasties.

Put some sausage filling on each bottom bit of the pastry and close the lids with a fork. Brush the pasties with a beaten egg.

Bake them at 200 C for about 15-20 minutes until golden brown.

Enjoy hot or cold, both variations are good.

Have a lovely weekend!

Your VegHog

Savoury pumpkin pie

My inspiration for this dish was Anna Jones’s recipe for savoury gruyere and pumpkin pie from The Guardian. Initially I was planning to follow the recipe, but once I started making the dish, I changed quite a few things. On the day I couldn't find fresh sage in my local shops, so I thought that thyme would also be nice. I didn't use a pumpkin either, but a squash from my seasonal dining table decorations. First I wasn't fully sure, if this squash would be tasty, and started roasting it first to have a taste. And indeed, it was fine, so I decided to use that very squash. When I was well into the cooking, I wanted to add some potatoes, and plenty of cheese as well. Only I didn't have any gruyere, so it had to be Cheddar. This is it how it went on, and I'm not sure how much was left from Anna Jones' idea in the end, if anything.

The essence is that I wanted to make a savoury pie, because I enjoy them more than sweet ones, and I think that this was a very nice one. Maybe one day I'll have to follow Anna's recipe, though. Have a read in the article, if you're curious about her version. This recipe below is how I made the pie. I also skipped making own pastry this time, which made it a perfectly manageable weekday meal. I think that such a savoury pie could also be nice at the Christmas table.

Savoury pumpkin pie

Ingredients

1 small pumpkin or squash

3 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion

2 garlic cloves

25 g butter

2-3 small potatoes

1 tbsp vegetable stock powder

Handful of fresh thyme

1 tsp smoked salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

½ tsp cumin seeds

100 g grated Cheddar

250 g shortcrust pastry

Pumpkin seeds as decoration

Method

Peel the squash and cut it into small wedges. Brush the wedges with olive oil and roast in the oven.

Chop the onion and garlic finely, and start sautéeing the onion in the olive oil and butter mix until soft and browned.

Add the potatoes, peeled and sliced, followed by the vegetable stock powder and about one cup of water. Let simmer under lid until the potatoes are done and the liquid has mostly evaporated.

Add the seasoning, garlic and the squash and let simmer a while longer.

While the mixture is still hot, stir in the cheese and set to side to cool.

Spread the pastry on a pie dish and spread the filling in.

Bake at 180 C for about 30 minutes. Add the pumpkin seeds on the top towards the end, and return the pie to the oven for a few minutes more.

Let the pie set a little while before serving, and then enjoy!

Your VegHog

In My Kitchen in December

It's December, incredible! It'll soon be Christmas, and I'm not really prepared yet. But I'm sure it will be fine in the end as always. I'm not prepared to stress over it either. I wanted to share some stuff from my kitchen, but you will notice that it's not that Christmassy there yet. I've put up a few decorations, but haven't bought much Christmas stuff. Anyway, I hope that you'll like the post.

At least these pine cones are quite Christmassy. They smell so nice, and of course we can harvest some pine nuts from them, if we choose. At the moment however I find them very nice as table decorations. I also got this small hyacinth pot, which has already spread a faint lovely scent into our home.

We've put the Christmas lights up, and this constellation is at our kitchen/dining room window. Those are real fir branches under the lights. I really like that look, but I'm sorry about the poor photo quality here. When we put the lights up, we went with mulled wine to the yard and I just took a couple of snapshots of the lights with my mobile phone. I love it how they bring some light to the dark.

Ditte Ingemann's Saladsnedker is my first Danish cookbook. It has wonderful salad ideas and such beautiful photos. I need to make so many recipes from the book, some of which I'm planning for Christmas Eve. I think that the book would make a great Christmas present.

I have yet another Moomin mug. This one has a nice atmosphere for the dark nights of this season. I really want the bowl and plate from this series as well, as they are so cute. I think that there was also a ceramic tea pot with these motifs.

Rocking Veggie Drink Bouillon has been a real lifesaver for me recently. The cute rocking sachets make a warming broth with plenty of veggie bits. I've been drinking this after work/before language classes as a part of a light dinner, when the days are really busy. It's especially good with homebaked rolls.

I've also been trying to drink many gingershots. This Wish brand is really nice, but the bottles are quite big, so you tend to get a double shot.

I bought these 5-grain flakes, as they sounded so wonderfully healthy. They have a mix of organic oats, wheat, barley, rye and spelt. I haven't tried them yet, but want to use them in baking and in porridges. I'm sure it'll be very good.

I've been craving for vegan Golden Thai curries lately, so I cooked the dish several times and I'm not tired of it yet. Typically they have contained firm tofu, carrots, coconut milk and plenty of warming spices. They've been similar to this recipe, but with somewhat simpler contents. Of course a sticky rice will have to be there as a side. I was surprised how quickly I could actually make these curries. With a bit more practice I will be even quicker, so there will be no excuses for not to make it.

Salty caramel popcorn with ice-cream! Do I need to say more?

I'm sharing this post with Sherry from Sherry's Pickings, as she is hosting the In My Kitchen challenge, which I'm always happy to take part in. It's so nice to see different kitchen stuff from all over the world and meet new bloggers.

Have a nice rest of the week!

Your VegHog