Eat Your Greens June Round Up

June went by very quickly, but we received some lovely recipes to Eat Your Greens, which I'm presenting to you in this post.

Johanna from Green Gourmet Giraffe shared Macaroni cheese with broccoli. It's a great idea to add some vegetables to mac'n'cheese, especially some greens. I'm sure that broccoli was a very tasty addition to this comforting mac'n'cheese.

Éphée Lafée from L'éphémère quotidienneté des repas et autres trucs de magie made Bruschetta de petits pois et menthe. These are creative bruschettas containing peas, garlic, mint and green onions. They are very green, and they seem to be the perfect dish for the hot summer.

Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen posted a Baby Arugula and Tomato Salad with Pomegranate Seeds. Salads are just perfect for this season, and I would eat this either as standalone dish, or a side salad. It's so colourful and vibrant.

Shaheen, my Eat Your Greens co-host, from Allotment 2 Kitchen shared a Cinnamon Chickpea Tagine, and in the post she also presented some Bedminster Street Graffiti Art. The tagine dish is full of vegetables and warming spices, and it features courgettes as the greens.

I made a vegan Creamy courgette and spinach pasta, which used to be one of my favourite dishes when I was a student, and it's still nice to make especially in the summer when courgettes are new and fresh.

Thank you so much everyone for taking part in Eat Your Greens this time around. Shaheen will now host in July, so please keep contributing!

Your VegHog

Creamy courgette and spinach pasta

I'm a very happy hedgehog at the moment, as my three weeks of summer holiday started yesterday. Next week I will be heading home to Finland, and you will probably hear something from my trip later. You can also follow my holiday photos on Instagram theveghog. I very much look forward to spending midsummer in Finland after a long time. It's a big outdoor celebration in the whole country embracing the summer and enjoying the nightless night when the sun never sets. I just hope that the weather will be nice. Otherwise I don't really have any plans for the holiday, I just want to relax at home. What about you, do you have any nice holiday plans yet?

Now to food. I had two small lovely firm and green courgettes, and I wanted to make a creamy vegan pasta with them. I just cooked the courgette slices with onion and garlic and simmered in an oat cream. For extra greens I added some frozen spinach, and the dish was ready to be served with spaghetti. I really like this kind of uncomplicated and tasty pasta dishes, which I often made in my student times.

Creamy courgette and spinach pasta

Ingredients

2 courgettes

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

Vegetable oil

200 ml oat cream

Frozen spinach

Salt to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

Spaghetti

Method

Slice the courgettes and chop the onion and garlic finely.

Cook the onion in vegetable oil until soft, and then add the garlic.

After a while cooking, add the courgette slices. Cook until they are softened in places. I still prefer leaving a bit bite to them.

Add the oat cream, spinach and seasoning to the pan, and let simmer until the flavours have blended nicely and the cream has become bit firmer.

Cook the spaghetti and serve it with the sauce. Have a nice summer salad or a crusty bread on the side and enjoy!

I want to share this recipe with this month's Eat Your Greens challenge. I'm hosting this month, and the event is co-hosted by Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen. You also still have plenty of time to take part this month!

Have a great weekend!

Your VegHog

Vegan onion soup and garlic bread

We've been a bit sick this week, some throat and ear pains, coughing, general tiredness mixed with allergies. So therefore soup has been on the menu for a few times. It was quite annoying to be ill, when it was +28 degrees outside, but what can you do. At least the soups seemed to help quickly, and I'm fine again.

I made this vegan onion soup with vegan garlic bread on the side. I'm sharing the soup recipe below, but not the garlic bread. The garlic bread was just made on my basic thin pizza crust with some margarine, pre-cooked garlic, fresh parsley, salt and pepper. I tend to make garlic bread in a different way every time, but this was a very good variation. I guess it could be cheesy too, but it was perfectly nice just with this topping. 

Vegan onion soup

Ingredients

4 large onions

Vegetable oil

1 tbsp wheat flour

1 cup red wine

2 tbsp vegetable stock powder

1 tbsp yeast flakes

Salt to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

Fresh thyme

Method

Slice the onions into half rings and start slow cooking them at low heat under lid in a pan with vegetable oil. Cook and stir until they are caramelised and browned. This takes quite a while, but it is necessary in order to make a proper onion soup, so be patient and keep stirring so that the onions won't burn.

Add the flour followed by the wine. Then add the seasoning and some water and let simmer until the soup is nicely cooked.

Serve the soup with garlic bread, or bread of your choice, on the side and enjoy.

Your VegHog

Spicy sweet potatoes

I've been having a relaxing weekend so far, and tomorrow it's still a public holiday so that I can relax some more. Yesterday we went on a stroll in the botanical gardens and spotted some cute moorhen chicks swimming around in a lake full of yellow water lilies. It was a nice weather too, not too hot just nice and sunny. Today I want to go to the seaside a little bit, so we will soon head to that direction. It only takes about 10 minutes to walk there from our place. What have you been up to this weekend?

I made this vegan spicy mix with roasted sweet potatoes, black eyed peas, sweetcorn, tomatoes, carrots, brown rice and spices. It was just a creative dish using what was available, but it turned out quite nice.

Spicy sweet potatoes

Ingredients

2 sweet potatoes

Vegetable oil

4 tomatoes

2 carrots

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

1 chilli

1 cup black eyed peas

1 can sweetcorn

Salt

Ground black pepper

Smoked paprika

Ground cumin

Ground coriander

Tomato purée

½ cup brown rice

Method

Peel and cut the sweet potatoes into cubes. Coat them with vegetable oil, salt and smoked paprika and roast in the oven.

Chop the onion, tomatoes, carrots, garlic and chilli and start heating them in a pan.

Once they are softened, add the black eyed peas and sweetcord, and season to taste.

Cook the rice separately and add it to the mix once done.

Let the flavours blend and enjoy.

Your VegHog

In My Kitchen in June

Let's have a quick look, what's going on in my kitchen in June!

My brother's family were visiting us, and since it was close to my nephew's birthday, I made him a cake. It was just a basic layer cake with strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, gelatine-free butterfly sweets and cream. It was actually the first layer cake I've ever made, as I've always made different type of cakes, but it was fine and it went down well. I also had these nice seasonal flower bouquets as decoration. My nephew is an enthusiastic gardener and likes all kinds of plants.

Before the family visit, I also took the task of tidying the spice rack upon me. I don't do it often, and unfortunately I forgot to take before pictures. Now I can find everything more easily.

Finland won men's ice-hockey world championship in May, and on the night of the final I made this Finland-shaped naan bread. Do you think that it helped our team a bit to beat Canada? Related to that theme I'm also posting Swedish Wash brut ale (we sent Sweden home already in the quarter finals).

Now from sports to some foods I've been eating. I made homemade purple sweet potato gnocchi from lovely purple sweet potatoes from our market. I need to make them again and take better presentation photos, as it was a really nice dish.

We also made these roasted bell pepper, chipotle ketchup and mozzarella baguettes inspired by a tasty baguette that the sandwich chain Pret once had, but doesn't seem to anymore, at least not in Copenhagen.

A basic summer meal: vegetable sticks with hummus.

As usual, I'm sharing this post with Sherry from Sherry's Pickings blog, who is hosting the In My Kitchen blogger challenge. Go and have a look in her blog for the other entries as well.

Have a great weekend!

Your VegHog

Koshari

Koshari or Kushari is an Egyptian dish containing rice, lentils, macaroni, tomato sauce, crispy fried onions and cumin. There are different variations of the dish, and sometimes also chickpeas or short spaghetti are added. It's a wholesome meal, often served as street food, and it's one of Egypt's national dishes.

I had koshari for the first time as street food in London, and I've been making my own ever since I tasted the goodness. Now we also have a koshari restaurant close to our home, which is very tempting.

I made this koshari with brown rice, green lentils, small macaroni, spicy chickpeas, crispy fried onions and spicy homemade tomato sauce. It was seasoned with ground cumin, smoked paprika, salt and black pepper. I also think that koshari is the ultimate cheap eats that you can make from stuff out of the dry cupboard. I'm trying to save some money for the summer holidays without compromising healthy eating, and that's when koshari comes to the picture.

Have a lovely Sunday everyone!

Your VegHog

Eat Your Greens welcoming June recipes

Now it's officially summer, even though it doesn't fully feel like it over here yet. Anyway it's time to cook with green vegetables, and share them with our Eat Your Greens cooking challenge for foodbloggers. I'm hosting Eat Your Greens this month, and the event is co-hosted by Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen blog.

Eat Your Greens is all about sharing vegan or vegetarian recipes featuring green vegetables. Simply cook a vegan or vegetarian meal with green vegetables, post it on your blog, and share the link in the comment box below. If you are on Twitter, please share the post also there and add #eatyourgreens @SeasonalShaheen @TheVegHog , and we will retweet your post.

There will be a round up post at the end of the month showing all the green recipes that you shared with us. You can read more about the recipes shared in May here, and full instructions on how to take part are here.

Have fun cooking, I can't wait to see your creations!

Your VegHog