Eat Your Greens October Round Up

October went by pretty quickly, didn’t it? I can’t believe that today is already the last day, and there are little witches and ghosts roaming in the streets. Unfortunately our doorbell has been malfunctioning for quite a while now, due to be repaired only towards end of November, so the little tricksters and treaters won’t be able to access the premises.

Anyway, this post is now about Eat Your Greens and the recipes shared with the challenge in October.

My Eat Your Greens co-host Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen cooked a Vegetable Tagine. The tagine was made with homegrown courgettes, carrots, potatoes, sweet potato, chickpeas and dried fruit, and served with couscous on the side. Oh, how I would love to eat a vegetable tagine right now, as it has been quite chilly this week, and those spices would surely warm me up!

Johanna from Green Gourmet Giraffe shared a Mediterranean pumpkin and chickpea salad. This salad is so colourful and it features roasted pumpkin, red cabbage and red capsicum with dukkah, served on a bed of spinach with additional chickpeas and tzatziki. It sounds like a great combination, and I’m welcoming all pumpkin dishes at the moment.

My own October recipe was a Pattypan squash and broccoli green curry. A Thai green curry is such comfort food for me. I made this one with of course a green curry paste, pattypan squash, tenderstem broccoli, spinach and fried pieces of that “oat tofu”.

So my friends, this was my last time hosting Eat Your Greens and I would like to take a moment to thank all of you great contributors and readers over the years. It has truly been a great time being part of this challenge and getting know so many nice bloggers around the world. Shaheen will be hosting next month, so I hope that we will see many of your contributions there again!

Your VegHog

Homemade chipotle ketchup

It's such a dark and cloudy day with a heavy wind here in Denmark today. I just want to stay indoors and make a nice Saturday dinner. I'm planning to make a German classic today, which I may reveal here later, if successful. Otherwise I have no plans for today. I just need to go and buy the ingredients for this dish. But first I wanted to post something completely different.

Somehow I've never been too keen on ketchup, even though I love tomatoes. As a child I always refused to eat ketchup, but as an adult I slowly started experimenting with it. Now I'm especially keen on chipotle ketchups and a homemade one is of course the best. There is just a suitable hint of heat in a tasty tomato sauce. When I make a batch, it tends to be consumed quite quickly, so I never preserve this for a longer time.

I was first suspicious when I saw the tinned preserved chipotles at the supermarket, but was curious enough to buy them. Ever since then they have become a basic staple in my kitchen, and I add them to many dishes for warming chilli heat. The tin is also incredibly long lasting and economical. Chipotles are smoked red jalapeno peppers, and in this tin they have been preserved in adobo sauce, which is traditionally made from ancho and guajillo chillies. These chipotles are double preserved.

Here is my homemade chipotle ketchup recipe.

Homemade chipotle ketchup

Ingredients

400 g tinned tomatoes

1 chipotle chilli

2 tbsp tomato purée

3 tbsp vinegar

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp sugar

1 tsp smoked paprika

Onion powder to taste

Garlic powder to taste

Method

Put the ingredients apart from the onion and garlic powders to a blender and blend into a smooth sauce.

Heat the sauce in a pan and cook to reduce a little.

Add onion and garlic powders to taste and check the seasoning. Add more of the seasonings that may be lacking.

Serve with nice homemade fries, burgers or whatever you like.

Have a great weekend!

Your VegHog

Cauliflower cheese

 

I'm in the mood for autumn comfort food, so I've been cooking a lot of it and loading a heavier plate at work for lunch. I need to be a little bit more careful and get some exercise on the weekend, otherwise it's just getting too much. I need to make a few lighter meals again, but before I start with those, let's talk about cauliflower cheese.

Cauliflower cheese is such a nice side with many different dishes and I could eat it as the main dish as well. I often make cauliflower cheese just with melted cheese on top, but lately I've made it more often with a proper roux based white sauce. The white sauce does make it so much better, but is of course a bit of extra work. If you use colourful cauliflower like the purple and yellow ones, it's also easy to add a bit of a colour to the dish. I used yellow cauliflower on one of these samples. Sometimes I roast the cauliflower first instead of boiling or steaming, as roasted cauliflower is just so tasty.

I just saw today that my blogging friend Johanna from Green Gourmet Giraffe blog had also written about cauliflower cheese. She had made a quite special creation of cauliflower cheese pasties. I think that's a great combination and is lifting the dish to another level of comfort food. This will definitely go on my to-cook-list. Johanna also linked to her previous creative cauliflower cheese dishes, which are so inspirational. Recently she shared an idea with me how to use leftover cauliflower cheese: on a pizza! That's another candidate for the must-try-list. Go and have a look at her post and nice blog, if you haven't already.

Here are my simple steps for making this basic cauliflower cheese with roux based white sauce and Cheddar. The photos are just some different cauliflower cheese cooking sessions lately.

Cauliflower cheese

Ingredients

1 cauliflower

3 tbsp butter

3 tbsp wheat flour

100 g grated Cheddar

½ tsp onion powder

½ tsp garlic powder

½ tsp vegetable stock powder

A grind of ground black pepper

500 ml water (cauliflower cooking water can be used)

Method

Cut the cauliflower into florets and cook them in water. Save the cooking water and place the florets in an oven dish.

Prepare the roux. Heat the butter in a pan and whisk in the wheat flour. Let the flour cook a bit, for about 2 minutes.

Slowly add some of the cauliflower cooking water and keep whisking. Gradually add more water until you are happy with the texture.

Season the sauce and start adding the cheese in there. Whisk the cheese in and let it melt into an even sauce.

Pour the sauce on the cauliflower. Add some additional grated cheese on top and bake the cauliflower cheese at 180 C for about 25 minutes.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Pattypan squash and broccoli green curry

The past two weeks have been eventful and so nice. I've been on my autumn holiday and have had such great and relaxing time. First I took a trip with my partner to Oslo in Norway. We travelled on a cruise ship, which was quite nice for a change, and gave us the opportunity to see the beautiful fjords again. The weather was quite gloomy and rainy, but we still enjoyed the trip a lot. Then my brother came with his family to visit us in Copenhagen. It was also very nice to have family over and spend some quality time with them. My nephew loved the new Copenhagen metro so it was easy to entertain him. Otherwise I was just chilling at home and going for long walks in Copenhagen to admire the autumn colours. It was a good idea to take holiday at this time of the year.

Now to today's recipe. Thai curries are true comfort food for me, and they are so easy to make as tasty vegan dishes. I made this one inspired by the beautiful local produce of pattypan squash and tenderstem broccoli representing different shades of green. Naturally I wanted to make a Thai style green curry with them. I also used the Finnish oat block in this dish, which is like tofu, but made from oats. It's a really nice product and now also available in Denmark. Here is my recipe for a pattypan squash and broccoli green curry.

Pattypan squash and broccoli green curry

Ingredients

Green curry paste:

3 garlic cloves

2 cm fresh ginger

1 large green chilli

½ lime's juice

1 lemongrass stalk

Bunch of fresh coriander

Other ingredients:

½ pattypan squash

200 g tenderstem broccoli

1 onion

½ cup frozen spinach

160 g oat block or tofu

Vegetable oil for frying

1 can coconut milk

1 tsp palm sugar

1 tbsp vegetable stock powder

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp toasted sesame oil

1 cup jasmine rice

Fresh coriander

Method

Put the ingredients for the paste into a blender and purée them into smooth paste. Set it to side. If you ever happen to make too much paste, it's also good to freeze and use later.

Cut the oat block or tofu into cubes and fry them in hot vegetable oil until they are golden brown from each side. Set them to side.

Chop the onion coarsely and start slow cooking it in a saucepan.

Peel and cut the pattypan squash into cubes and add them to the onion.

After a while, add the green curry paste to the pan. Soon after pour in the coconut milk and add the seasoning to taste and let simmer.

Chop the broccoli and steam the stems. Then add them to the curry. Also add the previously fried oat block pieces or tofu to the curry.

Cook the rice and serve it with the curry. Enjoy!

I'm sharing this recipe with this month's Eat Your Greens challenge, which is hosted by me in October and co-hosted by Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen. October isn't over yet, so you'll have time to take part as well. Check out the full rules here.

Your VegHog

Pizza is life

I'm always in the mood for pizza, especially homemade variants, and I quite often bake pizzas at home. I would describe my homemade pizzas as “rustic”, as they are not perfect, just comforting and tasty, but not the best looking perhaps. If I eat pizza in restaurants, I often find myself ordering a Pizza Margherita, as I think that the true skill is in the basics.

Over the years I have tried to perfect my pizza dough recipe, but I think that there is still work to be done. I don't measure the ingredients when I mix them for the dough, but just make it by feeling and experience. Good dry yeast is essential for me when making the dough, and I have luckily found my favourite product. I prefer a thin crust, and a spelt and wheat mix for the dough, but lately I have sometimes been making a thicker crust. I mainly make a full baking tray rectangular pizzas, because I think that it's a more practical shape for home baking. I would only very rarely make a round pizza.

I collected pizza photos from a few months, and I'm sure you'll get the drift of my favourite toppings by looking at them. For me it's crystal clear that pineapple belongs on a pizza, and it is on most of my pizzas, sometimes tinned, sometimes fresh pineapple. Another favourites of mine as pizza toppings are olives, mushrooms, bell pepper, onions, and often instead of Mozzarella I prefer hearty Cheddar. That's why many of my pizza photos are rather orange. Cheese of course is essential for a pizza, and I like a double cheese pizza. I use different cheeses on my own pizzas: emmental, cheddar, mozzarella and sometimes a mix or even yet another cheese style. I think it's nice to use different kind of cheeses on pizzas.

I normally make the tomato sauce myself, just a basic garlicky sauce, preferably puréed smooth before spreading on the pizza dough. Sometimes I put a veggie ragout made with vegetarian mince on the pizza, or occasionally just fresh tomatoes instead of a sauce altogether.

Here are now quite a few pizza photos. I would love to hear what's your favourite pizza like, and do you make pizza often at home?

Your VegHog

Mushroom and Emmental sandwiches

I'm on my autumn holiday and having a great time. We already went on a small city break to Norway's capital Oslo earlier this week and saw the magnificent fjords again. Now I'm just taking it easy at home in Copenhagen and will attend a culture night event tonight. That is one of my favourite events of the year, when museums and other public buildings that may not be accessible otherwise open their doors for the public and have different events. Our first stop will be a railway control tower with a great view over Copenhagen and a champagne bar on the top. We should be there just on time for the sunset.

Some of my family members will also come over for a visit tomorrow and stay a few days with us, so I'm also shopping food and planning what to cook for them. Any ideas for 4 adults and one kid? The weather hasn't been the greatest, it's raining a bit again, but I'm still happy to have whole two weeks off work, enjoy the autumn scenery and spend time with family.

What could be a better way to start the day than with crispy and cheesy mushroom and Emmental sandwiches. I could eat this sort of sandwiches at any time of the day, and I often do. Now in the autumn it's so nice to use different seasonal mushrooms in the cooking, and the combination of mushrooms and Emmental cheese is just perfect. Here is my simple recipe for these sandwiches.

Mushroom and Emmental sandwiches

Ingredients

2 breads, rolls or baguettes

200 g closed cup mushrooms

2 garlic cloves

Salt to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

Fresh thyme to taste

1 tbsp olive oil

100 g grated Emmental cheese

Method

Slice the mushrooms and chop the garlic finely. Cook them in olive oil and season with salt, ground black pepper and fresh thyme.

Cut the breads in halves and brush a little olive oil on the cut sides. Place the mushrooms and cheese on them. Bake at 180C for about 15 minutes.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

In My Kitchen in October

My favourite season autumn is here! The trees are starting to turn colourful, days are shorter and mornings can be frosty. I just love it, as it's somehow so cosy. I also love all the seasonal food in the autumn. Here is a little peek to my autumnal kitchen.

Here is some of the lovely seasonal produce I've recently purchased: chanterelle mushrooms, corn cobs, tenderstem broccoli, cactus figs etc. I've also made a little pine cone and pumpkin display on the dining table.

I haven't bought that many new food items lately, but here are some: Yeast flakes and smoked tofu by Vantastic Foods. I find the quality of their products excellent and there is also a nice tofu character. 

I made a dessert with butter-pecan ice-cream and dark chocolate popcorn bites. It was a nice dessert, a bit more unusual, but very quick to make.

Here are some of my autumn dishes.

Vegan chilli with kidney beans and bell pepper, and sweetcorn rice

Creamy mushroom sauce with mashed potatoes

Fondant potatoes with vegan nuggets and steamed tenderstem broccoli

Red lentil and roasted bell pepper lasagne

I'm sharing this post once again with Sherry from Sherry's Pickings blog, who is hosting the In My Kitchen challenge.

Have a nice new week!

Your VegHog