Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas my friends! 

Have a lovely time and enjoy a lot of nice food. 

Blue potato focaccia

I’ve done some savoury baking again and there will be more of it getting closer to Christmas. I got some marvellous blue potatoes from a local shop, so I made this focaccia with them to showcase them properly. They would add a nice splash of colour to any dish. This was just a fluffy focaccia with pre-cooked blue potatoes, onion slices and garlic.

Your VegHog

 

Cheese and onion pie

 

How are you all getting on in this pre-Christmas time? I’ve been busy at work, so can’t wait for some quiet time at home and in the nature. That’s probably what it will have to be, as all places are closed. I’m quite looking forward to it though. First there are still three working days to go.

A cheese and onion pie is currently one of my candidates for the Christmas table. It would be a very filling thing, even if I made them on this smaller scale like here. I might make the pies on Boxing Day or on the between days rather than on Christmas Eve or Day. I served these pies with steamed sprouts, fondant potatoes and a side salad.

Have a nice weekend!

Your VegHog

 

Finnish Christmas tarts

 

I baked Finnish Christmas or star tarts with puff pastry, but a less traditional version, as I used Finlandia marmelades as the filling, which traditionally is prune jam. I also made savoury tarts in the same shape with cheese and smoked paprika filling. Both versions were very tasty and disappeared in no time. This means I’ll have to make another batch closer to Christmas.

 

Your VegHog

 

Purple sweet potato gnocchi

 

Homemade vegan gnocchi could be a good Christmas dish too. It would be something a bit different. I made these cheerful coloured gnocchi from a roasted purple sweet potato and they were so nice. I served them with crispy sage butter and a pomegranate salad on the side. Have a look at my easy recipe below.

Ingredients

1 large purple sweet potato

300 g wheat flour

75 g potato flour

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp vegetable oil

Method

Roast the sweet potato in the oven and let it cool. Remove the flesh and mash it.

Mix the wheat and potato flour gradually with the sweet potato to make a firm mix. Season the mix with salt and also add vegetable oil.

Shape gnocchi from the dough and cook them in boiling water. They are done when they float on the surface.

I also fried my gnocchi in some oil and butter mix.

Serve with your favourite sauce and sides and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Roast dinner with vegetable loaf

I’ve made a couple of cooking practice runs until now to be able to decide what I want to cook for Christmas. This year there won’t be Christmas parties, where you could eat all the Christmas food in advance. I wanted to know, if I am the only one doing this, practising for the big day? There are so many good veggie options that it’s hard to decide. I think some roast potatoes and vegetables are a must, but what will the main show be?

I got this new product, vegan Farsbrød, that is a vegetable loaf made from beans, mushrooms, cranberry and rosemary. It is very convenient to make, a frozen product that you just bake in the oven until it’s done. This is definitely something that would save me some time on Christmas Eve. It was tasty too, so I got a spare one for the freezer in any case.

 

I served roast potatoes, parsnips, squash and carrots, onion gravy, lingonberry jam and little sprouts and tomatoes with the loaf. It was a perfectly good meal made with fairly little effort.

Please share your vegan or vegetarian Christmas favourites with me in the comment section. I think I’ll make a nut roast again this year, but maybe also some other veggie surprises.

 

 

YourVegHog

 

In my kitchen in December

Christmas has already come to my kitchen a little bit, but there will be more in the course of the month. I will show you here some of the items that I already have and what I have recently eaten. My partner has also been hard-working, as you can see on my new seasonal logo. He gave the VegHog a little bit of seasonal flair. Did you know that hedgehogs hibernate in the winter, but they always wake up for Christmas to celebrate it with the other animals in the forest.

We got a couple of advent calendars, a quality chocolate one and a Skipper’s liquorice pipe one. They said that the chocolate calendar is for children, but I don’t care. I really like the animal illustrations on it and the chocolates are also very nice.

I did some home decorating in the kitchen and moved a new shelf in there. It’s quite practical and gives much more storage space and space for herbs to grow.

Then there are Danish Frogs. They are another brand of very qualitative chocolates.

There is an arsenal of mulled wine in my kitchen, which will still be stocked up for the holidays.

I got long luxury matches to light all my Christmas candles.

This sea buckthorn cheesecake was an absolutely delicious dessert. It was quite big, so I had it on two days. I of course kept the glass and it has become my favourite drinking glass.

I’m planning to use these lingonberry and sour cherry freeze-dried fruits for some Christmas dishes and baking.

I can’t wait to tuck in to these vanille cookies at Christmas. They just melt in your mouth.

We recently had two friends over and I served these snacks: watercress and cheddar scones, tomato tart, vegetable crisps and black finger grapes.

And finally a few of my recent dishes: tempeh burger with this really cool apple that’s red inside, cheese and onion baked potato with vegan frikadeller, butterbean and vegetable soup, spicy olive and onion pizza (depicted before baking and cheese addition), gnocchi with sage butter and salad and vegan burger with potato wedges.

As always, I’m taking part in the In My Kitchen blogging series hosted by Sherry from Sherry’sPickings blog. Go and check it out and join the fun!

Your VegHog