Stuffed giant peppers

When life gives you giant peppers, make the best of it. I think that is my new motto that inspired me to make this dish of char-grilled giant lamuyo peppers stuffed with a juicy barley risotto. It is a great winter dish and just to my taste. It's savoury due to the mushroom barley risotto with the sweetness and smokiness of the grilled peppers. The flavours are really great and it's not too complicated to make either, so give it a go!

Ingredients

2 large lamuyo peppers

2 tbsp groudnut oil for grilling

2 shallots

3 garlic cloves

3 tbsp olive oil

10 g dried porcini

2 tbsp vegetable stock powder + 1l water

3 tbsp fresh parsley leaves

25 g butter

1 dl white wine

100 g pearl barley

100 g emmental

1 tsp salt

1 tsp black pepper

Method

First of all prepare the vegetable stock for the risotto. Combine the vegetable stock powder with about one liter water and some parsley leaves and heat it up. Chop the shallots and garlic and crush the dried porcini mushrooms a little and then soak them in water for about 10 minutes.

Then just make a barley risotto with the basic risotto method. Heat the olive oil in a pan and sweat the shallots and garlic cloves lightly. Remove the soaking fluid of the porcini (the fluid can be added to the vegetable stock as it will have a lovely mushroom taste) and also add them to the pan for a further minute. Add the butter and once it has melted, the pearl barley. Stir for a couple of minutes and then make the wine addition. Let the wine evaporate and add the first couple of ladles of hot vegetable stock. Let the risotto simmer under lid, stir often and keep making vegetable stock additions until the pearl barley is tender and the risotto has developed a nice mushroomy taste.

While the risotto is simmering, prepare the peppers. Remove the seeds and the top part of the peppers as a small lid, and then char-grill the pieces on each side until they are getting soft and have the distinct grilling marks. Then set the peppers to side.

Once the barley risotto is nearly done, grate the emmental and add it to the barley, also season with salt, pepper and parsley and stir. Take the char-grilled peppers and hide some emmental pieces on the bottom of them. Then stuff them with the barley risotto and place the lids back on them. Bake the stuffed peppers at 180C for about 10 minutes.

Serve hot as a winter warmer and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Pearl barley and porcini Schnitzel

Guess what? It's veggie burger time, and that always means good times for me! Today's burger Schnitzel is a mushroomy one paired with healthy and earthy pearl barley.

Ingredients

15g dried porcini mushrooms

150g pearl barley

1tbsp vegetable stock powder

2 garlic cloves

1 onion

4tbsp barley flour

1 egg

Ground black pepper

Nettle salt

Vegetable oil for frying

Method

Soak the pearl barley overnight in water. On the next day boil the pearl barley in water with added vegetable stock powder for about one hour until tender. Drain the pearl barley and remove all excess fluid.

Chop the garlic and onion and crush the dried porcini. Soak the porcini for about 30 minutes. Mix all these ingredients with the pearl barley.

Add the flour, egg and seasoning to the bowl and mix carefully. The mixture should reach a fairly firm texture so that the Schnitzel hold well together. Shape Schnitzel of the mixture.

Heat vegetable oil in a frying pan and fry the Schnitzel on both sides until they are golden brown.

Serving suggestion

Serve the Schnitzel with smoked pepper hummus, potato flatbreads and sweet potato oven chips on the side.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog

Pearl barley mushroom risotto

This risotto can be made very much like a regular risotto. The only difference is that we'll use pearl barley instead of arborio rice. Pearl barley is nutritious, healthy and it tastes brilliant. So it's definitely always a winner and delightful with mushrooms. I think pearl barley needs to simmer slightly longer than arborio rice, but otherwise I'm using my normal risotto method. Let's start cooking!

Ingredients

1 cup of pearl barley

250g chestnut mushrooms

1 large shallot

2 cloves of garlic

100ml white wine

A few dried procini mushrooms

Vegetable stock powder

Vegetarian pasta cheese

Parsley

Thyme

Salt

Black pepper

Olive oil

Butter

Method

Chop the shallot, garlic and chestnut mushrooms. Prepare a vegetable stock by mixing the vegetable stock powder with water, adding parsley and warming it up. Crush a few porcini mushrooms and soak them in water for about 10 minutes. Later you can add this mushroomy soaking water to the vegetable stock. Remember that we want to make this whole risotto extremely shroomy!

Heat olive oil in a pan and lightly fry the chopped shallot. Then add the chestnut mushrooms to the pan and keep frying for about 5 minutes. Finally add the garlic and the soaked porcini.

Add small butter bits to the pan and let them melt. Then add the pearl barley and stir everything on the pan for a couple of minutes.

Pour the white wine in and let it evaporate. Then add a cup or two of the hot vegetable stock to the pan and let simmer under a lid. Stir often and add more vegetable stock after a while. Keep this up until the barley is cooked.

Grate some vegetarian pasta cheese (vegetarian parmigiano) and add it to the risotto. Season with salt and black pepper. Add more wine, butter or parsley if needed.

Garnish with parsley, cheese and some thyme and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Barley porridge piping hot from the oven

Good morning to you!

The VegHog decided to start its day healthily and make a porridge. You might guess that my favourite porridges are milky and salty and include mainly oatmeal porridge and barley porridge.

Oatmeal porridge is extremely quick to make: Just boil up some oat flakes with milk in a pot, add salt, stir thoroughly as this porridge burns easily at the bottom. After couple of minutes it's ready and such a filling breakfast. Of course you can eat it sweet or with fruits as well but please try the salty one as it's amazing. Accompanied with orange juice it will keep you going for hours!

This morning I feel like having barley porridge like the Hog mother used to make it. I always make this from whole pearl barley grains, and as they are bigger than flakes it takes much longer to boil them soft. There are different ways to pre-prepare the barley: Soak overnight or pre-boil in water in a pot. Boiling in water makes the process quicker but barley might lose on taste. This time I soaked the barley grains overnight and put them straight into the oven after that.

Barley makes a great addition to many vegetarian dishes and it's very nutritious. I haven't used it much elsewhere than in this porridge but would imagine that it's great with soups and stews. Do you have any great barley recipes to share? 

Preparing this porridge is so simple, it may take quite a long time to get ready but you don't have to do much yourself, just wait! Take an oven dish, put barley in there, add salt and fill up with milk but not too full that it doesn't boil over in the oven. The porridge might need couple of hours in the oven at about 150 C but you can check occasionally how soft the barley is. Mine took about an hour today but the soaking speeded the process up.

The baking will build up a brown surface out of milk which you can remove or just eat it. The porridge is very hot when it comes out of the oven and it's nice to pour cold milk on it before eating.

I have the feeling that this way making a barley porridge is Finnish. Have you ever eaten or made oven porridge before? Fancy trying this variation?

This porridge is just right! Have a great day!