Mikkeller and Lindemans collaboration beer Spontanbasil

I got to know several beers from Mikkeller's Spontan range when I visited Copenhagen last Easter, so I was obviously directly curious when I saw a bottle of Mikkeller and Lindemans collaboration beer Spontanbasil 6,0 % at my local beer shop. Obviously I had to buy it (and a second bottle in the meanwhile). It tasted so wonderful with such a strong basil flavour, it was just deligthful. It almost doesn't taste like beer at all, just like a refreshing basil drink.

I just booked my next visit to Copenhagen and I can't wait to have more of this and the other beers from Mikkeller's Spontan range. I'm so excited to go there again in March and hope to post many lovely Copenhagen posts for you.

Here are my tasting notes and impressions:

- the cork already heavily smells of basil

- the beer itself smells like an herb garden, herby with some lemon

- there's an initial punch of sour, which is directly followed by a strong basil taste underlined with fine hops

- there is a fresh lemon taste throughout

- the initial taste is very bold and powerful, lambic sourness leading to a fragrant and refreshing aftertaste

- there's more basil than hops in this beer

- the sourness comes from the lambic style of brewing, wild yeast is used to ferment the beer

I can't get enough of this beer and can't help planning which dishes it would compliment the most, would insalata caprese be too much of a clichee with this?

Stuffed lumaconi in tomato sauce

I recently bought the chunky lumaconi pasta shells and thought that the first dish made with them should be a pasta bake, and that's what I made. I went with the classic combination of pasta, tomatoes, mozzarella and basil here. I stuffed the pasta shells with mozzarella cherries that had been rolled in pesto, covered them with a heirloom tomato sauce and a bit of extra cheese and baked in the oven.

The firm giant pasta stuffed with fragrant pesto, melting mozzarella and covered in fresh tomato sauce made a very good combination indeed. Here's my recipe.

Ingredients

Sauce:

3 large heirloom tomatoes

1 onion

3 garlic cloves

2 tbsp tomato purée

Salt to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

Stuffing:

Handful of basil leaves

2 garlic cloves

10 g pine nuts

4 tbsp olive oil

200 g mozzarella cherries

Pasta:

12 lumaconi pasta shells

Vegetarian pasta cheese

Method

Make the tomato sauce first by cooking the finely chopped onion and garlic until soft and then adding the finely chopped heirloom tomatoes. Let simmer and season to taste.

Prepare the stuffing by puréeing the pesto ingredients together and mixing them with the mozzarella cherries.

Cook the lumaconi in water until al dente, cool them down with cold water so that they are easier to handle.

Stuff the lumaconi with the mozzarella cherries and pour the tomato sauce on the top.

Grate little vegetarian pasta cheese for the top.

Bake at 180 C for about 20 minutes.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Tomato and basil omelette

Here is my Sunday breakfast from earlier today and it gave me quite a nice start to the day. I don't have many plans for today and as usual I'm already planning what to cook for dinner and to prepare for Monday's work lunch. I hope that you are having a relaxing Sunday.

So into this omelette I put three eggs, a dash of almond milk (would've put normal milk, but didn't have any), a handful of homegrown mini tomatoes, fresh basil leaves, little grated Emmental cheese, ¼ onion, salt, black pepper and olive oil for frying.

First I whisked the eggs, milk, cheese, basil, salt and pepper together, chopped the onions finely and cut the tomatoes in halves. Then I started frying the onion in the olive oil and once they were soft, I added the egg mixture and placed the tomatoes. I turned the omelette in the pan once and enjoyed it with coffee and pineapple juice.

Your VegHog

Quick pasta using local tomatoes

I'm continuing straight from Sunday's post from my local street fest, as I purchased the tomatoes there that I'm using for today's dinner, a fresh pasta with fried tomatoes, mozzarella and basil. Through the method I prepared this dish, it really contains the fresh flavour of the tomatoes and the garlic gets only slightly fried complementing the other ingredients. Using a fragrant olive oil improves the dish immensely.

These are the ingredients I used today: Fresh tagliatelle, selected local tomatoes, garlic cloves, good quality olive oil, buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil, ground black pepper and salt.

This is a very quick dish to prepare. First prepare the tomatoes by cutting them into smaller pieces, halving or quartering, depending on the size. Tear the mozzarella and get the basil leaves ready. Chop the garlic finely and add it to a bowl with the chopped tomatoes to wait for the frying. Then start cooking the pasta in a pan of lightly salted water and simultaneously heat up a frying pan on medium to high. Once the pasta is almost cooked, put some olive oil into the pan and add the tomatoes and garlic and let them fry for a couple of minutes, just so that they heat through.

Put the cooked pasta onto a plate, then put the tomatoes, mozzarella and fresh basil on the top, season with salt and ground black pepper and add some of your best olive oil onto the dish. Serve immediately and enjoy.

This dish is wonderful served with some white wine, which you however might not want to drink on a weekday, and even I skipped it on this occasion.

Have a nice week!

Your VegHog

Start of the caprese season

I think that this is pretty much the start of the proper caprese season, for me at least it is. There have been times, when I could have lived through the whole summer on insalata caprese, also known as tomato, mozzarella and basil salad. I don't make it quite that often anymore these days, but can't think of many other perfect dishes for a hot summer's day. I'm still keeping calm here, as it isn't that hot yet, but seems to be getting more summerly.

Lovely local tasty tomatoes are appearing in the shops and basil grows nicely by my window. I hope to get my own tomato crops later this summer, too. On this occasion I used Pome Dei Moro tomatoes from Sussex. Of course good quality mozzarella is available in many shops, so there's nothing that can stop me from making this dish. I only use my best olive oil and balsamic vinegar or balsamic pearls for this salad and season it with little salt and ground black pepper.

The salad is wonderfully light on its own, but also great with crusty breads, pasta dishes, risottos, barbequed vegetables and so forth.

How do you like your caprese, traditional or more inventive?

Your VegHog

Garlic and basil rolls

You already got a sneak preview to these rolls posing on the side of my Alphabet soup, and now the recipe for them will be revealed. I got the recipe from Valio's webpage here and it's developed by Riikka from Vatsasekaisin Kilinkolin, a Finnish food blog. I'm posting below my own only slightly altered version. 

The dough may seem too soft for shaping rolls, but if you're only able to roll it at that texture on a floured surface, the rolls become wonderfully soft and fluffy. First I was skeptical and wanted to add more flour, but I'm glad I didn't. However I used a slightly different rolling technique to the original. Mine might have not been as pretty, but they were so tasty that I don't care!

This recipe makes about 14 rolls.

Ingredients

250 ml milk

1 tbsp dry yeast

1 + 1 egg

1 tbsp honey

½ tsp salt

5 dl wheat flour

50 g + 50 g garlic butter

Bunch of fresh basil

Method

Mix the yeast into lukewarm milk. Add one of the eggs, honey, salt and the half of the flour and mix. Add the rest of the flour and keep kneading for about 20 minutes by hand or 10 minutes with a machine. It is a long time, but worth it. Add 50 g of the melted garlic butter towards the end of the kneading. Cover the dough with a tea towel and let it rise for about one hour.

Place the dough on a floured surface and roll it into a sheet of about 35 x 35 cm. Spread the other half of the garlic butter (not melted, only soft so it's better spreadable) on the dough and sprinkle the chopped basil onto it. Roll the dough into a long firm log, swiss roll style, and cut roll sized pieces from it. Let these rise on a baking tray under a tea towel for about 30 minutes. 

Brush the rolls with a beaten egg and bake them at 220C for about 12 minutes or until the rolls are fully baked.

Enjoy with salads, soups, pasta dishes. They are at their best when fresh from the oven.

Your VegHog

Fusilli with roasted tomatoes, mozzarella and basil-garlic sauce

Such a pasta dish, like the one I'm sharing with you today, is my go-to dish whenever I want to eat fairly quickly yet tasty or just want to have a lazy weekday meal. Tomato-mozzarella-basil-olive oil is such a winning combination that it's easy to keep it simple. The flavours work well together, the dish is tasty and quick to make – what's not to like?

This is what today's pasta dish consisted of:

Ingredients

300 g mini plum tomatoes

6 tbsp olive oil + some to be drizzled on the top of the ready dish

2 garlic cloves

A bunch of fresh basil leaves

250 g mozzarella

300 g fusilli pasta

Sea salt

I also had some shop bought garlic bread on the side.

Method

Place the whole tomatoes into an oven dish and drizzle olive oil on the top. Roast them at 180-200C for about 10 minutes until they start bursting open.

In the meanwhile boil the pasta in salt water until al dente.

Purée the garlic with the basil leaves and olive oil and set to side. This will be drizzled on top of the dish just before serving.

Tear the mozzarella. Tearing doesn't just look nice on the dish, but it also contains the moisture in the mozzarella.

Serve the pasta with the tomatoes, basil-garlic sauce, mozzarella, little sea salt and good quality olive oil. It's ready to be enjoyed!

I'm sharing this recipe with this month's Pasta Please challenge. Pasta Please is a monthly vegetarian cooking challenge by Tinned Tomatoes blog hosted this month by Knead Whine blog with the theme “dishes that can be on the table in twenty minutes”. I thought that my recipe fits the category, and quite often quick pasta dishes are what I choose to cook after a hectic weekday.

Your VegHog

Heirloom tomato and mozzarella pasta

This is a very quick and a very fresh pasta dish. I just love this kind of meals, where the ingredients are simple yet beautiful. There is hardly any chopping to be done and no lengthy sauce making at all. These flavours work really well together, so why add anything extra. Have a look how easy it is.

Ingredients

1-2 large heirloom tomatoes

3 garlic cloves

3 tbsp olive oil

200 g buffalo mozzarella

Fresh basil leaves

Fresh rocket leaves

Salt

Ground black pepper

300 g rigatoni (or other pasta)

Method

Cut the heirloom tomato into small cubes and chop the garlic finely. Boil the pasta until it's al dente.

In the meanwhile cook the garlic in olive oil for a couple of minutes, and then the tomatoes only for a minute or so. They should only cook slightly and stay fairly firm. 

In the end add the basil leaves to the tomatoes and season with a sprinkle of salt and ground black pepper.

When the pasta is cooked, put it into a bowl, and then the tomatoes, generous pieces of torn mozzarella and a handful of fresh rocket on the top.

Enjoy the meal with a bottle of nice white wine.

Your VegHog

Basil ciabatta

I baked ciabatta, as it's one of my favourite bread types. I got inspiration and guidance from this recipe (in Finnish only), but then put my own twist on it. The original recipe used herb cream, but I thought that fresh herbs would be nicer and chose basil as the herb, as I wanted to serve the bread with tomato and mozzarella.

These ingredient amounts make either one large ciabatta or two smaller ones. Even 4-6 ciabatta rolls are possible, depending on the size.

28 g fresh basil leaves

250 ml cream

450 ml white bread flour

2 tbsp dry yeast

½ tbsp sugar

½ tsp salt

2 tbsp olive oil

Chop the basil leaves finely and warm the cream lukewarm. Add the basil to the cream and let infuse for a couple of minutes.

Mix the dry ingredients. Then add the basil cream and olive oil and knead to a bread dough.

Let the dough rise under a teatowel in a warm place for about one hour.

Shape to breads, brush them with olive oil and let rest under a teatowel for a further 15 minutes.

Bake at 220C for about 20 minutes until the surface is crispy and golden brown and the breads are fully baked.

After a while of cooling, I served the ciabatta with striking green tiger tomatoes, torn mozzarella and basil.

Your VegHog

Tomato bruchetta

A tomato bruchetta is a nice classic, which makes a brilliant breakfast or lunch bread with tomatoes, basil and mozzarella. Today I made my version, it's very fresh, simple and easy.

Ingredients

200g selected tomatoes (e.g. colourful small cherry tomatoes)

150g mozzarella balls

4 bread slices

Basil dressing

50ml olive oil

40g basil leaves

25g pine nuts

3 garlic cloves

First make the basil dressing by just puréeing all the ingredients. This dressing is very much like pesto, just without the cheese. Have a look at the frozen pesto cubes idea, since you may have more left than you can use.

Spread the basil dressing on the bread slices and place a few mozzarella balls on each one.

Bake the breads in the oven at 180C for about 10 minutes until the cheese has melted.

Slice the tomatoes, place them on the breads, put some extra basil dressing on them and serve.

Your VegHog

Frozen pesto cubes

When I make pesto, I tend to make a fairly large batch that I sometimes don't manage to eat in time. That's when this idea of frozen pesto cubes comes in handy: freeze the excess pesto and take it out to melt, or add to pasta sauces or pizzas whenever needed.

I prefer to make the cheeseless pesto version for freezing, just a clean basil dressing with basic ingredients. The following amounts are enough to fill a normal ice cube tray.

Ingredients

80g basil leaves

50g pine nuts

6 garlic cloves

1dl olive oil

Method

Puree all the ingredients together and pour into the slots of an ice cube tray.

Freeze.

Use whenever convenient.

Easy!

Your VegHog

Tomato, mozzarella and zucchini canapés

It's nice to have fresh salads at Christmas as well, or at anytime for that matter, and canapés are a convenient solution for any Christmas party. Therefore I have now made these tomato, mozzarella and zucchini canapés, which look quite cute and are very fresh.

Small cherry tomatoes

1 small zucchini

Mozzarella balls

Lemon juice

Olive oil

Chili flakes

Fresh basil leaves

You will need some cocktail sticks as well.

Only the zucchini needs a bit more preparation, the other ingredients are good to go and ready to be assembled. You can make any vegetable and cheese combinations you may imagine!

Slice the zucchini thinly with a peeling knife or a cheese slicer. Heat some olive oil in a pan and briefly toss the zucchini through. Add some lemon juice to the pan and season with a few chili flakes. Then let the zucchini slices cool again.

Then just stick the vegetables with the cheese on the sticks and make several different variations. In my experience these canapés tend to disappear quickly from the table, so you might want to make quite a few.

Your VegHog