Savoy cabbage roulades

There have been so tasty looking cabbages around lately, so I started craving for Finnish style cabbage roulades. I chose a savoy cabbage for the nice green shade, but normal cabbage works perhaps a bit better in this recipe, as the savoy is thinner and then tends to crisp more in the oven. It depends on your preference. The twist in this dish is that the roulades are brushed with black treacle and then baked in the oven.

Another inspiration for this dish was Danish food writer Ditte Ingemann's new organic spice blend called Cabbage Karma, which I wanted to try in a dish. It's a really fragrant spice blend containing coriander, fennel, sumac, garlic powder, black pepper and lemon thyme. I think that it was a wonderful addition to this dish, and I will try it in other cabbage dishes as well.

Here are my vegan savoy cabbage roulades.

Savoy cabbage roulades

Ingredients

1 savoy cabbage

1 cup rice

½ cup beluga lentils

½ cup green lentils

2 carrots

1 onion

3 garlic cloves

Vegetable oil

1 vegetable stock cube

Fresh thyme to taste

1 tsp salt

1 tsp ground black pepper

Cabbage Karma spice mix to taste

4 tbsp black treacle

Method

Cook the rice and lentils, and chop in the meanwhile the carrots, onion and garlic.

Cook the carrots, onion and garlic in oil until soft, and then add the lentils to the mix.

Season the mix, and also fold in the rice.

Let the filling cool down slightly.

Remove the cabbage leaves from the stem, and blanch them in boiling water for a few minutes until they are softened.

Fill the cabbage leaves with the rice mix and roll them into roulades. Place them in an oven dish and brush with black treacle.

Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes at 180 C.

You can serve the roulades as a side with all kinds of dishes. I served them just with some salad on the side.

This is my September Eat Your Greens recipe, which I'm hosting together with Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen. The round up with all September recipes will be up on Sunday.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Your VegHog

Green tahini cauliflower with quinoa cabbage roulade

The weather has become more autumnal here, and I'm turning to my comforting seasonal autumn favourites in food. There will be a lot of roasting, stews and steaming bowls of soup in my near future.

This dish was widely improvised around the ingredients I had. I bought a green cauliflower for a change. It's a bit paler than broccoli, and still tastes like cauliflower, so it sends a confusing message to the brain. I roasted it with a tahini-lemon-garlic-coriander sauce, which is always such a good choice, definitely one of my vegan comfort food favourites!

On the side I served a large cabbage roulade filled with quinoa and pearled spelt that were cooked in vegetable stock with onion and garlic and some spices. It was quite basic and rustic, but actually very tasty. I just couldn't resist the lovely purple cabbage. Does anyone have good cabbage recipes by the way, as I always tend to make only roulades or casserole, and would appreciate some inspiration?

So it's almost the weekend, my friends. Do you have any good plans or are you mainly just going to take it easy? Have fun whatever you do!

Your VegHog

Cabbage casserole

Here comes a good hearty and warming autumn dish. It's also quite economical one to make, which is always a plus. My mother taught me last year how to make traditional Finnish Kaalilaatikko, cabbage casserole, in its vegetarian version and I also blogged about it then. Now I cooked another version of the dish, which is vegan and contains also some carrots to have a bit more veggies in the dish. I really adore the tender pointed cabbages, which are perfect for such dishes. I also added some pearled spelt and soya mince, and the dish has a mix of savoury and sweet black treacle notes. The dish may not look so great, but I can assure you, it's tasty.

Ingredients

1 large pointed cabbage or white cabbage

2 onions

2 garlic cloves

2 carrots

1 tbsp vegetable oil

½ cup pearled spelt

½ cup dried soya mince

1 tsp vegetable stock extract

3 tbsp black treacle

1 tsp sea salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

Method

Cut the cabbage into generously sized pieces and cook them in water for a few minutes. Take off the heat and leave the cabbage in the water.

Chop the onion, garlic and carrots finely and cook them in a pan in oil until soft and lightly browned.

Cook the pearled spelt and dried soya mince in separate pots until done. You can add a little bit of vegetable stock powder to the cooking water.

Drain the cabbage, but keep the water.

Mix the ingredients and also add a few ladles of the cabbage cooking water. Season with salt, pepper and black treacle.

Put the mix into ramekins or an oven dish and sprinkle some black treacle on the top.

Bake the casserole in the oven at 180 C for about one hour.

During the baking, occasionally pour some of the cabbage cooking water onto the surface so that it doesn't fully dry out.

Serve with maybe some potatoes and salad on the side.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Mushroom and pearled spelt cabbage roulades

I couldn't stand cabbage roulades, casseroles, soups or basically any cabbage dishes in my childhood and youth, but one seems to grow into liking them. It probably is one of those adult type of foods. After I cooked a Finnish cabbage casserole with my mum a while ago, I wanted to make other cabbage dishes as well. Now I wanted to try a vegetarian version of cabbage roulades, so I made these cabbage roulades filled with mushroomy pearled spelt. They were pretty good and my technique was also successful. I would make these again with the same filling and also with something else. The pointed spring cabbage was a very good choice for this dish with its large and even leaves, that made the assembly fairly easy. 

Here is my recipe for mushroom and pearled spelt cabbage roulades:

Ingredients

1 cup pearled spelt

1 vegetable stock cube

250 g chestnut mushrooms

1 red onion

2 garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

Fresh thyme

Salt

Ground black pepper

50 g Cheddar and Emmental grated (optional)

1 pointed spring cabbage

A few notches of butter

½ tbsp black treacle

Method

Cook the pearled spelt in water with the vegetable stock cube until done.

Chop the mushrooms, onion and garlic finely and cook them in olive oil until the excess liquid has evaporated. Add the cooked spelt and season. Then also add the grated cheese. Leave the cheese out, if you want a vegan dish.

Remove the cabbage leaves and cook them in water for a few minutes until they are bendy enough to shape roulades. Save some of the cabbage cooking water and set to side.

Place some of the filling onto the cabbage leaves and wrap them firmly into parcels. Place them on an oven dish, put a little butter on the top and bake at 220 C for about 30 minutes until the surface has received some brown colour.

Lower the oven temperature to 175 C. Pour some of the cabbage cooking water on the roulades and brush the black treacle on them. Cover the oven dish with a foil and return to the oven for about an hour.

Enjoy! One way to serve them is with roasted potatoes and a salad, like I did here.

I want to share this recipe with this month's Eat Your Greens. I don't cook that much with cabbage, so I thought it would be a nice change to my usual green vegetables. Eat Your Greens is a monthly vegetarian cooking challenge involving green vegetables hosted by Shaheen from A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table blog.  

Have a relaxing Sunday everyone!

Your VegHog

Kaalilaatikko - Finnish cabbage casserole

I have been enjoying my time back home in Finland just relaxing and visiting family. I asked my mum, if she would teach me how to make this dish called Kaalilaatikko. So we had serene cooking moments making it and at the same time observing a red squirrel on the yard. Kaalilaatikko is a traditional Finnish dish made of cabbage, mince meat and rice. We of course made a vegetarian version with soya mince. I was never too fond of cabbage dishes as a child, but my taste has developed and become much more versatile, and I was curious to have this casserole again after a long break. I really liked it and will surely sometimes make it in the future.

Here's the recipe.

Ingredients

1 kg white cabbage

1 onion

1 tbsp vegetable oil

2 dl soya mince

Salt, pepper and thyme to taste

1,5 dl rice

4-6 tbsp dark syrup

2 dl cream

Method

Chop the cabbage and put the pieces into boiling water. Boil them for a few minutes until they become translucent and then leave in the pot while you make the other preparations. Save the cabbage cooking water for later when draining the cabbage.

Chop the onion finely and fry in oil. Add the soya mince (my mince was dried and needed to be boiled first) to the pan and cook for a few minutes. Season with salt, pepper and thyme. Boil the rice until it's done or little al dente. Instead of rice also pearled spelt or barley can be used.

Mix the ingredients together in a large bowl. Add the cream and syrup and and put the mix into an oven dish. You can pour a little syrup on the top as well.

Bake at 175C for about one hour. Add some of the cabbage boiling water onto the surface during the baking so that it doesn't dry out.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog