Blood orange and radish salad with coriander

Finally weekend although the weather is pretty gloomy, but maybe this colourful salad can cheer up a bit. I was again reading in The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit and this is another flavour combination recommendation for coriander leaves: oranges, radishes and onion. Instantly when I read about the combination, I wanted to make such a salad. And as it happens I still have blood oranges left, so it was perfect. Is the blood orange season maybe a bit longer this year? I'm not sure, but I was able to get quite a few of them this year, possibly also due to my hoarding. This salad was very vibrant, punchy and healthy and the flavours really did compliment each other very well.

Here's how I made the salad as a light lunch:

3 blood oranges

Handful of radish

¼ sweet onion

Handful of fresh coriander leaves

Slice the blood oranges and radishes.

Chop the onion finely.

Mix everything together and scatter coriander leaves on the top.

Enjoy!

I'm sharing this recipe with this month's No Croutons Required cooking challenge hosted by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes and co-hosted by Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen. I will probably be making more and more salads now when the fresh spring produce properly hits the shops.

Enjoy your weekend!

Your VegHog

Onion squash and lentil soup

Organic onion squash is back in my regular supermarket! That really is good news. I don't really mind if they don't get any other vegetables in for a while now... or maybe that goes a bit too far, but onion squashes are seriously tasty!

I grabbed a couple of squashes and as the first dish I decided to make the basic classic (at least my personal classic), a vegan soup with onion squash, onions and red lentils. This was really tasty flavoured with some fresh coriander, which turned the colour slightly weirdly into greenish, but that doesn't matter to me. I used my new herb pairing wheel for ideas when creating this recipe. Please have a look below how I made it.

Ingredients

1 medium onion squash

2 onions

3 garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

500 ml vegetable stock

½ cup dried red lentils

A handful of fresh coriander

Allspice to taste

Salt to taste

Method

Chop the onions and garlic cloves finely.

Peel the squash and cut it into small cubes.

Start cooking the onions and garlic in a saucepan in olive oil, after a while add the squash cubes.

Stir for a few more minutes and then add the vegetable stock and lentils.

Let simmer until the squash and lentils are fully cooked.

Season the soup, purée it and enjoy!

Even though this is a very basic vegan soup, I want to share the recipe with the No Croutons Required soup and salad cooking challenge, as I'm happy that the soup season is here again and I can use my favourite squashes. The challenge is hosted this month by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes and the co-host for this event is Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen.

Your VegHog

Freekeh salad with roasted courgettes and halloumi

Earlier this month I posted my first freekeh recipe on this blog: Smoky freekeh with peppers, beans and sweetcorn. Now I'm utterly freaking out for freekeh! At least I should get all my proteins and fibre at the moment, judging by the amount of freekeh I've been eating. This smoky freekeh is just perfect for different seasonal dishes at the moment and today I have made a warm and cold salad with it. The salad consists of roasted baby courgettes, halloumi, mixed leaves, pumpkin seeds and of course some freekeh. The fresh coriander added a wonderful flavour to this dish and as so often, I couldn't leave fried halloumi out of this salad.

Here's my salad recipe that is also my contribution to the 'Eat Your Greens' challenge by Shaheen from the A2K – A Seasonal Veg Table blog for the month January.

Freekeh salad with roasted courgettes and halloumi

Ingredients

1 shallot

1 garlic clove

2 tbsp olive oil

½ cup smoky freekeh

1 ½ cup vegetable stock

200 g baby courgettes

250 g halloumi

2 tbsp vegetable oil

½ tsp smoked paprika

Pumpkin seeds

Fresh coriander leaves

110 g mixed salad leaves

Olive oil + balsamic vinegar + salt + pepper drizzled on the top

Method

Rinse the freekeh. Chop the shallot and garlic finely and cook them soft in olive oil.

Add the freekeh to the pan with about one and a half cups of vegetable stock. More liquid can be added later if needed.

Let simmer under lid for about 30 minutes and season with the smoky paprika towards the end.

Cut the courgettes in about 1 cm long pieces and brush with olive oil. Roast them in the oven until they are soft with roasting marks.

Cut the halloumi into cubes and fry them in vegetable oil until golden brown.

Combine the components on a plate, drizzle olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper on the top and serve as a warm and cold salad.

Done! Easy!

Your VegHog

Falafel feast

Finally the weekend is here, and more time can be spent in the kitchen! Why not make a falafel feast for your loved ones like I made recently. Some years ago I'd had enough of falafel. Quite often they were the only, or the best, vegetarian alternative available, and so I thought that I had already eaten more than my share. However now I started thinking that I should give them another chance, and decided to make my own. It turned out that I still like them very much and will definitely have them more often again.

As an inspiration and guideline I read quite a few falafel recipes, but mainly based my own version on the Guardian article How to cook the perfect falafel and a recipe in the wonderful cookbook Veggiestan by Sally Butcher. The making of the falafel is surprisingly simple, and you can combine them with pretty much anything.

So this is how I made mine, and the recipe makes about 15 falafel.

2 cups dried chickpeas

195g broad beans (1 can)

5 garlic cloves

4 spring onions

15g fresh parsley

15g fresh coriander

1tsp salt

1tsp ground cumin

1tsp ground coriander

1tsp baking powder

Vegetable oil for frying

Soak the chickpeas overnight. Many recipes suggested that the chickpeas don't need to be pre-boiled, but I boiled them for 20 minutes anyway. The main reason being that I don't have a good food processor, just my old hand mixer. You can decide which version you prefer.

Chop the garlic and the spring onions and remove any large stalks of the herbs. Then just purée all the ingredients together into a paste that should be easy to shape with your hands.

Heat vegetable oil in a frying pan (or you can deep fry these) and fry the falafel on both sides until crispy.

This is how simple it is!

Serve the falafel with: homemade hummus, tahini, salad with mixed leaves, heirloom tomatoes and shallot rings, char-grilled peppers with harissa coating (chopped peppers first char-grilled on both sides, then brushed with harissa and baked in the oven for 20 minutes), char-grilled halloumi and pitta bread.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog