Easter food

 

I had a wonderful Easter break last weekend. It was very relaxing with whole five days off work. It also snowed, which was quite interesting. The spring isn’t quite here yet. There was of course a lot of food so I wanted to share some of it with you. There was a roast dinner with a vegan loaf, but otherwise I tried to keep it a bit lighter with plenty of salads, like these bruschetta with olive and pepper tapenade and insalata caprese on the top.

Vegan loaf, onion gravy, marinated carrots and peppers, blood orange salad

Pasta salad with garlic olives and pine nuts

Plantbased potatoes dauphinoise with oat cream

Asparagus in a puff pastry, olive tapenade and Emmental wrap

 

Globe grapes

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Your VegHog

Fried rice and Easter

It's already a national holiday here in Denmark today, and I'm getting ready for Easter. I have made our humble decorations, just some yellow tulips and catkins with wooden and ceramic eggs. Now I still need to clean the appartment, but sun is shining, so I reckon that it will be fun with some music playing in the background.

We will get guests from England, so we will be spending Easter out and about in Copenhagen. Hopefully I can also cook a meal for them. I was thinking of vegan hot dogs with different condiments and veggies, as hot dogs are very popular in Denmark. But we will see, how it goes.

I made this fried rice with mixed cabbage, beetroot, soya “chicken style” bits a while ago, but the dish looked quite suitable for Easter, so I posted it now. There is also a chilli-pineapple salsa on the side of the stir fry.

Have a happy Easter everyone!

Your VegHog

Happy Easter!

I wish a wonderful and peaceful Easter time to you all!

Your VegHog

March mood

Here are a few random items and foods from March, as weirdly the month is nearly ending! I will be traveling over Easter, but I still wanted to have a little bit of Easter atmosphere in my flat beforehand. So I bought this wonderful huge chocolate rooster to cheer me up. I've already had it for several weeks, and it still makes me smile. When I carried it to the till at the shop, it even made some fellow shoppers smile, what a presence!

Even though I'll be in Finland over Easter and can get the local goodies over there, I still ordered a few Mignon eggs by Fazer online and awkwardly decorated them with a Sharpie. Mignons have a real hen egg shell filled with very tasty solid chocolate and they are a lot of fun this time of the year.

Hotel Chocolat's H-Boxes are always good for any season, but I did really like the looks of The Egglet H-Box. I'm taking a couple of these to Finland for my family members.

I bumped into Karkli at Craft Beer Rising in London. It's an unique Indian snack made according to a family recipe, nice packaging and wonderful taste.

This year I just don't have the time and strength to make an own post of the Winchester Beer and Cider Festival, which I visited last Friday. It was a really nice event as usual, especially seeing the sign of spring in the green beer again. Here are a couple of pictures from the festival.

For a while now I've had a preferred cheese again, and it has been aged Havarti. It's so nice and tasty and versatile to use, I'm only fearing that they'll discontinue it in my shop as they often do.

I recently obtained this Fermenting Food book and can't wait to make some pickled vegetables and such like. Do you have experiences of fermenting food?

Here is one of my recent salad lunch boxes containing cheese and baguette, fresh pea shoots, tomatoes and carrot sticks with hummus and olives.

Sweetcorn cakes

I haven't been baking much for Easter this year. Probably because I won't be home then and have been quite busy lately. Now I made these savoury little cakes, which I think could almost qualify as Easter baking. Have you already been making some lovely stuff for Easter?

I saw this recipe for “Maissikakut” (Sweetcorn cakes) on a Finnish recipe page. I gave it a little bit my own twist, so my version is here below. These are really easy to make and they are a great snack in between.

Makes about 12 cakes.

Ingredients

260 g / 1 can sweetcorn

1 carrot

2 continental salad onions

A bunch of fresh parsley

200 ml polenta

2 tbsp spelt flour

200 ml milk

1 tsp salt

Method

Peel the carrot and grate it.

Chop the salad onions into fine rings, also use the greens.

Mix all ingredients in a bowl, season the mix and stir it smooth.

Place the mix into muffin cases and bake at 200C for about 15-20 minutes.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Squash pasta

With this post I'm already wishing you all a very happy Easter, have a lovely time whatever you choose doing! It certainly seems that the weather is going to be good in many places.

I'm off to Paris soon, and getting very excited about it, but first there's one final working day and some packing to be done before.

Today's recipe itself is once again a simple pasta dish, but I wanted to experiment with the combination of squash and pasta, and I rather liked it. I think you can even substitute kabocha squash with any other squash you happen to have. 

This is how I made my dish.

Ingredients

1 kabocha squash

1tsp thyme

1tsp parsley

Olive oil

3 shallots

3 garlic cloves

Dash of dry cider

1tsp salt

½tsp ground black pepper

Vegetarian pasta cheese grated

500g fusilli

Method

Peel the squash, remove the seeds and chop it into small cubes. Brush the cubes with olive oil, sprinkle thyme and parsley on the top, and roast them at 180C for about 30 minutes. Turn the cubes a couple of times during the roasting.

Then start preparing the other components by chopping the shallots and garlic. Once the squash is roasted, cook the shallots and garlic in some olive oil until soft, and then add the squash cubes to the pan. Add some cider and let it simmer (I used one of my favourites, Black Fox Cider, and a review is coming soon!). Season with salt and pepper, and more thyme and parsley to taste.

Cook the pasta al dente and serve it with the squash mix and a generous helping of some vegetarian pasta cheese on the top. Enjoy the simplicity!

Your VegHog

Pear tarte tatin

I thought that a tarte tatin is a great dish to be served as an Easter dessert, and I decided to make mine with pears this time. I followed Gordon Ramsay's recipe, but downscaled it a bit to fit better my cake tin (Ø 20cm). This is how I made mine.

4-5 pears (Green Williams pears)

50g caster sugar

60g butter

1 star anise

2 cardamom pods

1 cinnamon stick

1tbsp brandy

300g puff pastry

Peel and halve the pears. Heat the sugar, butter, star anise, cardamom pods and cinnamon stick in a pan at high heat. Let the butter bubble, and stir until it gets toffee colour. Add in the pear halves and cook them for about 10 minutes at lower heat. Stir in the brandy once the pears have cooked.

Remove the star anise, cardamom pods and cinnamon stick from the pan. Brush a cake tin with some of the caramelised liquid. Place the pears in there with the round side down and pour the rest of the caramel liquid on the top. Place the rolled out puff pastry on the top and press it down along the edges.

Bake at 180C for 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 160C and bake for further 15 minutes until the pastry is crispy and golden brown. Let the tarte rest for 10 minutes and then carefully turn it upside down onto a serving plate. This can be tricky because there is a lot of caramelised liquid.

Brandy cream

If you want to serve the pear tarte tatin with some brandy cream like I did, follow these instructions.

You need the following ingredients:

300ml whipping cream

2tbsp icing sugar

2tbsp brandy

Whip the cream and icing sugar for a few minutes and quickly stir in the brandy once the cream is firm enough. Serve on the side of the pear tarte tatin.

Happy Easter baking!

Your VegHog