Leek and lentil pie

British Pie Week is observed this week and I thought that I would participate with a pie recipe. I made an ultra savoury leek and lentil pie with a twist. This pie doesn't contain just leek and lentils, there is also a hint of tarragon and cider running through, all covered by a savoury skin-on potato mash (the best kind!). The method of making this pie is very straight forward. I served the pie with veggie sausages and a carrot ribbon salad. It was a really filling and nice wintery dish, just in time before spring has fully come here.

This recipe is very easy to veganise by substituting the butter and leaving out the cheese from the mash. I just wanted to make the mash rich and savoury by adding some of that lovely Havarti. And here's my recipe.

Ingredients

Topping:

500 g ruby gem potatoes

2 tsp salt

25 g butter

30 g aged Havarti cheese

Filling:

1 onion

4 garlic cloves

4 leeks

25 g butter

100 ml dry cider

1 tbsp vegetable stock powder

Salt and ground black pepper to taste

Small bunch fresh tarragon

½ cup puy lentils

Sides:

Veggie sausages, Cumberlands by the Secret Sausages

Carrot ribbon salad made from one orange and one yellow carrot

Method

Cook the potatoes to make the mash topping. Save also some of the potato cooking water for the mash. Mash the potatoes with little cooking water, salt, butter and cheese.

Slice the leeks and chop the onion and garlic finely. Heat the butter in a saucepan and start cooking the onion and garlic in there. After a while add the leeks and cider and let simmer under the lid. Add the seasoning.

Cook the lentils separately and then add them to the leeks.

Place the leek and lentil mix into an oven dish and cover it with the mash.

Bake in the oven at 180 C for about 30-40 minutes until the potato topping is little crispy and golden brown.

Serve and enjoy!

I want to share this recipe with My Legume Love Affair hosted this month by Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen.

Your VegHog

Thrice-cooked potato and leek bake

Potatoes and leeks are the best produce of this season for me and I love combining both of them with cheese, it's an old yet proved combination. So I don't know what made me think of thrice-cooked potatoes, but I was intrigued to see how it would work out. The potato slices were briefly boiled, then fried in oil and finally baked in the oven. They were combined with a cheesy leek mix in a hearty bake. This is a perfect dish to warm up on a chilly dark evening.

Ingredients

400 g potatoes

Vegetable oil

3 leeks

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

Vegetable stock powder

Fresh parsley

Salt

Ground black pepper

200 g grated Cheddar

Method

Slice the potatoes thinly. Boil them in water for about 5 minutes. Put them into a bowl and add some vegetable oil to them. Fry the potato slices for a few minutes in a hot pan until they get brown.

Slice the leeks and chop the onion and garlic finely. Cook them in oil until soft, then add a little vegetable stock powder and water. Season with parsley, salt and pepper and let simmer under lid by occasionally stirring.

Layer the leek mix, scalloped potatoes and cheese into an oven dish and bake for about 10-15 minutes.

I served the bake with steamed carrots and fried gem lettuce (too much Masterchef watching for me?). It was a nice dinner.

Your VegHog

Skin-on mash with veggie Schnitzel and mushroom sauce

This type of dish is one my absolute weekend favourites: potatoes, veggies and a vegetarian Schnitzel of some description and I quite often tend to have such meals. The components can and will vary, but the principle stays the same. So here's just one of those dishes. I would urge you to try skin-on mash, there's not a really a reason to remove the nutritious skins and they add a bit more interesting texture to the mash.

Skin-on mash

500 g potatoes

25 g butter

50 ml milk

1 tsp salt

Boil the potatoes in salt water until done. Mash them with the peels and add the butter, milk and salt.

Mushroom sauce

200 g closed cup mushrooms

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

Olive oil

100 ml oat cream

Salt

Pepper

Fresh basil

Slice the mushrooms ans chop the onion and garlic finely. Cook them in olive oil until soft and until the mushrooms have lost some of the excess water. Add the cream, salt, pepper and basil and let simmer until the cream has been infused nicely by the mushrooms and other components.

 

Leek side

1 leek

1 onion

25 g butter

50 g dry cider

Salt

Pepper

Slice the leek thinly and chop the onion finely. Cook them in butter until soft, add the cider, salt and pepper and let simmer.

Schnitzel

2 ready made vegetarian Schnitzel

Heat the Schnitzel in the oven until the surfaces are crispy.

Serve everything together and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Twice baked potatoes with leeks, cheese and cider

That's right my friends, the baked potato season is upon us and I often catch myself craving a baked potato with a cheesy filling. These twice baked potatoes with leeks flavoured with cider and oak smoked Cheddar are just a dream in the autumn. Have a look at how I made mine.

Ingredients

3 large baking potatoes

1 tsp sea salt

1 tsp olive oil

3 leeks

2 garlic cloves

1 tbsp butter

100 ml dry cider

1 tsp vegetable stock powder

Salt

Ground black pepper

100 g oak smoked Cheddar

100 g mature Cheddar

Method

Wash the potatoes and coat them with olive oil and sea salt, then bake at 180C for about one hour or until soft.

Cut the leeks into rings and chop the garlic finely. Cook them in butter for a few minutes. Then add the dry cider and let simmer until the leeks are soft. Season with vegetable stock powder (or cube), salt and black pepper. Add the cheese to the mix.

Once the potatoes are done, cut them in halves and scoop out the insides by leaving the skins. Mix the potato insides with the leeks and cheese and stuff into the potato skins.

Return to the oven for about 10 minutes until the tops get a bit of colour.

Serve with a side salad or like I did here with some tomatoes and baby kale.

Enjoy your weekend!

The VegHog

Roasted miniature new potato and leek bake flavoured with cider

I guess this is how most of my food photos are going to look now that the evenings are getting darker, the only time when I have time to cook on the weekdays. I do apologise for the darkness and hope to make some brighter looking photos on the weekends as well. I hope you'll like the food nevertheless.

I made this autumnal dish ultra savoury, just the way I like it. It's a bake made with roasted miniature new potatoes in a leek, cheese and cider sauce and here's the recipe.

Ingredients

500 g miniature new potatoes

1 tsp vegetable oil

½ tsp smoked paprika

3 baby carrots

3 leeks

3 garlic cloves

10 g butter

1 tsp vegetable stock powder

Salt

Ground black pepper

50 ml dry cider

100 g cheddar and red Leicester mix

Breadcrumbs

Sage

Thyme

Method

Wash the potatoes and roll them in vegetable oil and dust with smoked paprika, then roast them in the oven until done.

Chop the carrots and leeks into thin slices, also chop the garlic finely.

Start cooking the carrots, leeks and garlic in the butter. Cook them for a few minutes until slightly softened. Then add the vegetable stock powder, salt and ground black pepper and also pour the cider in. Let simmer slowly under the lid until all flavours have blended nicely.

Once the potatoes are cooked, mix them into the leeks. Then also add half of the grated cheese into the mix. Put it into an oven dish and cover with the rest of the cheese and the breadcrumbs, sage and thyme.

Bake in the oven until the cheese has nicely melted and golden brown. Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Flammkuchen

Vegetarian Flammkuchen is one of my favourite dishes ever and I occasionally make it. Flammkuchen comes from the Alsace region and is a classic dish there. I especially like the leek variation. I have published a very similar recipe before under the name Leek Flame Cake, but now I thought that I would make it again and share with the Eat Your Greens challenge, the leeks of course being the greens here. Shaheen from A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table blog hosts this monthly vegetarian cooking challenge, and since it's already August, new entries can be added. Have a look at the links and participate as well, if you are a blogger! 

Now to my recipe that makes two Flammkuchen.

The dough:

250 g self-rising flour

2 tbsp oil

1 tsp salt

100 ml water

The filling:

2 leeks

1 onion

1 garlic clove

Fresh basil leaves

6 tbsp crème fraîche

50 g grated Jarlsberg

50 g grated mozzarella

Ground black pepper

Salt

Method:

Mix the dough ingredients together, knead and roll the dough out thinly.

Slice the leeks and chop the garlic finely.

Spread some crème fraîche onto the rolled out dough. Then put the leeks, garlic, fresh basil grated cheeses, black pepper and salt on the top.

Bake at 250C for about 10 minutes and for the last couple of minutes you can use the grill setting in order to get some more flaming marks.

So simple and tasty, enjoy!

Your VegHog

Glamorgan sausages with potato mash and salad

When my partner made a humble request that I should cook Glamorgan sausages again, I was surprised, not because he requested them, but because I became aware that I hadn't made them for a long while. I love these breaded Welsh leek and cheese sausages and should make them much more often. Anyway I was instantly ready to make some and planned a simple dish around them. I though they would be good in a rustic combination with potato mash and some side salad.

So I just made a smooth buttery potato mash on the side from lovely English potatoes. To add some freshness to the dish, I chopped tomatoes and a small shallot and seasoned them with salt, pepper, olive oil and lemon juice. My salad was extremely simple, just some mixed leaves on the side.

You can find my Glamorgan sausage recipe here and I followed this same recipe again. They become so wonderfully crispy in the oven, yet still had a fluffy and tasty inside. The six chunky sausages also disappeared pretty quickly.

What would you serve the Glamorgans with?

Your VegHog

Irish Colcannon

As St. Patrick's Day is approaching, I thought I'd cook something Irish and ideally green. After a while of browsing vegetarian, or potentially vegetarian, Irish recipes I found Colcannon (Irish: cál ceannann "white-headed cabbage"). However I didn't use cabbage for this recipe, but thought that kale would nicely update the dish into a more modern version. Also the cabbages at my local shop were so white that no green would've been to be seen. This organic kale was just perfect for the purpose. After having read a few traditional Colcannon recipes, I decided my ingredients and started cooking.

I once spent St. Patrick's Day in Dublin, but missed the parade, as I found a nice pub quite early on the day with my friend. We could see some of the parade on television in the pub (!) when it was just a few metres away outside... and then when we decided to leave the pub, the parade had passed our point and only piles of rubbish were left on the streets. Oh well, it was a fun experience nevertheless. Needless to say that we then continued to another pub. I still like to tell the story, which is possibly still a bit funnier than actually having watched the parade. And now after this interlude, to the cooking of the dish.

Ingredients

1 kg potatoes

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

3 leeks

180 g kale

50 g butter

100 ml dry cider

150 g mature cheddar

Salt and pepper to taste

On the side: 6 Cumberland veggie sausages + olive oil for frying + salad

Method

Peel the potatoes, boil them until soft and then mash. Chop the onion and garlic finely and cut the leeks into thin slices.

Start cooking the onion, garlic and leeks in butter until they are soft. Then add the kale and cook until it's wilted a little. Add the cider and let it mostly evaporate. Then also add the grated cheddar and season with salt and pepper. Combine the mash with the leek and kale mix and serve.

If you also want to serve veggie sausages on the side, fry them in olive oil until browned. Also prepare any side salad that you want to serve with the dish. I chose to serve just mixed salad leaves on the side.

In all its greenness I also want to submit this dish to this month's Eat Your Greens challenge. This is a vegetarian cooking challenge for dishes using green vegetables by Shaheen from A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table. 

Enjoy the dish and happy St. Patrick's Day next week!

Your VegHog

Spelt Spätzle with smoky leeks

I have posted Spätzle recipes here a couple of times before. Please also see my Cheese and shallot Spätzle bake and the original Spätzle post. Those posts include a bit more detailed instructions for the making, if you're actually up for it. I am also very keen in answering any questions you might have about the process. I can't basically stop talking about this, if only anyone is interested.

Spätzle are Swabian egg noodles, a southern German classic dish. I love them and always want to find new ways to combine them in veggie dishes. One day I thought how great it would be to try Spätzle made of spelt flour, and I made a half and half mix. That was quite successful, so I went even bolder this time and only used spelt flour for this Spätzle. They stuck together just as well as with wheat flour and were wonderfully earthy and tasty.

In order to add even more to the earthiness of the recipe, I baked the Spätzle covered with cheese and hugged by a smoky leek sauce. If you got interested, read the recipe below. It's surprisingly straight forward even though you're making your own noodle batter.

Ingredients:

2 leeks

4 shallots

2 garlic cloves

1 tbsp butter

50 ml dry cider

2 tsp vegetable stock powder

100 g smoky cheddar

½ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

A few fresh thyme leaves

200 g mozzarella and cheddar mix

Spätzle dough:

400 g spelt flour

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

250 ml water

Method:

Chop the leeks, shallots and garlic and cook them in butter at medium heat for about 10 minutes.

Add the cider and vegetable stock powder.

Finally add the grated smoky cheddar and season with salt, pepper and fresh thyme.

Then mix the Spätzle dough ingredients together into an even batter.

Bring water to the boil and press the Spätzle dough into the water through a potato ricer to make thick noodles.

Cook them until they float on the surface.

Mix the Spätzle with the leek mix and place into an oven dish.

Cover with the mozzarella and cheddar mix and bake until the cheese has melted and is golden brown.

Enjoy the yummy winter flavours!

Your VegHog

Potato and leek bake

Potato + leek + cheese = BLISS!

I'm not sure, if I would ever get tired of this combination. It works so well in soups, stews, bakes... A cheesy potato bake is a life saver especially in the autumn and winter.

I already made one to practise for the cold time, so here is my recipe for a simple potato and leek bake. As a contrast I served a fresh fig salad on the side.

Ingredients

3 leeks

500 g potatoes

300 g Red Leicester and Cheddar cheese mix

3 garlic cloves

25 g butter

1 tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

Nutmeg to taste

Method

Slice the potatoes. I didn't peel mine as the skins were very thin on them, but you can peel them if you prefer.

Parboil the potato slices in salt water for about 10-15 minutes.

Chop the leek into rings and the garlic finely. Grate the cheeses. Cook the leek and garlic in the butter until soft and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Layer the leek mix, potato slices and cheese into a oven dish. Cover the bake with cheese.

Bake at 180C for about 40 minutes until the potatoes are fully baked and the cheese is crispy and golden brown.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

The VegHog's pea and leek burgers

I posted the basic burger bun recipe yesterday and will continue with filling those buns today. This time I made the veggie burger patties from dried ground peas. The texture of the peas is not fully pulverised, but small crunchy bits, so it binds well into a burger patty and is easy to handle. The ground peas are also rich in protein and full of pea taste.

Here are the simple steps how to make my pea and leek burgers.

Ingredients

1 cup dried ground peas

1 large leek

15 g butter

4 tbsp flour

1 tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp parsley

½ tsp paprika

Vegetable oil for frying

Method

Boil three cups of water and set to side. Put the ground peas into the water and leave in the pot under the lid for 30 minutes. Drain them after this and let cool.

Cook the finely chopped leeks in the butter until soft. Season them with salt, pepper, parsley and paprika.

Combine the leeks with the ground peas and add about four tablespoons flour. The amount of the flour depends on the moistness of the dough, add as much as you need for a firm mix. If you have difficulties to make a firm mix, add an egg and little more flour, and that should do the trick.

Shape burger patties of the mix and fry them in vegetable oil on both sides until cooked.

Serve them in the burger buns with tomato slices and watercress.

This post in three parts will continue tomorrow, but there are already spoilers on some photos of what lies ahead. Can you guess what it is? See you later!

Your VegHog

Welsh Glamorgan sausages

Today's dish that I want to share with you is a traditional Welsh leek and cheese sausage: the Glamorgan Sausage. After I read the article “How to make the perfect Glamorgan sausages” in The Guardian, I had to try to make these. I followed the instructions in the article pretty closely, but below is my version anyway. Have a look at an original Welsh recipe as well.

Who could have anything against the combination of leek and cheese! These are perfect sausages to be served at parties or even as a side dish to a burger or potato dish. I definitely will make these again and then try them also with different chutneys. This time I ate them just with some fresh tomatoes on the side.

These ingredient amounts make about 6 chunky Glamorgans, and this is how it goes.

1 large leek

30 g butter

¼ tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

180 g Welsh Cheddar

1 tsp ground mustard seeds

2 eggs

1 tsp thyme

150 g breadcrumbs

50 g wheat flour

Chop the leek finely and cook it in the butter until soft. Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper.

Grate the cheese and grind the mustard seeds. Separate the egg yolks and mix them with the ground mustard seeds and thyme in a bowl. Set the egg whites to side. The egg yolks go into the sausage mix and the whites are for the rolling of the surface.

Add the leeks, 100 grams breadcrumbs and the cheese into the bowl. Mix into an even dough and shape sausages of it. The shaping should be easy with these proportions.

Prepare three plates side by side: the wheat flour on one, then the beaten egg whites and finally the rest of the breadcrumbs. Roll each sausage on these plates and in that order.

Bake the sausages at 180C for about 20 minutes until crispy and golden brown.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog