Lentil shepherd’s pie

A warming shepherd’s pie dish so belongs to this season. I made this one following my basic recipe with two types of lentils, onions, carrots and spices to add savoury flavour and all of that covered with a nice potato mash. The pie turned out very good. Now that I’m working a lot from home again, it’s nice to make large dishes that stretch to next day’s lunch just to be warmed up quickly.

Your VegHog

 

Lentil rice with roasted cauliflower and tahini sauce

 

I’ve had a busy weekend with cleaning and baking, as we had guests over last night. I made various veggie snacks for them and they went down a treat. Now I’m a bit tired today and just planning to take it easy and go for a little stroll in town. It’s a sunny day, so this seems like a good idea. What are you all up to?

Here is just a quick post of a recent dish. I made this vegan bowl of lentil rice with small pieces of spaghetti, roasted cauliflower, crispy baked tofu and tahini-lemon sauce. I just love this sort of bowls of food, as they are so comforting, but also a bit healthy.

Have a nice Sunday!

Your VegHog

 

Lentil shepherd’s pie

Here is my rustic lentil shepherd’s pie. It’s vegetarian, but also very easy to veganise by just substituting the butter in the mash. I think that this kind of pie could be also nice for the Christmas table.

I used black garlic in this recipe, but also normal garlic would be fine. Also the broadbean crush can be substituted by more lentils or other pulse crushes. Have a look at the recipe below, if I got you interested.

Lentil shepherd’s pie

Ingredients

500 g potatoes

25 g butter

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup beluga lentils

1/2 cup red lentils

1/2 cup dried broadbean crush

2 carrots

4 onions

4 cloves of black garlic

2 tbsp rapeseed oil

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp vegetable stock powder

1 tbsp vegetable stock extract

Method

Boil the potatoes until done and mash them with butter, salt and little of the potato cooking water. Set to side.

Chop the onions into half rings and caramelise them in the rapeseed oil until they are very soft and brown.

Chop the black garlic finely and add it to the onions.

Peel and cut the carrot into small pieces, and also add it to the pan.

Add the seasoning and the vegetable stock extract, and some liquid.

Add the lentils and broadbean crush. You can also cook the beluga lentils separately for a while, as they take a bit longer to cook than the other pulses.

Let simmer until everything is cooked nicely.

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

Bake at 180 C for about 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Spinach and lentil curry with coconut rice

How has your week been? I've been busy and had little time for blogging, which is always annoying. However now I'm going to dedicate more time for it over the weekend. I have today off from work, which means it's a long weekend for me. I got up bright and early today to enjoy the day fully and I'm soon heading to town to see what's going on in there. Tonight there's a gathering from my partner's work place, which could be quite nice as well.

And now to the recipe itself. A vegan curry is always a lovely lovely thing. I decided to make a nice and comforting curry full of good things. I used spinach, green lentils and potatoes as the main ingredients and spiced the curry with garam masala and turmeric. I served fluffy coconut rice on the side. I rarely use white rice, but sometimes this sort of “proper” basmati is so lovely to have. This is just the sort of dish that I could keep eating all autumn and winter, and why not also spring and summer. Have a look at the recipe below, which should serve four.

Ingredients

1 cup green lentils

8 potatoes

3 onions

3 garlic cloves

3 cm fresh ginger (similar amount to the garlic)

2 small chillies

3 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tbsp garam masala

160 ml coconut cream

2 bay leaves

1 tsp ground turmeric

Sprinkle of salt

200 g spinach

1 cup basmati rice

2-4 tbsp desiccated coconut

1 tbsp coconut oil

Method

Pre-cook the lentils and the potatoes separately. They don't have to be fully cooked, as they will cook further in the final curry mix.

Chop the onions, garlic, ginger and chillies finely. Cook the onion first in oil until slightly browned and caramelised. Then add the garlic, ginger and chilli and keep frying for a while.

Make the garam masala mix or use a pre-made variation and add about one tablespoon of the spice mix and stir it in to the pan. Here is for example one of my own garam masala instructions, but nowadays I just randomly add the ingredients and grind.

Then add the coconut cream, bay leaves, ground turmeric and salt. Also add the pre-cooked lentils and potatoes and let simmer. Stir the spinach in only just before serving, as it doesn't need long until it wilts.

Cook the rice while the curry is simmering. Dry toast the desiccated coconut in a pan and stir it into the cooked rice. Also add some coconut oil to the rice.

Add any more seasoning to the curry to taste and serve it with the rice.

This recipe will be my Eat Your Greens entry, which I'm hosting this month, taking turns every other month with Shaheen. Remember that you still have plenty of time to submit your entries!

I also want to share this recipe with My Legume Love Affair cooking challenge that concentrates on vegetarian dishes that contain legumes. This month's event is the 100^th edition hosted by Siri from Cooking With Siri and co-hosted by Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen. Many congratulations for making it to the 100^th edition, that's amazing!

Enjoy your weekend!

Your VegHog

Dhal

I cooked a dhal for a change and it was very nice. I also noticed that I haven’t posted a dhal here on the blog yet. Dhal is Sanskrit for "to split" referring to the split pulses used in this dish. It’s basically a curried stew especially cooked in India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Dhal is a perfect dish for the budget cooking week, The VegHog's Cheap Eats Week, as making it isn’t very expensive. It adds important proteins to the nutrition and can easily be made from dried pulses, so it’s a perfect filling dish when you want to save a little bit of money. There are several variations of which you can choose your favourite.

I decided to serve my dhal with some homemade chapatis on the side to make the meal a bit more filling. Of course also rice can be had on the side. Homemade chapatis fit the budget theme quite well, as would basically any homemade bread.

Ingredients for the dhal

1 onion

4 garlic cloves

Fresh ginger (similar amount to garlic)

1 red chilli

1 cup red lentils

½ cup puy lentils

1 tsp vegetable stock powder

100 g tomatoes

1 tsp ground mustard seeds

2 tsp ground cumin seeds

4 dried curry leaves

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp tomato purée

2 tbsp vegetable oil

Fresh coriander to taste

Ingredients for the chapatis

100 g wheat flour

150 g spelt flour

50 g wheat flour for the shaping

1 tsp salt

250 ml cold water

Method

Cook the lentils separately with a little added vegetable stock powder.

Chop the onion, garlic, ginger and chilli finely and start cooking them in oil.

Add the chopped tomatoes and seasoning. Cook for a few minutes and add the lentils into the mix.

Cook until the flavours have blended nicely.

I followed a chapati recipe on BBC Food, but slightly changed it by using partly spelt flour and reducing the amount of flour for the shaping, but you can find the original recipe here. The dough was nice and stretchy after a while of kneading and easy to roll out. The thinly rolled chapati are then just cooked on a hot pan. Serve them together with the dhal.

I want to share this dhal recipe with the cooking challenge Credit Crunch Munch for March. The challenge is from Fuss Free Flavours and Fab Food 4 All and hosted this month by Travels for Taste blog.

Your VegHog

Halloumi, lentil and freekeh salad

Here is a very quick salad post for today. I made this salad last week, but didn't get around to posting it yet. I just came back from London, so I haven't had loads of time writing a post today. I thought a weekday salad could be a good post for today. The tomatoes in this salad are homegrown, which I guess makes it a bit more interesting. I have some proud bush tomatoes on my balcony with tasty produce, only some of them turned out to be very small.

I don't really have exact ingredient amounts for this salad either, as the size can be variable depending on for how many people you make it. The clue is again that there are some warm and some cold components, but it's equally enjoyable as a fully cold salad. I have made good guesses below, which catered for light evening salads for two people and for work lunches the next day.

Ingredients

½ cup green lentils

½ cup freekeh

1 tbsp vegetable stock powder

250 g halloumi

1 tsp vegetable oil

2 gem lettuce

100 g cherry tomatoes

Basil infused olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Salt

Ground black pepper

Method

Cook the lentils and freekeh in separate pots with a little addition of vegetable stock powder until they are done.

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

Cut the cherry tomatoes in halves and the gem lettuce into thin strips.

Combine the warm and cold components on a plate and drizzle with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Koshari

Koshari is an Egyptian dish made with rice, lentils, macaroni, vermicelli and chickpeas and topped with a tomato sauce and fried onions. I've had it quite a few times as street food and have totally fallen in love with the dish. What scared me off making it myself previously, was the amount of components. I was basically fearing I wouldn't have enough pots to cook everything separately. Now I felt brave enough and started making Koshari. It turned out that it wasn't such a horrible multi-tasking exercise, but quite straight forward instead, as most of the processes are simple. I used for example ready made fried onions to save that stage. There can be several variations of Koshari and the below recipe is my version of the dish.

Tomato sauce:

300 g tomatoes

1 small onion

3 garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp tomato purée

Chilli flakes

Ground cumin

Ground nutmeg

Ground black pepper

Salt

Other ingredients:

1 cup brown rice

1 cup puy lentils

1 cup macaroni

1 cup vermicelli pasta

1 can chickpeas

2 vegetable stock cubes

½ tsp smoked paprika

Fried onions

Method

First make the tomato sauce. Chop the onion and garlic cloves finely, cook them in olive oil, add the tomatoes and cook slowly under lid. Season to taste. Add more chilli flakes and other seasoning, if you prefer a very spicy sauce. When the sauce is almost done, start with the other preparations.

Cook the rice and the lentils with a vegetable stock cube each in separate pots. Basically everything is cooked separately and layered into a bowl in the end.

Cook the macaroni and vermicelli (break the vermicelli into about 1 cm long pieces first).

Warm the chickpeas up and season them with smoked paprika. Normally I would use dried chickpeas, but this time I chose the canned ones in order to save some additional cooking time.

Layer the components, top with tomato sauce and fried onions and enjoy.

This dish is also my contribution to this month's My Legume Love Affair (MLLA) #86 cooking challenge. It's hosted this month by Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen. MLLA was started by Susan from The Well Seasoned Cook and now administered by Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen. I thought that koshari would be a suitable dish to this challenge, as it's quite rich on lentils and puy lentils.

Have a good week everyone!

Your VegHog

Couscous with red lentils and roasted carrots

This dish has everything I want from an easy weekday dish. It's simple, quick, cheap, tasty, fairly light and on top of it all, it's vegan! Those are the things I tend to appreciate most after a long day at work. Cooking is a relaxing method for me, but sometimes I just need to get the food ready quicker with less hassle. This week this was my Monday evening dinner and here's how I made it.

Ingredients

6 medium carrots

1+1 tbsp olive oil

3 tbsp sunflower seeds

3 tbsp pumpkin seeds

1 cup couscous

1 vegetable stock cube

½ cup red lentils

2 shallots

3 garlic cloves

1-2 tsp ras el hanout

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Cut the carrots into about 2cm long thin sticks, brush them with olive oil and roast in the oven until soft.

Toast the seeds in the oven.

Cook the couscous in water with the vegetable stock cube and also cook the lentils separately.

Chop the shallots and garlic cloves finely and start cooking them in olive oil.

Once they are softened, add the lentils, spices, couscous, seeds and carrots.

Serve warm as a main or a side. This isn't too bad cold either.

Your VegHog

Bean and lentil burgers

My weekly cooking plan didn't go exactly as planned. I was keeping up pretty well during the week, but on the weekend I started slipping. I want to thank everyone for the comments throughout the week how organised I am, but now I have to admit that I didn't quite keep to the plan. On Friday I had a lovely pub meal as planned. I had a wonderful char-grilled pepper and halloumi ciabatta with thin chips and coleslaw on the side washed down with local ciders. On Saturday however I didn't make the veggie burgers, as originally planned. We decided to go to New Forest for a relaxing stroll and I didn't have any time for cooking. I will post photos from this walk later as well, but I'm making the veggie burgers today. This means the vegetarian Sunday roast won't be made at this occasion, but I don't mind that much, as it's quite warm today and I don't want to spend all day roasting vegetables and having the hot oven on. 

I was contemplating long and hard what kind of burger patties I would make this time and decided for a mix of different beans and lentils. That kind of veggie burgers tend to work always. Here is my recipe for today's burgers.

Ingredients

½ cup dried bean mix (Black eyed beans, black turtle beans, butter beans, haricot beans, lima beans, pinto beans, red kidney beans, rose cocoa beans, alubia beans, mung beans)

½ cup red lentils

¼ cup puy lentils

1 large shallot

3 garlic cloves

1 tsp chilli flakes

Ground black pepper

Salt

Ground cumin

Smoked paprika

2 eggs

1 cup breadcrumbs

Vegetable oil for frying

Served with: homemade spelt and carrot rolls, char-grilled bell peppers, fried red onions, smoked cheese, pea shoots, fresh peas and plum tomatoes.

Method

Soak the dried beans overnight. Then boil them for about one hour until done. Also boil the lentils until done. Actually I cooked the lentils extra mushy so that they are better binding agents for the burger batter. Drain well and let them cool down.

Chop the shallot and garlic finely and mix them with the lentils and beans. Season the mix with chilli flakes, ground black pepper, salt, ground cumin and smoked paprika.

Add the eggs and breadcrumbs (monitor the amount of the breadcrumbs while adding, as you might need less or slightly more than given in the ingredients) and mix into an even batter.

Heat vegetable oil in a pan, shape burgers from the batter and fry them on both sides until golden brown.

Serve with your favourite veggie burger fittings and enjoy!

Your VegHog