Pasta with creamy mushroom sauce

It has been a grey and rainy weekend over here, so I've decided to stay mainly indoors, cook, clean and watch TV. It has been quite nice not having to go anywhere for a change and just spend some time at home. Last week was hectic with several work dinners and parties, so I really appreciate some quiet time at home. Yesterday we did a big food shop for the whole week, and I'm looking forward to cooking with those veggies and products.

Now to this dish. Pasta with mushroom sauce is one of my all time favourite dishes. I make it over and over again with slight variations. I get real cravings for it sometimes. I made this sauce with closed cup mushrooms and oat cream, and I served the pasta with a simple tomato and mozzarella salad on the side. This combination is just heaven to me.

Enjoy your Sunday everyone!

Your VegHog

Mushroom rye breads

I often start Saturdays with a hearty breakfast, as I then finally have time to sit down and enjoy the breakfast after a busy week. I really like the moment when I can drink my coffee in peace and eat something tasty while browsing other blogs or writing my own posts. So here we are again in this situation. I'm planning to have a quiet weekend at home and it starts with these vegan mushroom rye breads.

Ingredients

150 g baby chestnut mushrooms

2 garlic cloves

2 tbsp olive oil

Few fresh basil leaves

Sprinkle of salt and ground black pepper

6 rye bread slices

Method

Slice the mushrooms and chop the garlic cloves finely. Cook them in olive oil until most of the excess mushroom liquid has evaporated again.

Season with fresh basil, salt and pepper.

Toast the rye bread slices and place the mushroom mix onto the breads.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

My student time standard dish

Obviously my money saving theme week made me think of times when I had tighter budgets and what I was eating then, so I wanted to contribute one of my student time favourite dishes to The VegHog's Cheap Eats Week. What would be better than sharing a short recap with you how my culinary life used to be back then and also hearing if you have any nice student time recipes to share!

When I first moved from home at 19 in order to live and study in another country and a city that I didn't know before, I wasn't the greatest cook. My mum and grandmother had been spoiling me too much with their lovely cooking, so I had only occasionally made some basic dishes like homemade pizza. I started finding more interest in cooking when I became a vegetarian as a teenager, but I didn't make great experiments back then. My cooking was more about just leaving the meat out, unless I tried some more experimental recipes from various cookbooks or magazines.

This kind of creamy mushroom sauce with pasta that I cooked now was basically my go to dish as a student. I loved creamy sauces back then and found that they went particularly well with pasta. I normally just added an onion and a vegetable of my choice, of which mushrooms stayed my favourite, and simmered them with cream to make a sauce. I seasoned the sauce quite discreetly with salt and pepper and very rarely some herbs. It was a cheap and filling dish to make, also fairly quick, so it was perfect for a busy student. To my horror I have to say that I quite often even used tinned mushrooms... not the greatest I would say now, but cheap nevertheless.

Sometimes I still get cravings for such a sauce and pasta and then nothing can stop me. This is today's variation from my student time favourite, perhaps a little more refined. Certainly back then I only very rarely used fresh herbs and the cream was dairy and not oat cream, also the pasta was the cheapest variation.

Ingredients

250 g closed cup button mushrooms

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

250 ml oat cream

1 tsp vegetable stock powder

Salt to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

Fresh basil leaves

Fusilli or other pasta

Grated cheese

Method

Slice the mushrooms and chop the onion and garlic finely.

Start cooking the onion and garlic in olive oil and after a while add the mushroom slices. Cook until excess liquid has left the mushrooms and they are lightly browned.

Add the oat cream and let simmer at low to medium heat until the cream has been infused with lovely mushroom, onion and garlic flavours.

Season and let simmer some more.

Cook the pasta and serve it with the sauce and some grated cheese.

What do you think of this dish? And please also note on some of the photos a few original books from my study time, Nibelungenlied in Middle High German with High German translation. That's some of the best stuff in the whole wide world and I miss studying those books so much!

Your VegHog

Bratkartoffeln – German style fried potatoes

I'm off to Germany tonight!! I'm so happy to have holiday and be able to visit my old home country. I try to post something from there, but if I don't manage, please don't wonder where I am, I'll be back very soon.

Before I'd leave, I wanted to make a vegetarian German dish and chose the good old Bratkartoffeln (fried potatoes) this time. They can be close to heaven when made correctly with a crispy surface and soft middle with an extinct taste. It helps, if the potatoes are cooked the previous day and then directly fried in hot oil and butter. I prefer adding some butter, as it gives them some extra flavour, but you can easily veganise this dish by using plant substitutes for butter. I served the Bratkartoffeln with some fried chestnut mushrooms as a side and here's how I made them.

Ingredients

500 g potatoes

1 large onion

2 garlic cloves

1 tbsp vegetable oil

25 g butter

Salt

Ground black pepper

Parsley

Method

Boil the potatoes in water on the previous night, cool down and store in the fridge overnight. The next day cut them into generous slices or wedges. I left the skins on on mine, but you can also peel them, if you prefer.

Heat the oil and butter in a pan and add the potatoes. Fry them until they are crispy and golden brown.

Chop the onion and garlic finely. Fry them in a separate pan in some oil and add them to the potatoes once they are soft and slightly browned.

Season the dish to taste and enjoy!

Bis bald!

Euer vegetarischer Igel

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

Stuffed portobello mushrooms with pearled spelt

I think that stuffed mushrooms are always a good idea and I have served them in a variety of combinations. I quickly came up with these ones stuffed with pearled spelt for a light weekday dinner.

Four stuffed portobellos make a neat starter for four people or a main for two people with some side dishes.

Ingredients

4 portobello mushrooms

1 shallot

2 garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

½ cup pearled spelt

1 vegetable stock cube

50 g mature cheddar

Fresh sage leaves

Salt and pepper to taste

10 g pine nuts

Method

Remove the stalks of the mushrooms and chop the stalks finely. Also chop the shallot and garlic. Cook these in olive oil for a few minutes and then add the pearled spelt, vegetable stock cube and about 250 ml water. Let it simmer for about 15 minutes until the spelt is cooked and season the mix with salt, pepper and sage.

Grate the cheese and mix with the spelt. Stuff the mushrooms with the mix. Coarsely chop the pine nuts and sprinkle on top of the mushrooms.

Bake at 180C for about 15 minutes. Serve instantly and enjoy! Very easy!

Your VegHog