Tomato and pepper filo tart

Filo pastry is quite fiddly to work with due to its ultra thin structure, but for this tart you don't have to do much work with it. I wanted to make a filo tart for a while now and got inspired for this tomato variation through some really nice selected tomatoes that I purchased. And this is how to make this very easy and tasty tart.

Ingredients

2 romano peppers

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

Olive oil

270g filo pastry

200g different coloured small tomatoes

100g emmental cheese

Basil

Black pepper

Salt

Method

Chop the peppers, onion and garlic finely. Fry them slowly in a pan until the onions and peppers get some sweetness and are soft. Season the pan contents with pepper and salt. Take the pan off heat and add grated emmental cheese to it.

Slice the tomatoes and chop fresh basil leaves. Prepare a baking tin by greasing it. Layer several filo sheets on it and brush olive oil between each of the sheets. Also brush the sides with olive oil. Pre-heat the oven to 180C and pre-bake just the filo pastry for 5-8 minutes. This prevents it becoming soggy when baked with the filling.

Place the pepper mix on the pre-baked filo, then the tomato slices (make patterns with the different coloured tomatoes to make a nice looking presentation). Sprinkle the chopped basil on the top and bake for about 15 minutes.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog

Arundel food festival

I had a really wonderful day out yesterday visiting the Arundel food festival. There were plenty of stalls offering local goodies and I made great purchases in the farmers' market and in the shops.

  

These Cheddar and watercress scones were really lovely.

Arundel is a lovely little town in the South Downs with great independent shops, restaurants and pubs. I missed to visit the town's main attraction, the 11^th Century Arundel Castle, due to rain, but on the outside it looked magnificent and I want to visit it soon. If you ever have the opportunity to visit this food festival or Arundel please do, it is an exquisite place!

Interior of a local shopping centre.

One of the highlights of my visit was the local cider and beer festival at the Red Lion pub right at the centre of the town. They served this very tasty vegetarian Medieval Scandinavian style beer soup in an authentic jug. It was very savoury and tasted strongly of beer and Gruyère cheese. It totally hit the spot after walking around the town and browsing the food stalls. I tasted several local ciders there one being an interesting cloudy apple cider with blackberries.

I also shopped diverse things like mulled cider, cheeses, walnut bread and tomatoes at the local delicatessen shop, Pallant of Arundel, and my best find was a huge flying saucer squash. That will surely be featuring in one of my dishes soon. In general it was nice to see a variety of different squashes and pumpkins offered everywhere. I love this season so much!

Your VegHog

Baked thick-cut potato chips

I'm very fond of Irish style chunky potato chips as this sort of fries are so nice and full of potato flavour. They make a lovely meal on their own or a brilliant side to vegetarian burgers and other dishes. These chips are surprisingly easy to make as oven chips, no deep frying or loads of oil needed.

So I made mine in the oven and served them with a homemade tomato sauce, peas and roasted munchkin pumpkins. The tomatoes for the red sauce were from my own balcony garden and it was just a basic tomato and garlic sauce. Munchkin pumpkins are so cute and seasonal and I eat them a lot at the moment. I brushed them with oil and roasted in the oven for about 30 minutes. You can remove the seeds before roasting if you prefer as the munchkins are tiny, but the seeds are still normal pumpkin seed size.

This recipe makes two portions of chips or side chips for a few more portions and this is all you'll need:

2 large oven potatoes

Sea salt

Paprika powder

Vegetable oil

Peel the potatoes and cut them into long thick chips. Boil them in water for about five minutes and pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Place the chips into an oven dish and brush them with vegetable oil. Sprinkle sea salt and little paprika powder on them. I tend to add paprika powder although I don't think it will be added to the authentic Irish chips.

Bake the chips for about 40 minutes until they are fully baked and slightly crispy. Turn them over couple of times during baking.

Enjoy! What's your favourite combination for such chips?

Your VegHog

End of the balcony growing season

We are quickly approaching the end of October and I have moved some of my balcony plants indoors, or removed them completely, as the nights are getting chillier. The large pepper plant and some other plants are still outside and growing, but soon I will clean the balcony fully up for the winter. I hope that last year's small Christmas tree will be able to delight us this year as well. For now it's looking pretty good.

I have already moved the last tomatoes indoors for blushing. I cut the branches with fruit off of the plants and put them into a vase. That made a very nice autumnal flower arrangement for the kitchen, and it's very nice to follow the tomatoes as they ripen.

Indoors I already have several different herbs and chilies growing. I hope those will keep thriving throughout the winter.

And this lovely hoglet with its basil is coming in too!

Pear and walnut salad

I wanted to post a fresh and quick salad on this occasion just as a change to the autumn style dishes. This salad can be enjoyed at any time of the year. A pear and walnut salad is a classic, but I wanted to make somehow a different one. I first was reluctant to use a garlic and honey vinaigrette in this salad, but it turned out to be a rather interesting choice.

The salad:

Pear

Walnuts

Rocket

Ricotta cheese

The vinaigrette:

Garlic

Olive oil

Honey

Vinegar

Salt

Make the vinaigrette first. You could also use another salad sauce for this salad or even leave it as it is as pear is quite a juicy fruit.

Heat some olive oil in a pan and fry the finely chopped garlic. Add honey and vinegar and simmer for a while. Add salt and the vinaigrette is done. Add more of any ingredient depending on the taste.

Roast the walnuts in a dry pan for a few minutes. Peel the pear and make thin shavings of it with a peeling knife. There are quite many possibilities to present the pear, but this time I decided to make the thin shavings.

Mix the rocket leaves with the vinaigrette and place them on a plate. Put the walnuts, pear and ricotta on the top and the salad is ready to be enjoyed. Easy!

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog

Chocolate chip and pecan muffins

I baked chocolate chip and pecan nut muffins and I want to share the recipe with you.

As decoration for these muffins I used those cute Dalecarlian chocolate horses Dalahästar that I purchased in Sweden this summer. They gave the muffins quite a cute look. Otherwise I decided against an extra chocolate icing not to make the muffins too sweet.

This recipe makes about 12 muffins that are very easy to bake.

Ingredients

300g flour

50g butter

80g sugar

1tsp baking powder

2 eggs

225ml milk

100g milk chocolate chips

50g pecan nuts chopped

1tsp vanilla extract

Dalecarlian chocolate horses or chocolate icing (optional)

Method

Stir the flour and baking powder together. Add the soft butter and pinch it until the dough has reached a similar texture to bread crumbs. Then add the sugar.

Mix the milk, eggs and vanilla extract in a separate bowl and then add these to the flour mixture. Add the chocolate chips and chopped pecan nuts. Mix the dough and pour it into muffin cases.

Bake them at 200C for about 15-20 minutes until the dough is fully baked.

Let the muffins cool and decorate them either with some chocolate icing or chocolates in horse shape or any other shapes. These muffins are best to be enjoyed with some coffee.

Your VegHog