Green bean and wild garlic curry

It's the weekend again, and soon we'll be heading to a new streetfood market. It's been around now for a month or so, and it has already become one of our favourite places. I'm not sure yet, what I want to have for lunch, as there are quite many vegetarian options. In the evening we will go to a public viewing of the football world cup game Peru-Denmark in our local stadion. Let's see how our home team will do, while we have some beers and picnic on the grass. So that's pretty much the plan for today.

I've been cooking more light summer food lately: pasta dishes, halloumi salads, corn cobs, new potatoes, fresh peas etc., but now I made a vegan curry again after a little while. It was very nice and surprisingly summerly due to the ingredients. Have a look below, if you want to know how I made this curry.

Green bean and wild garlic curry

Ingredients

2 shallots

3 cloves of garlic

2 cm fresh ginger

1 red chilli

150 g green beans

50 g potatoes

1 can coconut milk

Vegetable oil

1 tbsp garam masala

1 tsp ground turmeric

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

2 tbsp tomato purée

Wild garlic stalks

Jasmine rice

Method

Chop the shallots, garlic, ginger, chilli, green beans and potatoes.

Cook the potato pieces in water until they are nearly done.

Heat vegetable oil in a pan, and start cooking the onion, followed by garlic, ginger and chilli.

Mix the spices into the onions and let fry for a couple of minutes.

Add the coconut milk, green beans and tomato purée to the pan, and let it simmer.

Cook the rice while the curry is simmering.

When the curry is nearly done, add the potatoes and while garlic and cook them for a few minutes in the curry.

Serve with the rice and enjoy!

I'm sharing this recipe with this month's Eat Your Greens. The challenge is hosted this month by Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen, and co-hosted by me. You can read more about the challenge via the link, and do also visit Shaheen's lovely vegetarian blog from Wales.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Your VegHog

White asparagus pasta with a tomato and mozzarella salad

It has been a lazy weekend for me, and the Sunday shall continue the same way. We will just go to town shortly and then for dinner to a friend's place. It's still sunny, and the plants are desperate for some rain, but some has finally been forecast for next week. Before that, we will definitely enjoy this warm Sunday, as there is another busy week ahead.

Light pasta dishes are simply the best in this hot season, especially as you can get all the lovely seasonal produce. Now I made a white asparagus pasta with some fresh pea shoots on the top accompanied by a tomato, olive and mozzarella salad. It was a really nice light dinner, and I'm sure that I will have many more dishes like this during the summer.

White asparagus pasta

Ingredients

Fresh spinach tagliatelle

Bunch of white asparagus

1 fresh onion

2 garlic cloves

25 g butter

100 ml white wine

1 lemon's juice

1 tsp sea salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

Fresh pea shoots as topping

Served with a fresh tomato, mozzarella and olive salad on the side.

Method

Prepare the asparagus by peeling it and cutting it into small pieces.

Chop the onion and garlic finely.

Melt the butter in a pan and start lightly frying the asparagus.

After a couple of minutes, also add the onion and garlic, followed in couple of minutes by the white wine and lemon juice.

Let simmer for a few moments, and season with sea salt and ground black pepper.

Cook the pasta, and mix it with the sauce.

Serve with the salad and enjoy!

Your VegHog

In My Kitchen in June

Here is a little update from my kitchen in June. There seems to be quite a lot of pasta, but also some other things.

Fresh Danish peas have arrived! This means that my summer is saved! I love snacking on these peas, sometimes a bit too much. It just brings back childhood memories gathering fresh peas on huge fields. Those were the days.

There's new organic animal pasta in my kitchen this month, zoopasta tricolore, that looks so cute. There is also a nice game on the back of the box, surely it's not just for children! What sort of dish should I make with the pasta? I normally use animal pasta in soups, but it could also be something else this time...

I just had to get this blue masa harina flour for making tortillas to bring some more colour to my dishes. I already added some of the flour to homemade rolls, but not enough to turn them blue.

This Upton's jackfruit has such a nice branding, and I hope that it will be tasty too, as I haven't tried it yet. I got natural and barbecue flavours, and if they are any good, I might try the Thai flavoured one as well. I just need to decide, what kind of dish to make with them.

As you may know, I often bake rolls with vegetables myself, especially with carrots. I was now delighted to detect a new product in my local shop, rolls containing spinach, beans and carrots. They were very nice, but of course I will still be baking my own ones as well.

I was planning to use this vegan pasta topping in a dish for a vegan guest, but then I forgot about it, and ended up cooking something else than a pasta dish anyway. This means I have yet to try this topping, but I'm sure it will be savoury and herby.

Kuhbonbons are legendary sweets, and actually these vegan versions of the classic were very nice. 

I absolutely love wild Danish cider by Æblerov, and now had this pear cider of theirs. It was wonderful and refreshing, and just the perfect drink for the summer.

I got these beautiful flowers for myself to cheer me up. I divided them into two small vases and they were absolutely delightful and quite durable.

I bough these black olives mainly because of the tin, and I may not open them anytime soon.

We had a vegan visitor from England, and he wanted to have vegan English breakfast. Hmm, I do prefer the continental one and he hadn't been outside of England for that long yet, but sometimes a veggie fry up can be nice. So I made this slightly non-traditional cooked breakfast with vegan sausages, potato rostis, mushrooms, tomatoes, fresh spinach, toast and baked chickpeas (as I didn't have any suitable beans at hand, but chickpeas were maybe nicer in my opinion). 

Here is just a random weekday pasta with tomato and mozzarella, a frequent visitor in my kitchen, especially now in the summer season.

We've also had a lot of homemade mac'n'cheese lately. This one was made by my partner, and he adds a little bit more spices to the mix than I do, which is nice.

I am sharing this post with Sherrry from Sherry's Pickings, who is hosting the In My Kitchen challenge as usual.

Your VegHog

Quick-pickled red onion and vegan hot dogs

You can hardly eat at a vegan restaurant or look at Instagram without seeing pickled red onions on every dish these days. And yes, I've joined the crowd as well. I initially made this jar of pickled red onion to be eaten with vegan hotdogs, but now I'm adding them everywhere. They do add a nice zing and colour to dishes, so why not!

Quick-pickled red onion

Ingredients

1 red onion

½ cup cider vinegar

1 tbsp sugar

2 tsp salt

1 tbsp pink peppercorns

Method

Slice the onion.

Heat the vinegar and mix in the sugar, salt, pink peppercorns and onion slices.

Seal in a container and let rest in the fridge overnight.

Serve as an addition with salads, burgers, hot dogs, anything you can think of.

Your VegHog

Fishless finger sandwiches for breakfast

I just had my one year anniversary of living in Denmark. It's incredible how quickly the time has passed. I've really been enjoying every minute here, and I'm so happy that I took that decision to move. It has been a very busy year with many things going on in my life and many changes, but luckily I have managed to blog at least a little bit. And of course I'm planning to blog further.

The lifestyle in Denmark is more similar to what I'm used to from Finland, so it was easy to feel like home straight away. Copenhagen is a very international city and there are so many interesting places to see. I don't even want to travel anywhere else on holiday, I'm just happy strolling around in my own city. I've learned a lot of Danish and can already have short conversations in Danish. It's only hard to practise, as everyone switches quickly to English, if you're not fast enough, but I do like to try.

Now to today's dish. I wanted to celebrate the anniversary with a vegetarian version of a weird and wonderful British dish: the humble fish finger sandwich. I never managed to eat anything like it while I lived in Britain, so I wanted to create a version of this classic dish now. Do Brits even eat this, or is it just an urban legend?

I recently bought some vegan fishless fingers and they were perfect for this dish. They don't taste fishy at all, which is good, but the texture seemed to be similar to what I remember of fish fingers. I refined the sandwiches a little bit by using sourdough bread and topping them with tomatoes, spinach and vegan chipotle mayonnaise. I don't think that those things are included in the traditional recipe. This was actually quite a nice dish and definitely hit the spot as breakfast. 

Have a nice Sunday!

Your VegHog

Eat Your Greens May Round Up

This is the round up for Eat Your Greens cooking challenge in May. I hosted the challenge this month, and in June it will be Shaheen's turn to host again. I can't believe that no one shared a green asparagus dish, but it was a great seasonal selection anyway. So without further ado, let's admire the green recipes that were shared with us in May!

My co-host Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen shared a Versatile Dippy Green Pate and Pesto Presto Pasta that contains a lot of spinach and of course gets its lovely greennes from it. The pate really has many uses, as it can be enjoyed as a spinach cream cheese spread on crackers, mixed into olive pasta, or whatever combination you desire. It's a really good idea for summer parties too.

Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen cooked Savory Sage Green and Yellow Split Pea Rice Patties with Apple Chia Seed Compote. The patties themselves contain a huge amount of greens: split green peas, green apples, scallions, green chillies, peas, sage, thyme and oregano, and they are served with an arugula, watercress and microgreens salad. There is also a delightful apple and chia seed compote with cinnamon. This sounds and looks like a wonderful plate of food. I'm always ready for a little homemade vegetable patty.

Linsy from Home Cook Food made a Thai Green Curry Ramen Bowl, which is just a comfort dish after my own heart. She used green curry paste, green Thai chillies, lemon grass, lime juice and coriander leaves in the recipe, so there are plenty of greens in there. I would be happy to tuck into this anytime, and like Linsy mentions, the ingredients can easily be substituted by others that you happen to have at hand or feel like eating.

Teresa from Affectioknit blog posted Spinach Molds that were served with tofu and sweetcorn on the side. Again of course spinach is the main green here. The molds are creamy and have a nice pale green colour from the spinach. I think that more food should be served in molded shapes, and might attempt something similar myself. I do admire, how these hold well together. I'm sure it's not easy to get the texture right.

My own contribution in May was a Wild garlic tart. I didn't get to forage the wild garlic myself, but I enjoyed it immensely on this tart and in other dishes too. It does add a nice splash of green colour when piled on top of a tart. I also used some fresh onions with their green stalks and fresh thyme in this recipe that were mixed into the potato filling for some additional greens.

Thank you so much everyone for taking part, and also many thanks to our faithful readers! I look forward to seeing your creations also in June.

Your VegHog

Wild garlic tart

Wild garlic is just a beautiful, beautiful thing, isn't it? However I wasn't able to forage any wild garlic yet this year, as I've only seen it grow in the Botanical Gardens, and of course I couldn't take it from there. But luckily for me, the local market also sold some, and to very reasonable prices at that, so I got a good supply of it to make a few dishes.

I think that the stalks look great, so it's always a shame to hide them somewhere in the dish. I wanted to make a potato tart, where the wild garlic is added fresh on the top after the baking, and gets the centre stage. It was a very nice tart with some added cheese, and I hope to be able to make another one, while there is still some wild garlic around. Here is my recipe for it.

Wild garlic tart

Ingredients

Bunch of wild garlic

200 g potatoes

100 g grated cheese

1 fresh onion with stalks

2 garlic cloves

Vegetable oil for frying

Fresh thyme

1 tsp sea salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

25 g butter

Shortcrust pastry

Method

Cook the potatoes and mash them. Them season them and mix with the cheese.

Chop the onion and garlic finely, and fry them lightly in the vegetable oil, and also mix them in with the potatoes.

Heat butter in a pan with thyme, salt and pepper, and cook it until it turns brown. This mixture will be poured on the tart later.

Spread the pastry, and spread the potato mix on it.

Bake the tart at 200 C for about 15-20 minutes until golden brown.

Place the wild garlic stalks on top of the tart and drizzle the brown butter on the top. Enjoy!

I'm sharing this recipe with the Eat Your Greens challenge, which I'm hosting this month, and co-hosting with Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen blog. You still have a little while to take part, so submit your recipe!

Your VegHog