Botanic Garden Oxford

I have blogged about Oxford's Botanic Garden before (post here), and I got the chance to visit there again. This time was kind of special for me, as I have been there many times, but always in January or December. Now in late May the garden was blooming, wonderfully green and the weather was gorgeous. There were nice vegetable patches and beautiful exotic plants. That is why I thought that the garden and plant friends among you might enjoy a little photo collection from there.  

Soya fillets on a vegetable bed

I've had a good week so far, a couple of days off and a short trip to Oxford, from which I will be posting a few photos soon. Here is a new recipe for a light meal that I cooked inspired by my new dried soya fillets. The fillets are quite versatile to use and now I combined them with a green stir fry type of a dish. All in all this is a quick and easy vegan dish and here is how I made it.

Ingredients

6-8 dried soya fillets

1 red onion

2 carrots

150 g radishes

230 g purple sprouting broccoli

230 g pak choi

1 garlic clove

1 small chilli

1 tsp vegetable oil

2 tbsp sesame oil

3 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine

Method

Prepare the soya fillets and chop all the veg. My soya fillets needed to be cooked in water for 10 minutes and then they could be fried. Fry the soya fillets so that they get a bit firmer and add a little soy sauce.

Chop the red onion into half rings and the carrots into thin sticks. Slice the radishes and the pak choi. Chop the garlic and chilli finely.

Fry the onions, garlic, chilli and carrots in the vegetable oil. Season with sesame oil, soy sauce and Shaoxing rice wine and add the radishes and purple sprouting broccoli. Let simmer until the vegetables are cooked, yet a little bit with bite or crunch. Add the pak choi only just before serving to warm through and get slightly infused by the sauce.

Serve the vegetables with the soya fillets and enjoy!

I'll share this recipe with the Eat Your Greens vegetarian food blogging challenge that's all about green vegetables. This challenge is hosted by Shaheen from the A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table.  

Have a nice week!

Your VegHog

New Forest walk

Last Saturday we went for a nice walk in the New Forest National Park. I always enjoy a visit there very much and this time was no exception. The weather was good and there were plenty of ponies and cows about and plants were thriving everywhere.

Here are some of the photos I took during our walk. I'm sorry about the short text, but I'm about to go on a short day trip again. I'll rather let the photos speak for themselves.

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

Vegetable grazing plate with hummus

Today I'm just grazing lightly on vegetables and hummus before tomorrow's English veggie breakfast and pub meal in the evening. Sometimes simple dishes that don't require a lot of cooking, but are still full of vegetable goodness, are the best choices as weekday meals. I can't believe it's yet another vegan meal! I've been cooking many vegan meals lately. Of course some cheese could be added, but is by no means necessary. This is what I used to make this vegetable grazing plate with hummus as a part of this week's cooking plan.  

Hummus

2 romano peppers

10 baby turnips

10 baby carrots

15 cherry plum tomatoes

1 cup mung bean sprouts

I cooked the double amount of chickpeas for yesterday's chickpea, spinach and potato curry and saved the half of them to make hummus for this dish. I also started sprouting the mung beans on Monday. 

I roasted the peppers, but everything else I ate raw and dipped to the lovely homemade hummus. I had to buy those cute baby turnips for their looks and they were indeed very tasty as well.

What would you put on such a grazing plate? Are you also crazy about hummus?

Have a lovely soon starting weekend!

Your VegHog