Pasta salad

The weekend has once again arrived. Somehow January is just rushing by. Normally it feels like such a long month, but now I think that it has gone almost a little bit too quickly. It's still very warm in Denmark for the time of the year. I guess, we won't be seeing much snow or ice this winter.

A pasta salad is a nice and simple weekday lunch. You can add to it almost anything you have. We tend to make a pasta salad at Christmas with chickpeas and apples. It's quite a nice and more unusual combo. This one is more of a classic with olives and sundried tomatoes and of course olive oil.

Simple ingredients:

Pasta

Sundried tomatoes

Olives

Olive oil

Salt

Ground black pepper

Fresh parsley

Cook the pasta, cool and mix it with the chopped sundried tomatoes and olives. Season with olive oil, salt, ground black pepper and fresh parsley.

Have a nice weekend!

Your VegHog

Bruschettas

It's a sunny morning here in Copenhagen for a change, but we have a little chore to do before we can go out. We need to move our stuff out from the loft room to the new basement storage, as the new house owners will expand the loft to apartments. Luckily we don't have so much stuff up there, just some mainly empty moving boxes. But I will miss the cosy wooden hideaway, which is a proper room with a view over the rooftops. It will be more handy to have the stuff in the basement though, as we live on the first floor. Otherwise I don't have any plans for today, but will go for a walk at least, as the weather is nice.

I made these tomato-olive and plain olive bruschettas yesterday for brunch and they went down very well. They were topped with garlic, olive oil, salt, ground black pepper, wild garlic, mozzarella and either just green olives or green olives and cherry tomatoes. I bought the bread to a reduced price, as I went to the supermarket in the evening. That's such a handy way to save money and still get fresh bread from the day.

Your VegHog

Tahini pasta bowl

Have you tried pasta made from pulses that looks like rice yet? Well I have and I loved it. Mine was made from red lentils, chickpeas and peas and I made a vegan tahini pasta bowl with it. I added some mini macaroni, veggie balls, bell pepper, onion, garlic, garlic sprouts, fresh tomatoes and a sauce made with tahini and lemon to the bowl. It was such a nice and comforting bowl of food. A little splash of tahini and lemon can work wonders on any basic bowl.

I'm also including some live scenes from my tea towel to this post. January continues being grey and soggy here in Copenhagen, but the buildings are colourful and uplifting. We are off for a walk soon regardless the heavy winds.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Your VegHog

In My Kitchen in January 2020

It's a new year in the kitchen too and I'm very excited for it. In January money is typically tight and I try to live more healthily, but there normally also are several lapses to lovely comfort food. This post mainly contains Christmas presents and food souvenirs from Finland, but I'll also try to share a couple of simple vegan weekday meal ideas for those, who are taking part in Veganuary. Those are all dishes that I've recently cooked.

My partner got me this lovely pipe-smoking whale enamel cup for Christmas. It's just so cute. And my mum got me the new seasonal Moomin mug called “Tykkylumi”, “crown snow-load” which is heavy snow that accumulates on a tree. It's also very pretty and wintery. 

 

I bought my partner an indoor mini garden, a silicone base, where you can cultivate micro herbs. The packet came with radish, broccoli and rocket seeds. Soon you will probably see his plants decorating my food photos. 

 

One of my local supermarkets has started cultivating herbs on site to reduce the transport and water footprint. They have a big glass cupboard full of growing herbs, and you can buy them in small bunches and they survive for a while in little water at home. I think that it's a really neat idea. I also like the confetti coriander that they have, which I haven't seen elsewhere. It looks almost like dill with thin leaves, but of course tastes fully like normal coriander.

I also got this dill and parsley herb salt for Christmas, and my partner got the dreamy chocolate hippos.

Then to the food. These are all easy dishes to make and can be adapted depending on what ingredients you have available. They are also all vegan. I always want to avoid food waste, and in January I will be paying even more attention to that. The first dish is a mix of vegan “chicken” type of soya protein (Salty & Smoky Oumph) with tomatoes, bell peppers and aubergine served with hummus and flatbread. This dish can be made in so many variations and is easily adaptable. The smoky Oumph was very tasty and handy to store as a frozen product. 

 

This is a Thai noodle bowl with fried oat block (like tofu, but made from oats), broccoli and peanuts. So tasty, so warming and always one of my favourites. 

 

I fried the leftover beetroot gnocchi again and served it with roasted bell peppers stuffed with cherry tomatoes and garlic. It was a quick and effortless dish.

This is a bowl of koshari, which is Egyptian streetfood with rice, lentils, chickpeas, spicy tomato sauce and fried onions. It's so tasty and easy and affordable to make at home.

These are carrot wraps filled with Mexican style rice mix and fried oat block. I often make this sort of wraps full of warming spices and protein.

Here are some homemade lentil and broad bean frikadeller that can be enjoyed with many different dishes as a source of protein.

Polenta chips are easy to make and are so lovely when fried.

So this is how my year in the kitchen begins. As usual, I'm sharing this post with Sherry from Sherry's Pickings blog, who is again hosting the In My Kitchen series. I can only urge you to take part in the event or at least to read the shared blog posts, it's so much fun!

Have a great weekend!

Your VegHog

Beetroot gnocchi with marinated portobello mushrooms

The weekend has gone by so fast and I'm not sure, if I got anything done during it. At least I've returned to blogging after a little Christmas break, so that's good. I've also cooked and baked a lot this weekend. Today I want to share another vegan dish with you. This dish was our New Year's Eve's feast. After many roast dinners and Christmas food, I felt like something different and thought that homemade gnocchi would be nice.

These gnocchi are vegan and this recipe makes a gnocchi portion for four. I added some potato flour to the dough to make them stick better together and the end result was very firm and bouncy gnocchi. I only could have used more beetroot for a more vibrant colour, as these turned out rather salmon coloured than proper pink from beetroot. They were tasty though, and went down well with the marinated portobelli. I marinated the mushroom slices in olive oil, garlic, parsley, salt and pepper and pan-fried them before serving.

Beetroot gnocchi

Ingredients

700 g potatoes

300 g wheat flour

75 g potato flour

1 beetroot

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp vegetable oil

Method

Cook the potatoes, peel and mash them. Set them to side to cool down.

Chop the beetroot and cook it in water, then purée it in a blender. Add a little bit of water (about ¼ cup) to make a bit more liquid mix. Mix it in to the potatoes.

Mix the wheat and potato flour gradually with the potatoes to make a firm mix. Season it with salt and also add vegetable oil.

Shape gnocchi from the dough, give them a fork mark and cook them in boiling water. They are done when they float on the surface.

I additionally fried the gnocchi in vegan butter, but that's optional. I just prefer fried gnocchi to give it some more bite and colour.

Serve with the sides of your choice and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Crispy roast potatoes, vegan beurre blanc and 2020

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you got to the twenties alright. I've had a very nice break, first Christmas at home in Finland, and then New Year's celebrations here in Copenhagen. We even got some snow in Finland, even though it has been unusually warm for this time of the year.

I have some recipes waiting to be shared with you, and I can't wait to get started. I will be sharing many vegan dishes this month, and it could be handy in case you're taking part in Veganuary. I'm once again not doing it, as I've got too much left-over cheese from the festive period. However I will primarily be eating plantbased food.

Today's dish is what I cooked for my partner for his birthday dinner after Christmas, a fully plantbased meal of crispy roast potatoes, vegan beurre blanc, steamed brussels sprouts and a shop-bought vegetable frikadelle. It was a very nice meal, and it now occurred to me that it was almost identical with this dish from 2018! The funniest thing is that even the tea towel in the photos is the same! Well old habits... but this time the dish was vegan, and I think that there were also improvements in the roast potatoes. You can check the recipe for the roast potatoes in that old post and here's the recipe for the vegan beurre blanc. I used Vegan Block by Naturli, and it worked here very nicely.

Vegan beurre blanc

1 shallot

150 ml white wine

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

125 g vegan butter

1 tsp yeast flakes

Pink peppercorns

Green peppercorns

Chop the shallot finely and heat it with the wine and vinegar. Reduce until about the half of the liquid has cooked off.

Remove the shallot with a sieve leaving just a clear liquid. Add the cold vegan butter into the liquid a small piece at a time and keep whisking.

Finally add the yeast flakes and peppercorns and serve with the dish of your choice. 

 

I look forward to another year of cooking and sharing recipes with you. With these wintery scenes from Finland, I wish you a nice weekend!

Your VegHog