Udon noodles in peanut sauce with tofu and broccoli

I made a comforting bowl of thick udon noodles in peanut sauce served with firmly fried tofu and steamed broccoli. I got the idea for this dish from The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit, as there was a description of the flavour combination of coriander leaf and peanut. I have to say that coriander really did add something nice to this dish and broccoli was a nice addition too.

This was a surprisingly fast and uncomplicated weekday dish and I will surely be refining this recipe further. Next time I'll probably try smaller tofu pieces and smaller broccoli florets mixed straight into the noodles. I will also try to this with other veggies.

So here's my vegan recipe of today:

Ingredients

300 g tofu

2 tbsp vegetable oil

3 garlic cloves

3 cm ginger

Handful of peanuts

Sprinkle of chilli flakes

Splash of soy sauce

Splash of toasted sesame oil

3 tbsp peanut butter

Fresh coriander

200 g udon noodles

1 broccoli

Method

Chop the garlic and ginger finely and peel the peanuts.

Cut the tofu into large pieces and fry them in vegetable oil until firm and golden brown.

Cut the broccoli into florets and steam them.

Cook the noodles in water.

Start frying the garlic and ginger in a pan and after a while add the peanuts.

Add the chilli flakes, a splash of soy sauce, a splash of toasted sesame oil and peanut butter.

Once these have made a nice sauce, also add the udon noodles to the pan and season with fresh coriander.

Serve all components together and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Twice-cooked broccoli pasta

Today I wanted to share a perfect weekday recipe with you that I recently found. Even though it's December, some ordinary food is still needed of course. This is a beautiful recipe with broccoli cooked twice, first boiled in water and then pan-fried, until it's creamy and served with pasta. There are added heat of chilli and comforting garlic with the broccoli in the sauce, pretty much a perfect company for it. Broccoli cooked this way goes so well with pasta and this could become one of my favourite ways of cooking it. This dish is very easy to veganise simply by using vegan pasta.

Here is the original recipe from The Guardian article by Rachel Roddy directly from Rome: Broccoli ripassati with olive oil, garlic and chilli. Check out the article, as it contains the perfect description of the dish and some other serving suggestions for it! I followed the original recipe pretty closely, but used 250 g spelt tagliatelle to go with my two heads of broccoli. 

Even though this isn't my own recipe, I really want to enter this post to this month's Eat Your Greens a vegetarian cooking challenge hosted by Shaheen from A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table blog. I think that broccoli is always a nice green vegetable to use and this is quite a cunning way to cook it. What do you think, would even kids be into it in this texture and combination?  

Have a nice week!

Your VegHog

Broccoli nuggets

I made these broccoli and cheese nuggets last year and now I made very similar ones to have a nice Saturday night meal while watching some Nordic noir on TV. These nuggets were baked in the oven, so they don't have any cooking fat on them. Of course I added cheese to make them extra tasty. I have to say that they went down pretty well. They had a crispy surface and were fluffy and cheesy inside with a nice broccoli flavour. I served the nuggets with chunky oven chips, barbeque sauce and cheese dip. 

Here is the recipe.

Ingredients

1 broccoli

1 onion

3 garlic cloves

Olive oil

Salt

Chilli flakes

1 tbsp spelt flour

100 g Cheddar and Red Leicester cheese mix

2 eggs

Breadcrumbs

Method

Cut the broccoli into florets and steam them until they are soft.

Chop the onion and garlic finely and cook them in olive oil until soft.

Let the components cool, combine them and add the salt, chilli flakes, spelt flour, grated cheese and the egg yolks.

Beat the egg whites in a separate bowl and also put the breadcrumbs into another bowl.

Shape nuggets from the broccoli mix and roll them in the egg whites first and then in the breadcrumbs.

Place them onto a baking tray and bake in the oven at 200 C for about 15-20 minutes until the surface is crispy and golden brown.

And they are all done!

I'm entering this recipe for this month's Eat Your Greens, which is a vegetarian cooking challenge hosted by Shaheen from A2K- A Seasonal Veg Table. Although my photos look more like eat your beige, but as broccoli is in the nuggets, I think it'll be fine. I'm happy that I finally cooked something with a green vegetable to be able to participate this month, as my cooking has been quite a bit about squashes, potatoes and cauliflower recently.

Have a great week!

Your VegHog

Broccoli cheese with creamy mushroom sauce and roasted potatoes

Sometimes I just need to have this sort of a meal, a cheesy vegetable bake, a creamy sauce and roasted potatoes. It's such comfort food for me, and surely for many others, but I don't make these kind of meals that often anymore. Normally I prefer lighter meals, but isn't it just nice to be a little naughty sometimes? Especially now when the weather is so rainy and gloomy.

I made quite basic versions of all components, so this is also a quite effortless meal and can be easily made fairly quickly when you're feeling blue.

Roasted potatoes:

400 g potatoes

1 tsp vegetable oil

Smoked paprika

Brush the potatoes with vegetable oil and sprinkle smoked paprika on the top. Roast in the oven until soft with a nice roasted skin.

Broccoli cheese:

1 broccoli

1 onions

2 garlic cloves

1 tsp olive oil

1 tsp vegetable stock powder

Ground black pepper

Salt

100 g grated Cheddar and Mozzarella mix

Cut the broccoli into florets and steam them until they are almost done. Chop the onions and garlic cloves finely and cook them in olive oil until soft. Add the seasoning and combine with the steamed florets. Put into an oven dish, cover with cheese and bake until the cheese has melted and the top is golden brown.

Mushroom sauce:

250 g baby button mushrooms

1 onion

1 garlic clove

1 tsp olive oil

150 ml single cream

Ground black pepper

Salt

Fresh thyme

Slice the mushrooms and chop the onion and garlic finely. Cook them in olive oil for a few minutes and then add the cream. Season and let simmer until the cream has been infused with the flavours.

Serve the components together, a little salad on the side and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Sesame-roasted tofu with satay sauce and broccoli

Let's cook after all sorts of travel posts! It's nice to be home for a change and be able to cook in my own kitchen.

This recipe is from The Best of Rose Elliot – The Ultimate Vegetarian Collection (p. 114-115) Sesame-roasted tofu with satay sauce & broccoli. This book is full of creative vegetarian recipes photographed beautifully. The recipe can also be found here online. 

I followed the recipe pretty accurately, so I didn't repeat it here. Only my tofu took longer to roast than described in the book. It was worth the wait however, as it got really firm with a sticky coating. This dish turned out to be very tasty and the combination of the components is just divine. The broccoli tasted so good with the satay sauce that has a strong peanutty taste, and the texture and sesame taste of the tofu were wonderful.

Have a great week everyone!

Your VegHog

Pearled spelt with broccoli

Here's my last holiday dish for now, but do not worry, the next holiday is already booked. Tomorrow I'll have to leave the beautiful banks of Kyrönjoki and return to England, so today I made this pearled spelt dish with carrot and broccoli and I also visited the lovage bush again. Here are the instructions for making this dish.

Ingredients

1 broccoli

2 onions

1 cloveless garlic

1 carrot

2 dl pearled spelt

4-6 large lovage leaves

1 litre water

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1 tbsp rapeseed oil

Method

Chop the onions and garlic finely. Cut small dices of the carrot. Cook the onions and garlic in a pan in rapeseed oil until soft and then add the carrots and cook for further 5 minutes. Heat the water in a separate pot with coarsely chopped lovage leaves.

Add the spelt to the pan and then about a third of the lovage water. Let cook for about 15 minutes and keep adding more water. Finally add the broccoli florets and the seasoning and let simmer until everything is cooked nicely.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

 

Broccoli and cheese nuggets

Today my three part burger meal series comes to an end, and I shall end it with my recipe for broccoli and cheese nuggets (have a look at the previous posts: basic burger buns and pea and leek burgers). Don't you also think that vegetarians are still discriminated by the poor choice on vegetarian nuggets? If you're lucky you can get either plain cheese or cheese and chilli nuggets, but I think that a nugget is a great way of combining different vegetables and cheese, and I promise you to make other ones as well in the future.

These broccoli and cheese nuggets are oven baked, so there's neither playing around with hot oils, nor is there any need for a deep fryer. That's why I claim that these are more healthy in comparison to the deep fried ones, as no fat (or additives!) is used. Vegetarian nuggets make quite a nice change to the normal fries and burger combination. You might even be able to convert some broccoli haters with these. I have already managed to do so! So, here's how.

Ingredients to make about 12 chunky nuggets

1 broccoli

1 shallot

3 garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp oregano

½ tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

180 g mild Cheddar

2 eggs

100 g breadcrumbs

Method

Steam the broccoli florets until they are cooked soft, and then let them cool. Chop them into fine pieces.

Also chop the shallot and garlic finely and cook them in olive oil until soft. Season them with oregano, salt and pepper and let cool.

Grate the cheese and combine the broccoli, shallots and cheese.

Separate the eggs; add the yolks to the nugget mix and set the whites to side.

Use half of the breadcrumbs (50 g) to the mix and the other half for rolling the nuggets in. Prepare a production line with two plates with the beaten egg whites on one and the breadcrumbs on the other.

Shape small nuggets of the mix. I made mine triangle shaped, but you can shape them as you like. Roll the nuggets in the egg whites first and then in the breadcrumbs. Then set them to a baking dish.

Bake them at 200C for about 20 minutes until the surfaces are crispy.

Serve with a dip as a part of a burger meal. I had the Lyme Bay Winery's gorgeous Spicy Tomato Chutney with Jack Ratt Cider on the side. This is a really good chutney!

So, this was my vegetarian burger meal suggestion posted in three parts, how did you find it?

Your VegHog

Potato casserole with honey-glazed carrots and steamed purple sprouting broccoli

The sweetened potato casserole is one of the traditional Finnish vegetarian Christmas dishes. It takes a long time to prepare as the resting time is long, but it's worth the wait as that's when the casserole gets its special sweetness. You can prepare this well in advance and freeze for Christmas. I have combined the casserole today with some simple sides: honey-glazed baby carrots and steamed purple sprouting broccoli. These will all make nice additions to any veggie Christmas.

The sweetened potato casserole (1 large or 4 small ramekins):

1,5kg potatoes

About 2dl cooking water of the potatoes

4tbsp flour

200ml milk

3tbsp butter

2tsp maple syrup

1tsp salt

Peel and boil the potatoes until soft and save about 2dl of the cooking water. Mash the potatoes and let them cool slightly. Place the mash into an oven dish and add the flour and the cooking water to make a smooth mash. Cover the dish with foil and let stand in a warm place for about four hours. I put mine to the oven at 50C. This is the phase when the mash gets sweetened.

After this has been done, add the milk, melted butter and syrup, and season with salt. Then either use a large oven dish to make one casserole or divide the mix into four small ramekins. Don't fill the dishes fully as the casserole will move while heating and could easily boil over.

Bake the casserole at 150C for about 2 hours. After this treatment you should be left with a soft and sweetened casserole that can be combined with any veggie dishes.

The honey-glazed baby carrots:

150g baby topped carrots

1tbsp honey

3tbsp butter

50ml vegetable stock

Fresh thyme

Heat butter in a pan and quickly saute the carrots in there. Add vegetable stock and bring it to a light boil. Then add the honey and thyme and continue cooking until the carrots are al dente – not too soft and not too hard either. That's at least how I like them best.

The steamed purple sprouting broccoli:

230g purple sprouting broccoli

Steam the purple sprouting broccoli for about 10 minutes until they are also al dente. Take care that they don't get too soft.

Serve all components together for nice sweet and savoury flavours and combine with a nice wine. Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Broccoli and potato cream soup

Winter doesn't seem to be over yet, so let us eat soup! A soup with broccoli and potato is something fine and I occasionally like to enjoy it. This soup is not just tasty but I also believe broccoli to be fairly healthy but convince yourself based on facts. 

Ingredients

1 Broccoli

200g Potatoes

4 Cloves of garlic

1-2 Shallotts

Vegetable stock

1dl Cream

Olive oil

Salt

Pepper

Rosemary

Method

Peel the potatoes and dice them into smaller pieces and chop the shallots and garlic. Prepare the vegetable stock and add some rosemary to it. Cut the broccoli into smaller pieces.

Heat some olive oil in a pan. Slightly fry the potatoes in the oil, then add the onions and after a while the garlic. When all of these are nicely glazed put in the broccoli and the vegetable stock. Bring to simmer under lid by occasionally stirring. It will take around 30 minutes until everything is nicely cooked. Add some of the cream into the pan and then puree the soup with a hand mixer.

Season the soup with salt and pepper and let it simmer further. Season with additional rosemary if needed. You can add some more cream if you like but you don't necessarily have to add all of the cream depending on your personal taste. Cream can also be left out completely, even naturally the soup becomes quite creamy and then you would have a vegan soup.

Once the taste has developed enough serve the soup piping hot. 

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog