Chickpea and roasted root vegetable hotpot

As snow falls over Britain (in many places, here I only saw about 5 snow flakes), it's suitable to post a warming winter dish. For the life of me I couldn't decide whether to call this dish a soup or a stew, so I went for a hotpot in the end. This dish can be a little bit of all of them, but I do find that it's a nice mid-winter dish. I haven't published too many soup or stew recipes here lately, but the other day I had the idea for this dish. It's cheap and easy to make and it tastes lovely and savoury in all its simplicity.

This is yet another vegan dish. Although I didn't commit to Veganuary, I have noticed that I've been cooking amazingly many vegan dishes this month. For me it's probably better not to be “forced” to eat vegan, then I do it quite voluntarily and almost without noticing. Don't get me wrong, there has been a lot of cheese, hot chocolate etc., so I haven't changed my ways.

Ingredients

2 parsnips

2 carrots

3 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp thyme

2 shallots

3 garlic cloves

1 cup cooked chickpeas

1 l water

1 vegetable stock cube

Salt and pepper to taste

Fresh coriander leaves

Method

Peel and chop the parsnips and carrots into cubes. Brush them with olive oil, sprinkle thyme on them and roast in the oven until done with roasting marks.

Chop the shallots and garlic finely and cook them in a saucepan in olive oil until soft. Add the cooked chickpeas to the pan and shortly after that, the water and vegetable stock cube.

Let simmer for a while and just towards the end, add the roasted root vegetables and season the hotpot.

Serve warm, maybe with a slice of bread.

Your VegHog

Moroccan style stew with onion squash, chickpeas and sugarsnap peas

For a change I wanted to combine a squash with more exotic spices, so I came up with this recipe. I want to keep eating seasonal squashes for a long time still, so new ideas are always welcome. In this recipe I used Moroccan style spicing and combined the squash with chickpeas and sugar snap peas. Would Moroccans even use these vegetables? I'm not quite sure, but I have to say that they work with the spices. On the side of the stew I served couscous with almond flakes and a garlicky yogurt sauce to neutralise the spiciness a bit. I liked this dish very much and I'm sure I'll be making similar ones in the future. I also like making a large batch like this, as this is a good dish to take as packed lunch for the next day, or even eat it two days in a row. Feel free to scale the ingredient amounts down, if you don't want to have spare stew or don't have about four eaters.

Ingredients

Stew

100 g dried chickpeas

1 onion squash

240 g sugar snap peas

4 shallots

3 garlic cloves

1 small red chilli

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp paprika

1 tsp ginger powder

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp turmeric

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ras el hanout

500 ml vegetable stock

1 tbsp honey

Couscous

1 cup couscous

50 g almond flakes

½ tsp salt

Yogurt sauce

150 g natural yogurt

1 garlic clove

1 tsp lemon infused olive oil

Method

Soak the chickpeas overnight and boil them in generous amount of water for about one hour. You can also use canned and cooked chickpeas, in that case this step is unnecessary.

Prepare the yogurt sauce. Chop the garlic finely and cook it for a couple of minutes in the lemon infused olive oil, but don't let it get brown. Let the garlic cool and mix it with the yogurt. Now the yogurt can rest in the fridge until serving. Lemon juice can also be added to it to taste before serving.

Then you can start making the stew. Peel the onion squash and remove the seeds. Cut it into cubes.

Cut the sugar snap peas in half. This is an optional step, you can also leave them whole, if you prefer.

Chop the shallots, garlic and chilli finely and cook them in olive oil until soft. I only use a little bit of chilli, but use more, if you like hot food.

Add the spices (paprika, ginger powder, ground cumin, ground coriander, turmeric, cinnamon and ras el hanout) and the vegetable stock to the pan, and then also the squash and chickpeas.

Let simmer slowly under lid for about one hour until the squash is cooked soft. Taste the stew a few times when you go along so that you can adjust the spices according to your own taste. Only when I started cooking more, I started tasting the food as I went along, and that's really necessary to get the taste right. That's also the reason why I'm not always so keen giving amounts for spices here, because I think everyone wants to make the dish to their own taste anyway.

After the simmering, add the honey and the sugar snap peas to the stew and let it simmer for further five minutes. Veganise this dish by leaving the honey and the yogurt sauce out.

In the meanwhile also prepare the couscous. First boil two cups of water and take the pan off heat. Add the couscous, salt and almond flakes to the pan and leave them under the lid for about ten minutes.

Serve the stew, couscous and yogurt sauce together and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Chickpea couscous

Now it's really getting autumnal here: heavy rain, severe weather warnings, wind! Quite a few thunderstorms have also been here, which I like, but I don't associate them with autumn. For a Finn they are a summer thing. Finally I can fully enjoy walks in the park, wearing warm pullovers, drinking tea and cooking autumn dishes.

Today's dish is more a side dish, but you can eat it as a stand-alone dish as well. In that case you might want to consider adding more vegetables and spices to it. It's not really that autumnal, but there's more coming up. I combined chickpeas with harissa and couscous in a very simple dish.

Ingredients

1 cup dried chickpeas

½ cup couscous

2 shallots

2 garlic cloves

250 g tomatoes

1 tbsp olive oil

3 tbsp harissa

Salt

Ground black pepper

Pomegranate seeds

Method

Soak the chickpeas overnight in water. Then boil them heavily for a few minutes and then let boil more moderately for about one hour until they are cooked soft.

Chop the shallots and garlic finely and cook them in olive oil until soft. Chop the tomatoes and add them and the chickpeas to the pan.

Prepare the couscous by boiling ½ cup of water and then removing it from the heat. Add the couscous and leave under lid for 10 minutes. Then add the cooked couscous to the tomatoes and chickpeas and season with harissa, salt and pepper.

Decorate with pomegranate seeds for serving.

And that's it!

Your VegHog

Falafel feast

Finally the weekend is here, and more time can be spent in the kitchen! Why not make a falafel feast for your loved ones like I made recently. Some years ago I'd had enough of falafel. Quite often they were the only, or the best, vegetarian alternative available, and so I thought that I had already eaten more than my share. However now I started thinking that I should give them another chance, and decided to make my own. It turned out that I still like them very much and will definitely have them more often again.

As an inspiration and guideline I read quite a few falafel recipes, but mainly based my own version on the Guardian article How to cook the perfect falafel and a recipe in the wonderful cookbook Veggiestan by Sally Butcher. The making of the falafel is surprisingly simple, and you can combine them with pretty much anything.

So this is how I made mine, and the recipe makes about 15 falafel.

2 cups dried chickpeas

195g broad beans (1 can)

5 garlic cloves

4 spring onions

15g fresh parsley

15g fresh coriander

1tsp salt

1tsp ground cumin

1tsp ground coriander

1tsp baking powder

Vegetable oil for frying

Soak the chickpeas overnight. Many recipes suggested that the chickpeas don't need to be pre-boiled, but I boiled them for 20 minutes anyway. The main reason being that I don't have a good food processor, just my old hand mixer. You can decide which version you prefer.

Chop the garlic and the spring onions and remove any large stalks of the herbs. Then just purée all the ingredients together into a paste that should be easy to shape with your hands.

Heat vegetable oil in a frying pan (or you can deep fry these) and fry the falafel on both sides until crispy.

This is how simple it is!

Serve the falafel with: homemade hummus, tahini, salad with mixed leaves, heirloom tomatoes and shallot rings, char-grilled peppers with harissa coating (chopped peppers first char-grilled on both sides, then brushed with harissa and baked in the oven for 20 minutes), char-grilled halloumi and pitta bread.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Chickpea tagine

Unfortunately I don't own a tagine (maybe one day!), but I still attempted to make a tagine style dish in my large cast iron pan and it turned out fine. Are there any tagine owners among my readers? What are your experiences of them?

Don't be intimidated by the long ingredient list as all of these spices are very versatile for all kinds of dishes, so it pays off having them around. You could use a pre-made Ras el hanout spice mix instead of all the individual spices. Also the stages of making this dish are simple, it's only important to keep tasting the dish and add the spices to your own taste. I'm slowly getting more comfortable with a wider selection of spices and like experimenting with them. Preserved lemons might be difficult to get, but they add citrus zing and saltiness.

Ingredients

150g dried chickpeas

7 small shallots

1 sweet potato

2 carrots

2 romano peppers

3 cloves of garlic

1 small chilli

1tbsp olive oil

1tbsp vegetable stock powder + 300ml water

2 preserved lemons

100g black olives

1tbsp honey

Pinch of dried rose petals

For the spices I used:

1,5tsp ground cumin

0,5tsp ground coriander

1tsp ginger powder

0,5tsp ground cinnamon

2tsp paprika

0,5tsp turmeric

0,5tsp grated nutmeg

4 stamen of saffron

Method

Soak the chickpeas overnight and then boil for about one hour.

Chop the vegetables (shallots, sweet potato, carrots, peppers and garlic) into small pieces. Sweat the onions in olive oil and then fry all the vegetables for a few minutes, then add the spices to the pan.

Prepare the vegetable stock and add it to the pan. Add the drained chickpeas and cook under lid for about one hour. Cooking under the lid keeps the steam in the dish, which ensures the vegetables cook evenly and at least partly makes up for not having a proper tagine.

Later add the chopped preserved lemons, honey and whole black olives to the mix and cook a while longer. There's no need to rush this dish!

Once you're happy with the taste, serve on its own as a stew or with couscous. Sprinkle some rose petals on the top for serving.

Your VegHog

Hummus

One more post before September ends, and this is just a basic hummus recipe. I know hummus can be bought anywhere, but by making it yourself it's fresh and you'll know what went into it. Hummus is a great chickpea dip for finger food and paste for veggie sandwiches and burgers and simply has to be a part of any vegan's or vegetarian's diet. I especially like a simple and light lunch of vegetable sticks and hummus as a dip.

As I use dried chickpeas for my hummus the preparation takes overnight, but it's totally worth the wait.

Ingredients

200g dried chickpeas

2 garlic cloves

1 lemon's juice

4tbsp olive oil

4tbsp water

1tsp paprika

1tsp cumin

1tsp salt

Method

Cover the dried chickpeas with cold water and let them soak overnight. Then bring them to the boil. First heavily boil them for a couple of minutes and then let them boil slower for about one hour until they are soft. Stir occasionally.

Let the chickpeas cool and then continue with the preparations. Chop the garlic and squeeze the lemon juice into a bowl. Add the chickpeas and season with paprika, cumin and salt. Add the olive oil and water and puree into an even paste. Taste again and add more seasoning or more fluid if needed.

Drizzle little olive oil and paprika on the top for serving and that's it.

I will be posting dishes where I have used my hummus later. Until then, stay hungry!

Your VegHog