Fennel and chickpea curry

I want to be quite productive with cooking, posting and commenting this week... let's see how that goes. At least I'm full of cooking ideas, if only I can make it all happen. Slowly it's starting to be bright when I leave for work in the morning, and the sun hasn't fully set yet when I get home on most days. So that's quite energising, and hopefully I'll get some daylight for my food photos soon!

Today's recipe is another fennel dish of mine. This time I used fennel in one of my favourite curries, a chickpea one with garam masala. I simply served it with some basmati rice. This was a really good vegan meal, one that I will certainly be making again. I added some purple carrots in order to add slightly more colour and texture.

Fennel and chickpea curry

Ingredients

1 onion

4 garlic cloves

3 cm fresh ginger

1 small chilli

2 tbsp vegetable oil

2 purple carrots

1 fennel

1,5 cups cooked chickpeas

1 tbsp garam masala spice mix

Sprinkle of turmeric

160 ml coconut cream

1 cup basmati rice

Method

Chop the onion, garlic, ginger and chilli finely. Heat vegetable oil in a pan and start cooking the onions first. Once the onions are soft and slightly browned, add the garlic, ginger and chilli.

Slice the carrots and fennel and also add them to the pan. Stir for a few moments and then add the chickpeas and garam masala spice mix and turmeric.

Then add the coconut cream and let simmer until all components have nicely cooked and the flavours blended.

Cook the rice separately and serve it with the curry once done. Enjoy! 

I want to share this recipe with Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen, who is hosting My Legume Love Affair this month.

Your VegHog

Chickpea and butternut squash cheatballs

Okay, it's time to post some recipes for a change. Sorry about the posting break during my holiday, but I wanted a small break from blogging, just to be back with some new enthusiasm. So first of all I want to share a recipe with you that I cooked for my family at Easter. I made these vegan chickpea and butternut squash cheatballs for our vegetarian Easter meal and they seemed to disappear quite quickly, the balls not the family... I oven baked the balls, so they were quite effortless to make and also low on fat. I think that I got about 10 fairly chunky balls out of these ingredients.

Here's the recipe.

Ingredients

1 medium butternut squash

1 can chickpeas

1 onion

1 cloveless garlic or 2 regular garlic cloves

Vegetable oil

Bunch of fresh coriander

Salt

Ground black pepper

Method

Peel the butternut squash and cut it into coarse chucks. Cook them in water until done.

Chop the onion and garlic finely and start cooking them in oil. Once they are soft, add the chickpeas to the pan.

Once the squash has been cooked, add it also to the chickpeas, take them off heat, season and mash. I liked leaving some of the chickpeas as whole, but you can also make a fully smooth batter, if you prefer.

Shape balls from the batter and cook them in the oven at 200 C for about 30 minutes or until the surface is slightly browned and firm.

Enjoy the cheatballs for example with potato mash, mushroom sauce and a selection of salads like we did.

Your VegHog

Tomato and chickpea soup with harissa

I'm not officially participating in Veganuary, as I basically missed the beginning and also have the lame excuse that I opened my favourite Finnish cheese in late December and now have to eat my way through the one kilogram bauble not to let it ruin. Anyhow I've been eating predominantly vegan otherwise and want to do so more now.

This tomato and chickpea soup with harissa that I made yesterday evening is an easy recipe for weekdays. It's a very warming vegan soup with a hint of spice. I wanted to add that oak smoked Anglesey sea salt to it, which indeed added quite a nice smokiness to the dish.

Here is my recipe.

Ingredients

400 g / 1 can chickpeas

300 g plum tomatoes

1 onion

3 garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

400 ml vegetable stock

4 tbsp tomato purée

2- 3 tsp harissa

Few fresh parsley leaves

Smoked paprika to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

Pinch of oak smoked sea salt

Method

Soak the dried chickpeas overnight, or just use some from a can.

Chop the tomatoes coarsely and onion and garlic finely.

Cook the onion and garlic in olive oil until soft and then add the tomatoes.

After a while add the vegetable stock and simmer the soup.

Purée the soup, if you prefer. I puréed it a little bit by still leaving some tomato and onion pieces.

I wanted to leave the chickpeas whole, so they were added after the puréeing.

Season the soup and let simmer until the flavours have blended nicely.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Roasted crown prince squash with chickpeas and peanut sauce

Nigel Slater can create such magical veggie dishes from simple ingredients and he has done it once again! My partner saw this recipe first and suggested that we should make it, so it came to pass very swiftly. The recipe in the article that I followed was for a Roast pumpkin with peanut sauce. Have a look at the article though, as there are also other veggie Christmas recipes by Nigel. 

I put my own twist to this recipe, as I wanted to use my beautiful crown prince squash instead of a pumpkin. Crown prince squash has a rather odd, greyish, pale green colour, which may not be fully appealing to cooks and diners, but the content is pure gold! I really love its nuttiness and versatility. In this recipe it goes wonderfully with the chickpeas that deliver an additional filling agent and the great peanut and tomato sauce. I will definitely make this dish again. It was only a bit too dangerous, as I ate too much... So I will write my version of the recipe below, as I changed a few things. 

Ingredients

1 crown prince squash

4 carrots

Olive oil

Salt

5 garlic cloves

1 onion

150 g peanuts

250 g cherry tomatoes

25 g parsley

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

660 g chickpeas

50 g butter

2 tbsp olive oil

Method

Peel the crown prince squash and cut it into wedges. Also peel the carrots and cut them into long pieces. Roast them in the oven with olive oil and salt until done.

Toast the peanuts on a dry pan.

Chop the garlic and onion finely and cook them in olive oil until soft. Add the roughly chopped tomatoes into the pan and keep cooking for a few minutes. Add the peanuts, parsley and balsamic vinegar and purée into a paste. I liked to keep this warm for the serving.

Heat butter and olive oil in a pan and cook the chickpeas until they have turned golden brown.

Serve the components together as one comforting dish and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Chickpea and butternut squash Schnitzel with kohlrabi mash

For a change I made some vegan Schnitzel. I normally use eggs for Schnitzel binding, but this time I decided to go without them and cheese, so I created these chickpea and butternut squash patties. They were quite soft in texture, but they still stuck together. I served them with kohlrabi mash to have a change to potato mash and also some roasted purple carrots.

Here is my recipe.

Chickpea and butternut squash Schnitzel:

½ cup dried chickpeas

1 butternut squash

1 vegetable stock cube

1 large onion

3 garlic cloves

A bunch of fresh coriander

Salt

Pepper

Ground cumin

Smoked paprika

Breadcrumbs (if needed)

Vegetable oil for frying

Method:

Soak the chickpeas overnight and cook them until they are done.

Peel the butternut squash, cut it into pieces and cook with a vegetable stock cube until it's done. Then mash it.

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

Combine the components and mash them a little bit. I still like having some whole chickpeas in there, so I don't make too smooth of a burger material.

Shape burgers from the mixture and cook on both sides in oil.

Kohlrabi mash:

2 kohlrabi

1 garlic clove

2 tbsp butter

Salt

Pepper

Method:

Peel the kohlrabi and cut it to pieces. Cook the pieces in water until they are soft and mash them.

Chop the garlic finely and mix it into the kohlrabi.

Add the butter, salt and pepper.

Combine the components on a plate and enjoy!

As it happens, the theme for the vegetarian cooking challenge Vegetable Palette is orange this month, so I would like to share this vegan Schnitzel recipe with the challenge. Shaheen from A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table, who hosts this challenge made a good choice with the colour, as this season is full of orange veg, at least in my kitchen with all the squashes, pumpkins and carrots.

Have a great week!

Your VegHog

Koshari

Koshari is an Egyptian dish made with rice, lentils, macaroni, vermicelli and chickpeas and topped with a tomato sauce and fried onions. I've had it quite a few times as street food and have totally fallen in love with the dish. What scared me off making it myself previously, was the amount of components. I was basically fearing I wouldn't have enough pots to cook everything separately. Now I felt brave enough and started making Koshari. It turned out that it wasn't such a horrible multi-tasking exercise, but quite straight forward instead, as most of the processes are simple. I used for example ready made fried onions to save that stage. There can be several variations of Koshari and the below recipe is my version of the dish.

Tomato sauce:

300 g tomatoes

1 small onion

3 garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp tomato purée

Chilli flakes

Ground cumin

Ground nutmeg

Ground black pepper

Salt

Other ingredients:

1 cup brown rice

1 cup puy lentils

1 cup macaroni

1 cup vermicelli pasta

1 can chickpeas

2 vegetable stock cubes

½ tsp smoked paprika

Fried onions

Method

First make the tomato sauce. Chop the onion and garlic cloves finely, cook them in olive oil, add the tomatoes and cook slowly under lid. Season to taste. Add more chilli flakes and other seasoning, if you prefer a very spicy sauce. When the sauce is almost done, start with the other preparations.

Cook the rice and the lentils with a vegetable stock cube each in separate pots. Basically everything is cooked separately and layered into a bowl in the end.

Cook the macaroni and vermicelli (break the vermicelli into about 1 cm long pieces first).

Warm the chickpeas up and season them with smoked paprika. Normally I would use dried chickpeas, but this time I chose the canned ones in order to save some additional cooking time.

Layer the components, top with tomato sauce and fried onions and enjoy.

This dish is also my contribution to this month's My Legume Love Affair (MLLA) #86 cooking challenge. It's hosted this month by Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen. MLLA was started by Susan from The Well Seasoned Cook and now administered by Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen. I thought that koshari would be a suitable dish to this challenge, as it's quite rich on lentils and puy lentils.

Have a good week everyone!

Your VegHog

Chickpea, spinach and potato curry

Today I made this chickpea, spinach and potato curry as planned as the Wednesday meal for this week. It was quick to make, as my partner had recently made a brilliant garam masala spice mix. Therefore I could luckily fully skip the spice mixing phase, which is fun, but also takes time and now I just wanted an easy weekday curry. Here is my chickpea, spinach and potato curry recipe.

Ingredients

½ cup dried chickpeas

500 g potatoes

2 shallots

2 garlic cloves

1 tbsp vegetable oil

100 g cherry vine tomatoes

160 ml coconut cream

100 g spinach

1 vegetable stock cube

1 tbsp garam masala

Ginger powder to taste

Chilli flakes to taste

Curry leaves to taste

Ground cumin to taste

Method

Soak the chickpeas overnight and then boil them in water until they are done.

Cut the potatoes in halves or quarters depending on the size. Boil them in water until they are almost done. You can save some of the potato cooking water to be added later to the curry.

Chop the shallots and garlic finely and start cooking them in the vegetable oil. Add the finely chopped cherry tomatoes and then the garam masala. Stir for a while and add the potatoes and chickpeas and the coconut cream.

Let simmer slowly and season with vegetable stock cube, ginger powder, chilli flakes, curry leaves and ground cumin. Add a little water if needed.

Once the flavours have blended nicely and the potatoes are fully cooked, add the spinach towards the end and let it wilt in the mix.

I served the curry on its own, as it contains quite wholesome ingredients. I didn't think it needed rice or anything else with it. Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Pasta salad with chickpeas and apples

I'm going to fly back to England later today, so sadly my holiday at home is soon ending. It was good to be here for a few days anyway.

I made this slightly different pasta salad with chickpeas, apples and a three cheese cream sauce. The three cheese cream is a Finnish product that can be purchased in the shops, but it could also be made by combining cream with finely grated cheeses. This combination might sound weird, but I really liked it, especially the apple addition.

Here is the recipe.

Ingredients

250 g fusilli tricolore pasta

250 ml three cheese cream

2 apples

1 small onion

200 g chickpeas

Ground black pepper

Method

Cook the pasta and cool it.

Peel the apples and cut them into small cubes.

Chop the onion finely.

Combine the ingredients in a bowl and enjoy!

Your VegHog