Hedgehog Awareness Week 2017

The Hedgehog Awareness Week 2017 #hedgehogweek is being observed 30.04.-06.05. It's an annual theme week organised by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society trying to raise awareness about the problems that hedgehogs face, and what each one of us can do to help them. Have a look in the link above, if you want to help in any way, as there are some really good tips. Some things are really easy to do and help hedgehogs a great deal. This cause is of course close to my heart, and it would be great, if more people would think about these things and get involved. This year there is a special strimmer campaign reminding people to check all areas for hedgehogs before using strimmers and other equipment.

I usually make a hedgehoggy dish to celebrate this week, and I have made many different hedgehog ravioli in the past, so I thought I'd make something different this year. I ended up making hedgehog shaped polenta snuffling in a nice colourful realm. There were roasted bell peppers, honey and chilli glazed halloumi, pomegranate seeds, chicoree, lambs lettuce, semi-dried tomatoes and edible flowers, and of course the herby polenta hogs. It was quite a tasty plate of food.

Have a nice week!

Your VegHog

Hedgehog porcini ravioli & Hedgehog Awareness Week

Hedgehog Awareness Week has started once again, and it would be great if each and every one of us could do at least one small thing during the week to raise hedgehog awareness or directly help hedgehogs. If you have a garden, leave a shallow bowl of water out and make sure that there's a gap in your fence so that hedgehogs can access your garden. Read for more hints and tips how to help the spiny creatures on the webpage of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society. 

I've had a tradition now for a few years to make hedgehog shaped ravioli for the hedgehog week, and this year was no different. This time I made brown pasta dyed with dried porcini mushrooms with earthy porcini filling. I thought I'd keep everything else simple and let the mushroom flavour be the star of the dish. This worked out very nicely and all hogs held together during the boiling!

Have a look at my recipe:

Ingredients

Pasta:

200 g pasta flour

2 eggs

1 tsp salt

15 g dried porcini mushrooms

Filling:

15 g dried porcini mushrooms

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

30 g grated vegetarian pasta cheese

3 tbsp breadcrumbs

Sprinkle of salt

Sprinkle of ground black pepper

Handful of fresh basil leaves

Served with:

Basil and garlic infused olive oil

Lambs lettuce

Method

Soak all dried porcini mushrooms (15 g + 15 g) in water for about 30 minutes. Drain them, but save the porcini water and purée the mushrooms into a smooth paste. Take the half to use in the pasta dough.

Knead the dough ingredients together and let the dough rest in the fridge for one hour. Add some of the porcini water to the dough, if needed. You can also add it to moisten and flavour the filling later.

Chop the onion and garlic for the filling finely and fry them in little olive oil until soft. Mix all ingredients for the filling together.

Then roll the pasta out. Make thin sheets with a pasta machine, cut the ravioli into shapes and fill them.

Cook in salt water for a few minutes and serve.

I would like to share this pasta recipe with Pasta Please vegetarian pasta cooking challenge, which is hosted this month by Chris from Thinly Spread and co-hosted by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes.

Have a wonderful Hedgehog Awareness Week!

Your VegHog

Gingerbread cookies

Of course also this year I had to make a small batch of gingerbread cookies. Once again I used the ready made dough from Ikea, which is very nice and makes things easy. I used my new hedgehog cutter for the most of them and fully kept to the hedgehog theme this time. I decorated them with a mix of icing sugar, cocoa powder and lemon juice. They filled the flat with a lovely flavour.

Hedgehog shaped ravioli with a potato, olive and rosemary filling

This week is Hedgehog Awareness Week and I can't keep saying it enough. Yesterday I already wrote an Old Prickly post, but now I am going to continue with the all important hedgehog theme. I made suitable hedgehog shaped ravioli with a potato, olive and rosemary filling. I have made hedgehog ravioli before, but the potato filling was a first for me. All the components tasted in the mix, so it worked really well and I liked this ravioli version a lot.

As the May theme for The Vegetable Palette challenge is “your favourite vegetable”, I thought I'd share this recipe there as well. The Vegetable Palette is a monthly vegetarian food blogging challenge hosted by Shaheen from A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table. I though long and hard what would be my favourite vegetable, as it constantly changes and there are many, but potatoes are pretty much always up there on the top of my list. They are so versatile, subtle yet tasty and also easy to cook in many shapes and forms. So there you have it, I love potatoes! In this recipe I of course combined them in a way I have never done before, which was also a great experience. 

 

I will also share this recipe with another food blogging challenge, Pasta Please, which is hosted this month by Jen from Jen's Food and created by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes. The theme in May is free, as long as the recipe contains some pasta. 

Here is my recipe for these small prickly beasts and it does make quite an array of them:

Pasta:

400 g grade 00 pasta flour

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

Filling:

500 g potatoes

200 g green olives

Sprinkle of salt

Fresh rosemary leaves

25 g grated mature cheddar

Method

Make the pasta first by kneading the pasta flour, eggs and salt into a firm dough. Let it rest wrapped in a cling film in the fridge for at least one hour.

Boil the peeled potatoes until they are done and mash them. Let the mash cool. Grind the olives into a smooth paste with a mortar and pestle and add them to the mash. Also add the salt, rosemary and little grated cheddar.

Start working the pasta dough thinner and thinner by rolling it through a pasta machine. Once you are happy with the texture and thinness, cut some hedgehog shapes from the dough. Put a little teaspoonful of the potato filling onto a hedgehog shape, brush the edges with water and press it closed with another hedgehog.

Cook the hedgehog ravioli until they are al dente and serve. I served them simply on a bed of salad drizzled with olive oil. Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Old Prickly & Hedgehog Awareness Week

The Hedgehog Awareness Week (3.-9.5.2015) started yesterday, so now is the perfect time to remember our prickly friends. You don't necessarily need to be donating money or goods, but for example as a garden owner you can do a lot to improve the well being of your local hedgehogs. You can also raise hedgehog awareness in your neighbourhood through information sharing or events. 

I'm going to make a couple of hedgehog related posts this week and will start by sampling a wonderful hedgehog themed beer, Old Prickly by Hobsons Brewery. This beer supports the work of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, 5p of every pint or bottle sold will go to the hedgehog charity. 

At 4,2 % Old Prickly is delightful like a hoglet. There is a refreshing foretaste leading to a hint of citrus sharpness with aromas of spices and raisins and a long crisp malty aftertaste. This is a very tasty beer to enjoy and remember that you will be supporting the prickly beasts while drinking it.

Have a nice week thinking of hedgehogs!

Your VegHog

Gingerbread woodland animals diorama

Gingerbread cookies always belong to Christmas, but this year I wanted to make something different. Instead of plain cookies or a gingerbread house, I made a small woodland animal diorama. In my plans it was much more spectacular than how it actually turned out, but never mind, I was happy with it. Maybe next year I can spend more time with such a project, as it was great fun! It reminded me a little bit of the huge horse head gingerbread cookies that I used to bake for my horse and pony friends at Christmas – those were the days! Have you made any creative work with gingerbread?

So, this is a photo post of my creation. The woodland animals are mainly hedgehogs of course, but if you look very closely, you might spot one or the other different species as well.

Spinach hedgehogs and hoglets

 

I think that November has progressed far enough to publish the first possible Christmas recipe! I got the idea for these puff pastry and spinach canapés in a recipe by Valio, but I added my own hog twist to it, and also changed the filling recipe slightly. These small snacks are a lovely item for example for your autumn and Christmas celebrations. Here is my version of the easy recipe. 

Ingredients

150 g spinach

2 garlic cloves

1 tbsp garlic infused olive oil

Ground nutmeg

Ground black pepper

Sea salt

50 g emmental

40 g pine nuts

2 eggs

500 g puff pastry

Method

Chop the garlic finely and cook it soft in the olive oil. Add the spinach to the pan and wilt them.

Season the mix with nutmeg, black pepper and salt to taste.

Purée the spinach with the grated cheese and toasted pine nuts. Add one egg to the mix.

Cut hedgehog shapes from puff pastry with a cookie cutter. Obviously any other shapes can also be made.

Brush them with beaten egg and place some of the spinach mix on the top.

Bake at 200C for about 15 minutes.

Done!

With this post I will also take part for the first time in Shaheen's Eat Your Greens Challenge from the A2K - A seasonal veg table blog - very exciting! I'm so happy that she pointed out that possibility to me.

Your VegHog

Grilled pepper ravioli in hedgehog shapes

I enjoy making ravioli very much. It's quite a bit of work, but so rewarding when you have the end product. I like eating light pasta dishes in the summer, and already a few of these ravioli can be enough for a light summer meal! I thought that my ravioli filling was quite vibrant this time, and of course you can fill some other shaped pasta with it as well. I served the pasta with homemade radish leaf pesto, which is in my mind the best kind of pesto.

These hedgehog ravioli come a little bit late for the Hedgehog Awareness Week this year, but shouldn't every day be about hedgehog awareness anyway? 

Please follow these instructions for making this dish.

Pasta:

400 g grade 00 pasta flour

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

Mix the ingredients and knead into a firm dough. Press the dough into a ball and let it rest wrapped in cling film in the fridge for at least one hour.

Later when you get to assembling the ravioli, roll out the pasta dough thinly with a pasta machine and cut shapes from it.

Ravioli filling:

3 yellow and orange romano peppers (or other peppers)

Vegetable oil for char-grilling

1 small shallot

2 garlic cloves

1 tsp olive oil

50 g vegetarian pasta cheese / vegetarian parmesan

A handful of fresh basil leaves

½ tsp oregano

½ tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp salt

Breadcrumbs (depending on the texture of the paste)

Char-grill the peppers until they have some black grilling marks and roast them at 200C for about 10-15 minutes until they are fully soft with some additional roasting flavours.

Cook the finely chopped shallot and garlic in little olive oil in a pan until soft.

Grate the cheese and purée all ingredients into a firm paste. Add breadcrumbs if the paste seems to be too moist. I had to add about 4 tablespoons to get my moist peppers to settle.

Cut hedgehog-shaped pieces (or any other shapes) from the rolled out pasta dough with a cookie cutter, fill the small hedgehog bellies with the filling (about 1 teaspoon each) and press firmly together. A light brushing of water around the edges helps the ravioli to stick together.

Once assembled, boil the pasta in water until al dente.

Radish leaf pesto:

The leaves from a bunch of radishes

1 clove of garlic

30 g cashew nuts

3-4 tbsp olive oil

A sprinkle of salt

The pesto can be prepared before the pasta making and left in the fridge.

Blanch the radish leaves for ten seconds in boiling water and quickly transfer them into cold water and then drain. Purée the leaves with the other ingredients and place the pesto into the fridge.

Serve the pasta with the pesto and some additional grated vegetarian pasta cheese as the spines and enjoy!

Your VegHog

1st VegHog birthday

Today is the 1^st anniversary of The VegHog blog! It's somehow unbelievable that it has already been one year since I started as I only feel like a small VegHoglet, but I'm very proud to have made it for a year. I'm so grateful for all your encouraging comments during the year and I hope you'll still have fun reading this blog in the future.

During this first year of vegetarian food blogging I got hungry for more. I had the opportunity to share some of my all time favourite vegetarian recipes and fully new creations with you and it has truly been a ball. You can have a look back at my first introduction post on January 7^th 2013, but I don't think that my plans have changed that much since. Maybe I have sometimes started giving you more accurate descriptions of my recipes, the ingredient amounts and such, which is good.

Always remember that I love reading your comments in general and hearing from you when you have tried my recipes. Let's have a great second year!

Your most humble VegHog

Chocolate hoglet

Christmas is the time to eat as many chocolates as you can. Sometimes I feel like no desserts are needed as you can eat chocolates and sweets instead. I have my firm favourites among the Finnish Christmas chocolates that I simply have to eat every year, but I have also found some favourites among this year's British novelty Christmas chocolates. Those would mainly be the Woodland Friends range and the Snowman and the Snowdog series. I especially love the art work and the whimsical figures on these chocolates – smiling faces everywhere!

Obviously I'm a big fan of Spike the Hedgehog (who wouldn't love a giant chocolate hoglet?), but the other Woodland Friends are also very cute and tasty.

A Spike cake!

I remember for having watched The Snowman animation film on every Christmas Eve as a child in Finland, and I still try to watch it every year if possible. It has a wonderful Christmas atmosphere.

Enjoy your Christmas sweets!

Your VegHog