Dinosaur ravioli

 

If you have dinosaur loving kids or are a dinosaur loving adult, this recipe might just be the right one for you. I made vegetarian t-rex spinach ravioli with a sunblushed tomato, garlic, basil, pine nut and mozzarella filling and wanted to share the recipe with you. The dinosaurs were quite thin so the sealing was a bit challenging, but I didn’t split any of them when cooking. You can of course make any shape of ravioli that you fancy with this recipe. The recipe actually yields quite a lot of pasta dough so you might want to make other shapes also that are quicker to make.

And note that my pasta dough is eggless, hence vegan, but I used Mozzarella in the filling. If you want to keep it vegan, you can find some alternatives to that. Have fun pasta making!

Pasta dough

100 g fresh spinach

1 ½ cups 00 pasta flour

1 cup semolina

1 tsp salt

½ cup water (add more if needed)

1 tsp oil

Filling

2 garlic cloves

70 g sunblushed tomatoes

2 tbsp pine nuts

50 g grated mozzarella

A few fresh basil leaves

Pinch of salt and ground black pepper

2 tbsp olive oil

Method

Wilt the spinach in the ½ cup water for the dough and purée it smooth. Mix it and the other ingredients for the pasta dough and knead to a firm ball. Wrap the dough in a cling film or beeswax wrap and let rest in the fridge for at least one hour.

Fry the garlic in olive oil and toast the pine nuts in a pan. Purée them with the other filling ingredients into a smooth paste.

Roll the dough out and work it through a pasta machine into thin sheets. Cut out dinosaur shapes with a cookie cutter and fill them with the filling. Seal carefully by brushing the edges with water and pressing them together.

Boil the ravioli in hot water for a few minutes and serve. I added just a little bit of brown butter on the ravioli for serving.

 

Your VegHog

Wild garlic tagliatelle

 

It’s another long weekend here and I’m quite chuffed about it. I basically have no plans, which is nice. There’s no rush to get anywhere. Last weekend we got to do some hiking at the Danish countryside, which was really refreshing. Now we will just stay in town I reckon.

First I want to share this green dish with you. As I got even more wild garlic, I decided to make a vibrant green homemade tagliatelle and this is how it turned out. First I had a pale green pasta dough, but once the pasta was cooked, it turned really nice and green. It very much tasted of wild garlic and I got the texture right, as it was not too thick and not too thin. I served the pasta with roasted cherry tomatoes, mozzarella and a salad with edible flowers. It was quite a nice meal.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Your VegHog

 

Homemade smoked burrata, porcini and wild garlic ravioli

 

It’s a public holiday, Ascension Day, in Denmark today so I’m starting the day slowly writing a blog post and making breakfast. We will go to the local covered market again, probably eat lunch there and then stroll back home. We won’t leave quite yet, as a thunderstorm is approaching from Sweden and it already started raining here. I hope it clears for the afternoon.

I have been manufacturing some homemade pasta again. This time I made large ravioli with a smoked burrata, porcini mushroom and wild garlic filling. The ravioli were very tasty. I served them with brown butter and a radish salad. You can see some stages of the making here.

Your VegHog

 

Bread board with cheese and olives

I really enjoy eating a variety of different snacks gathered on one board. These kind of boards are always a good idea for a cosy night in and I think that the next Saturday evening is already settled. The best thing is that there isn't too much preparation for this. This time I baked my own breads, but homemade bread is useful anyway, so it doesn't matter that it takes a bit longer. Otherwise it's hardly any work to gather such a board.

For this board I made three breads, mini carrot baguettes, mini carrot loaves with wheat flour and spelt rolls with pumpkin seeds, hazelnut crunch and cider. I wanted to serve the bread with dips and cheeses and altogether this was actually a surprisingly filling evening meal. I also added some soft roasted garlic, as I have been roasting garlic heads lately like there's no tomorrow, so lovely for the winter! Aged Havarti cheese has been my another guilty pleasure of the season and had to go onto the board, it's such a nice and flavoursome cheese.

Here are the components of this board:

Mini carrot baguette

Mini carrot loaf

Seedy spelt rolls

Butter

Roasted garlic

Aged Havarti

Gouda

Olives

Roasted peppers

Hummus

Balsamic vinegar

Do you ever fancy such snack boards?

Your VegHog

Homemade naan bread

The other day when I was determined to make aloo gobi curry and had already started cooking, I noticed that I hadn't bought naan bread. I find that naan bread is the best side dish to aloo gobi. Then I remembered for having recently read Felicity Cloake's Guardian article How to make the perfect naan bread, and indeed that saved the day! 

It turns out that you don't necessarily need a tandoor to make naan bread. You can make it on a dry very hot pan at home. 

I followed the recipe in the article pretty closely, only instead of 300g strong white bread flour I used 150g wheat flour + 150g spelt flour. Were these possibly the first spelt naans ever? Anyway, they turned out very nice and went perfectly with my curry. There was even this distinct naan taste – a success!

If you like making curries, I would urge you to try making these naan breads as well. Do any of you already have experiences of naan making?

Your VegHog

Red pepper ravioli

I am such a big fan of homemade filled pasta, and I always try to make up new variations of it. They do take some effort to make, but the results are normally phenomenal! Today I made some giant ravioli (well, could always be bigger...), which had a nice and intense red roasted bell pepper filling.

Here are the ingredients and the method for making this pasta dish. You can combine the ravioli with just a simple tomato sauce or even just with butter and cheese and a side salad (I have made photos of each serving suggestion, please see below).

Pasta:

400 g flour

4 eggs

1 tsp salt

Filling:

2 red peppers

1 tsp olive oil (for brushing the peppers for roasting)

3 tbsp pine nuts

1 garlic

50 g Jarlsberg cheese

½ tsp salt

1 tbsp fresh oregano leaves

5 tbsp breadcrumbs (check consistency before adding all)

Method:

Make the pasta first as it needs to rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Knead the flour with the salt and eggs into a firm dough. Add little water if the dough is too tough. Once you are happy with the texture, wrap the dough in a cling film and set to rest in the fridge.

For the filling quarter the peppers and remove the seeds. Brush them with olive oil and roast in the oven at 180C for about 30 minutes until they are soft and have roasted flavour.

Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan for a couple of minutes. Add the chopped garlic into the pan just to be heated through quickly. Grate the cheese and then puree all the filling ingredients to a firm paste with a hand mixer, and add more or less breadcrumbs depending on the moisture of the mix. You wouldn't want a runny filling as it can escape the ravioli more easily.

Then start making thin pasta sheets. Roll the dough in small batches a few times through a pasta machine to make thin sheets. Cut out whatever shapes you like of the sheets with a cookie cutter or a knife, and fill them with a generous teaspoon of the filling by leaving an edge of about 1 cm all around. Brush the edges with water and then stick the pasta pieces firmly together. Press them down with a fork if needed. Set to side.

When the whole dough has been worked on and filled, boil water in a large pan and cook the ravioli until al dente and serve. Also check out my other ravioli recipes here.

Stay hungry and share your pasta making experiences with me!

Your VegHog