Ottolenghi: W is for watercress

Has anyone read the recent article “Yotam Ottolenghi's A to Z of summer veg, with recipes to match” in the Guardian? It is a very inspiring one, yet not all recipes are fully vegetarian. 

I adore Ottolenghi's vegetarian recipes anyway, and now I found a new favourite among his creations. This recipe in the section W is for watercress instantly caught my eye, and I tried to cook it. The recipe is for a great salad: Roasted courgette with watercress, pistachios and parmesan (vegetarian pasta cheese in my version). I think that the spicy watercress is a really good combination with the mild courgette, and lemon goes with both. The vibrant pesto style watercress paste is also gorgeous. I can see myself eating it with pasta or new potatoes as well.

Here you can read my version of the recipe, although it's quite close to Ottolenghi's. I used baby courgettes as I could get some local ones and they look so cute.

Ingredients

400 g baby courgettes

75 ml olive oil

½ tsp sea salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

100 g watercress

1 garlic clove

1 tbsp grated lemon zest

50 g pistachios

50 g vegetarian pasta cheese

2 tsp lemon juice

Method

Cut the baby courgettes into halves and place them on a roasting tin. Sprinkle two tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper on the top and shake lightly. Bake at 220C for about 15-20 minutes so that the courgettes have roasted flavour and brown roasting marks, but still have a certain bite to them. Turn them occasionally during the roasting and allow them cool afterwards.

Purée the rest of the olive oil with the garlic, lemon zest and 2/3 of the watercress into a smooth paste and pour it on the cooled courgettes.

Chop the pistachios roughly and roast them in the oven.

Combine all ingredients and add the rest of the watercress to the salad.

Make shavings of vegetarian pasta cheese and squeeze the lemon juice on the top.

The salad is now ready to be served.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Lemon and courgette risotto

My courgettes are growing nicely on the balcony, which means that it's time to cook with own produce again – exciting! Now the courgettes start coming in bulk, so it's good to have many different recipe ideas for them. I love my yellow courgettes, but I also planted green ones additionally. As I haven't made a risotto for a while, I decided to make one and the courgettes should play an important part in it. Lemon is a good complimenting flavour to courgettes, so I used lemon infused olive oil and pressed lemon juice as seasoning.

Sense the taste of summer with my lemon and courgette risotto!

Ingredients

250 g arborio rice

3 small courgettes (or one medium)

100 g sweet baby peppers

2 shallots

2 garlic cloves

2 tbsp lemon infused olive oil

1 l vegetable stock

250 ml dry white wine

25 g butter

25 g vegetarian pasta cheese

½ lemon's juice [add grated zest for more lemon flavour (optional)]

1 tbsp Herbes de Provence

1 tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp salt

Method

Cut the courgettes into thin slices and the baby peppers into small cubes. Also chop the shallots and garlic cloves finely. Warm the vegetable stock up.

Cook the shallots, peppers and garlic in one tablespoon of lemon infused olive oil for about 10 minutes, until they are pretty soft.

Add the butter and arborio rice and stir for a few minutes until the rice becomes translucent. Pour in the white wine and let it evaporate.

Add a few ladles of the warm vegetable stock and let simmer under lid. Stir often and add more vegetable stock when needed.

When the risotto is almost cooked, heat one tablespoon of lemon infused olive oil in a separate pan and cook the courgette slices in there for a few minutes. Don't cook them too long, as it's nice when they still have little bite to them. Add the courgettes to the risotto.

Season the risotto towards the end with grated vegetarian pasta cheese (vegetarian parmesan), lemon juice, Herbes de Provence, black pepper and salt. Add more white wine, if needed.

I served my risotto with a fruity halloumi salad (similar to the one in the previous post), which makes a great summer side dish.

What is your favourite vegetarian summer risotto combination?

Your VegHog

Yellow courgette and tomato salad

Survived Monday more or less eloquently... so before I go into hibernation, here's a quick salad post that's long overdue and has been hogged by me. I bought these round courgettes in Paris, as some of you might remember from a previous post, and already made this salad a few weeks ago. This potential post just got stuck in my folder, but here it is now with its delightful colours to refresh your Monday.

2 yellow round courgettes

2 tbsp lemon infused olive oil

3 slicing tomatoes

Pomegranate seeds

Lettuce

½ tsp salt

½ tsp black pepper

Cut the courgettes and the tomatoes into thin slices.

Briefly sautée the courgettes in a pan in the lemon oil.

Layer all the ingredients nicely on a plate or into a bowl and enjoy the freshness!

Have a good week!

Your VegHog

Lemon and white chocolate muffins

As Easter is approaching, it's nice to bake something fresh and springlike and add whimsical Easter decorations to the baked goods. So I decided to make some lemon muffins with white chocolate icing. As a rough guideline for the ingredient amounts of the cake dough I used Mary Berry's recipe for lemon cupcakes, check it out as well. 

Here is my recipe, and it makes about 12 tasty muffins.

125g self-raising flour

125g caster sugar

125g butter

2 eggs

2tbsp milk

1,5 lemons, zest grated

150g white baking chocolate

Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Mix the flour and sugar with the soft butter. Add the eggs, milk and one lemon's zest and whisk them all into an even dough.

Divide the dough into muffin cases and bake for about 20 minutes until fully baked. I usually place the muffin cases into a silicone muffin baking tray with slots, so they keep their shape better.

Let the muffins cool after baking and once cooled start preparing the icing. Melt white chocolate gently in a water bath and mix the half lemon's zest into it once melted. Spread the chocolate on the muffins and let set. You can also pipe the chocolate icing on, but then hurry up, so that the chocolate doesn't set again.

Then just enjoy the tasty muffins!

Your VegHog

Liquorice and lemon chocolate

I found this idea for white chocolate with salty liquorice and lemon on Fazer's recipe pages, and wanted to try it as a quick remedy for chocolate cravings. Please note that the original recipe is in Finnish. They used white lemon chocolate, but I decided to season regular white chocolate with lemon zest.

300g white chocolate (for baking)

½ lemon's zest

2tbsp Tyrkisk Peber crush (substitute with another liquorice crush)

Heat the chocolate in a water bath until liquid.

Grate the lemon zest and add it to the chocolate and whisk.

Pour the chocolate on a baking parchment and sprinkle the Tyrkisk Peber crush on the top.

Let it set in the fridge for a few hours.

Break off pieces and enjoy.

Your VegHog

Tomato salad with lemon dressing

I wanted to make a quick and fresh salad and add a splash of colour among all these winter dishes. So I ended up making this tomato and zucchini salad with some added freshness of a lemon dressing.

Salad:

65g baby leaf salad

275g selected tomatoes

1 zucchini

Dressing:

½ lemon's juice

3tbsp olive oil

3tbsp fresh basil leaves

½tsp salt

½tsp black pepper

Make the dressing by mixing the ingredients together. I don't have a dressing shaker and I normally use a small airtight container for this purpose. Just put all the ingredients in there and shake vigorously.

For the salad half the tomatoes and slice the zucchini thinly. Then layer all the salad ingredients on a plate, drizzle the dressing on the top and enjoy.

Your VegHog

Rosemary, garlic and mozzarella spelt crust pizza

My aim was to make a very different kind of pizza than I would usually do, so I ended up making a fully new type of crust and a tomato-free filling. On that note I'm not sure whether it should be called a pizza or not. It would work well as a side bread to a pasta dish or a salad as well. I chose to use spelt flour in the crust, which made a very tasty and crispy crust. My recipe makes either 2 small thin crust pizzas or one larger one.

Ingredients

The crust:

100g wheat flour

100g spelt flour

7g dry yeast

175ml warm water

1tsp salt

2tbsp olive oil

The filling:

Fresh rosemary

1 cloveless garlic

Mozzarella balls

Lemon juice

Chili flakes

Olive oil

Prepare the dough for the crust first. Mix the dry ingredients together and add the warm water. Knead to an even dough and add more flour or water if needed. Finally add olive oil to finish off the kneading. Let the dough rise under a tea towel for about one hour. There's not much to prepare for the filling, so you can just rest most of the time while your dough is rising. Pre-heat the oven to 200C.

Once your dough is ready roll it out on a baking tray. Brush the surface with olive oil. You can even use some homemade rosemary oil for this. Then place the garlic shavings and rosemary leaves on the crust. I used cloveless garlic for this and shaved thin slices of it with a peeling knife. Add the mozzarella balls and press little lemon juice on the pizza. Sprinkle some chili flakes on the top. Bake for about 10 minutes until the crust is crispy.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog

Baked herb and lemon crust tomatoes

This is a very simple but tasty side dish. Using fresh herbs really pays off for this one.

Ingredients:

250g cherry tomatoes

1 garlic clove

Parsley

Thyme

Lemon zest

Bread crumbs

Vegetarian pasta cheese

Black pepper

Olive oil

Follow these easy steps:

Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Chop the garlic and herbs.

Grate the cheese and lemon zest.

Mix these ingredients with the bread crumbs and add some ground black pepper.

Cut the tomatoes in half and place them into an oven dish.

Brush the tomatoes with olive oil.

Sprinkle the herb and bread crumb mix on the tomatoes.

Bake for about 25 minutes until the crust is crispy.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Crusted harlequin squash wedges

A while ago I purchased Yotam Ottolenghi's vegetarian cook book Plenty and it's absolutely amazing. It's full of inspiration and tasty recipes.

This recipe is from that book but has naturally been slightly altered (original: Crusted pumpkin wedges with soured cream, Plenty p. 72-73). I used a squash instead of a pumpkin and served them with potato mash seasoned with smoky cheese and some lightly fried lemony zucchini slices. In any case this was a delightful and quick dish to make.

Harlequin squash was a new ingredient to me but I couldn't help purchasing it when I saw its cuteness on the supermarket shelf. It's quite mild yet sweet and tender.

For the squash wedges:

1 harlequin squash

25g grated vegetarian parmesan

15g bread crumbs

2 garlic cloves

4 tbsp parsley

2 tbsp thyme

Zest of one lemon

Olive oil

Pepper

For the side dish:

4-6 small zucchinis

Lemon juice

Chili flakes

Salt

For the potato mash:

500g new potatoes

Red Leicester cheese grated

Smoky Cheddar grated

Butter

Salt

Prepare the squash and its crust first. There's no need to peel the squash, just washing is enough. Slice the squash along its natural wedges. Be careful when cutting as the squash can be tough to cut.

Then make the crust mix by mixing bread crumbs, grated veggie parmesan, chopped garlic, parsley and thyme and grated lemon zest.

Place the squash wedges in an oven dish and brush them with olive oil. Sprinkle the crust mix and little pepper on them. Bake the wedges at 190C for about 30 minutes until the squash is tender and the crust is crispy.

While these bake you can boil the new potatoes for the mash. New potatoes tend to be very small, and the smaller the tastier, so they boil quicker than regular potatoes. When the potatoes are boiled soft, squeeze them through a potato ricer and season with salt, butter and grated smoky Cheddar and Red Leicester cheese. Mix it until smooth.

When the wedges are in the oven and the potatoes are boiling there's time to make the zucchini slices. Slice the small zucchinis thinly lengthwise and fry them lightly in olive oil. Add lemon juice, chili flakes and salt.

Serve all the components together and you'll have a nice and still fairly light meal.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog