Leek and lentil pie

British Pie Week is observed this week and I thought that I would participate with a pie recipe. I made an ultra savoury leek and lentil pie with a twist. This pie doesn't contain just leek and lentils, there is also a hint of tarragon and cider running through, all covered by a savoury skin-on potato mash (the best kind!). The method of making this pie is very straight forward. I served the pie with veggie sausages and a carrot ribbon salad. It was a really filling and nice wintery dish, just in time before spring has fully come here.

This recipe is very easy to veganise by substituting the butter and leaving out the cheese from the mash. I just wanted to make the mash rich and savoury by adding some of that lovely Havarti. And here's my recipe.

Ingredients

Topping:

500 g ruby gem potatoes

2 tsp salt

25 g butter

30 g aged Havarti cheese

Filling:

1 onion

4 garlic cloves

4 leeks

25 g butter

100 ml dry cider

1 tbsp vegetable stock powder

Salt and ground black pepper to taste

Small bunch fresh tarragon

½ cup puy lentils

Sides:

Veggie sausages, Cumberlands by the Secret Sausages

Carrot ribbon salad made from one orange and one yellow carrot

Method

Cook the potatoes to make the mash topping. Save also some of the potato cooking water for the mash. Mash the potatoes with little cooking water, salt, butter and cheese.

Slice the leeks and chop the onion and garlic finely. Heat the butter in a saucepan and start cooking the onion and garlic in there. After a while add the leeks and cider and let simmer under the lid. Add the seasoning.

Cook the lentils separately and then add them to the leeks.

Place the leek and lentil mix into an oven dish and cover it with the mash.

Bake in the oven at 180 C for about 30-40 minutes until the potato topping is little crispy and golden brown.

Serve and enjoy!

I want to share this recipe with My Legume Love Affair hosted this month by Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen.

Your VegHog

Lentil pancakes with chilli butter & 500!

It's The VegHog's 500^th blog post my friends! Hurrah, hurrah!

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Again I want to thank you all, my lovely readers! Only because of you I've made it to 500! 
♥

I wanted to post something festive to mark the occasion, but then realised that I've been cooking quite healthy food this winter, which might not be such party food. Then I thought that a cake would be nice anyway, ahem... a pancake, ahem... a savoury pancake... but then again, what could be more me than that? This recipe is for savoury pancakes powered with red lentils and spelt flour for that extra protein and healthy twist with some extra special chilli and lime butter on the top. So here comes the recipe, I hope you enjoy reading it!

The VegHog's Lentil Pancakes

Pancake batter

50 g dried red lentils

110 g spelt flour

1 tbsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp ground cumin

2 eggs

150 ml milk

50 g butter

Olive oil for frying

Chilli butter

100 g butter

1 red chilli

½ lime's zest

Method

Make the chilli butter first by mixing the finely chopped chilli and grated lime zest into soft butter. Wrap into a cling film and let rest in the fridge.

Rinse and cook the lentils until done.

Mix the dry ingredients together for the batter.

Add the cooked and cooled lentils, eggs, milk and melted butter and beat it all into an even batter.

Fry the pancakes on both sides in a frying pan in olive oil.

Serve the pancakes straight from the pan with the chilli butter.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Lebanese dirty rice

Adapted from the New Feast (p. 194-195) by Greg and Lucy Malouf

Some weeks ago I wrote a post about my newest vegetarian cookbook the New Feast by Greg and Lucy Malouf and now I cooked my first dish from it, the Lebanese dirty rice. It's a traditional Middle Eastern dish and I would love to hear from local people (or from people more experienced in this style of cuisine) how you usually make this dish. Please comment in the box below, if you have any experiences with such dishes. And obviously you can also comment, if you don't! The recipe was also published as an edited extract here. First I was very surprised by the lack of different spices, but when I ate the dish I realised that nothing else was needed. This was such a simple and beautiful dish and I think it will become a regular in my kitchen. The fried onions are just amazing!

I made some adjustments according to what was in my cupboard. I replaced the small black lentils with green lentils and the long-grain rice with brown rice. I also added one tablespoon of vegetable stock powder to the lentils when they were cooking. Otherwise I stuck more or less to the original recipe, but the below one is my version of it. I doubled up the ingredient amounts as well as I wanted to have a huge dish (feeds about 4 adults), but feel free to reduce the amounts if you prefer.

Ingredients for the rice

2 onions

4 tbsp olive oil

80 g green lentils

160 g brown rice

1,5 – 2 litres water

1 tsp ground cumin

Dried rose petals for the presentation

Ingredients for the fried onions

2 large onions

6 tbsp cornflour

1 tsp ground cumin

Vegetable oil for deep/shallow frying

Method

Chop the onions for the rice finely and rinse the lentils. Start cooking the chopped onions in the olive oil until soft. Then add the lentils and about one litre water. More water will be added later. Let cook under lid for about 20 minutes until the lentils are almost done.

Then add the rice and little water if needed. Let cook for further 30 minutes. It can take longer with the brown rice. The goal is to cook both very soft so that the lentils stain the rice and make it dirty as described in the title.

In the meanwhile slice the onions for the topping into this strips and soak them for about 15 minutes in salt water. After that drain them well. For the coating mix the cornflour and ground cumin and roll the drained onions in there. Heat vegetable oil in a pan and deep fry the onions until they are crispy.

Serve the rice with the onions and rose petals on the top and enjoy! I found this pheomenal even cold the next day. What a great dish! I'm going to make this again next week, as it's also very cheap and I should always have the ingredients for it in the cupboard.

Have a good week everyone!

Your VegHog

Acorn squash salad

I think that this salad could well be served at Christmas. It's colourful, wholesome, comforting... the clue is in the mixture of warm and cold components: the squash, lentils and halloumi will be served warm and the salad leaves and pomegranate cold. Have a look below, how easy it is to compile.

Salad ingredients

1 acorn squash

1 tbsp olive oil for roasting the squash

½ cup green lentils

1 vegetable stock cube

250 g halloumi

1 tbsp vegetable oil for frying the halloumi

200 g mixed salad leaves

1 pomegranate

Dressing ingredients

1 tbsp pomegranate molasses

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

4 tbsp olive oil

½ tsp thyme

½ tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

Method

Cut the acorn squash into slices, basically rings, and remove the seeds. There's no need to peel the squash. Then brush the slices with olive oil and roast at 180C for about 30 minutes until they are fully roasted. The roasting time can vary depending on the thickness of the squash slices and the oven's performance.

Rinse the lentils and cook them in water with the vegetable stock cube until soft, yet with some bite. This takes about 20-30 minutes. After that drain them.

Cut the halloumi into cubes and fry them in hot vegetable oil until they are golden brown.

Wash the salad leaves and remove the pomegranate seeds.

During the roasting and cooking, the dressing can be made. Just mix all the ingredients together.

Then assemble the salad. Make either a nice presentation on individual plates, or place the components nicely into a salad bowl and drizzle the dressing on the top.

Your VegHog

Nutty vegetable pie topped with coquina squash mash

Oh, poor old me has been suffering from a bad cold since Sunday evening. Now I forced myself to the computer with a hot blackcurrant juice, as being active does make you feel slightly better. No doubt that I will soon be returning to bed to rest. However I wanted to post this recipe for a pie that I made a while ago. At the moment I don't have much strength for cooking. My favourite meal, when I'm sick, is spaghetti with little butter, salt and grated cheese. That's the glamorous food I'm planning to eat today as well. It's just suitably tasteless, but keeps you going.

So, quite the contrary this recipe is full of flavour. It's for a lentil, black bean and hazelnut pie with roasted coquina squash top. It really oozes autumn and warms you up on a chillier day.

Please have a look how easy it is to make.

1 coquina squash

Olive oil for roasting

½ tsp salt

1 cup breadcrumbs

Peel the coquina squash, remove the seeds and cut to wedges. Brush the wedges with olive oil and roast at 180-200C until soft with roasting marks. Mash the squash and season it with salt. I added breadcrumbs, as the squash mash can be fairly liquid, more so than a potato mash would be. So the breadcrumbs help to make it a sturdy top layer for this pie.

150 g hazelnuts

Cut the hazelnuts in half or into smaller crumbs and toast them in the oven.

1 cup green lentils

1 mushroom stock cube

Rinse the lentils and boil them in water with the mushroom stock cube until fully cooked.

240 g / 1 can black beans

3 shallots

3 garlic cloves

Olive oil for frying

1 cup dry cider

2 bay leaves

2 tbsp vegetable stock powder or two vegetable stock cubes

1 tbsp miso

Salt and pepper to taste

Chop the shallots and garlic finely and start cooking them in olive oil. Once the shallots and garlic are cooked soft, add the beans, cooked and drained lentils and toasted hazelnuts into the pan.

Cook for a couple of minutes and then add the cider and season with bay leaves, vegetable stock powder, miso, salt and pepper. Also add the miso to taste.

Let the mix simmer slowly for about 15 minutes. Then remove the bay leaves and layer the lentil mix into ramekins or a large oven dish.

Spread the squash mash on the top and bake the pie at 180C for about 40 minutes.

Enjoy your autumn pie!

Your VegHog

Lentil and pea burgers

No month goes by without veggie burger time for me and it's here again today! Sometimes it's almost like no week goes by without veggie burger time, especially now in this slightly colder season. This could be a good recipe, if you are planning cosy weekend evenings in. Have a lovely weekend all anyway!

In these burgers I combined red lentils with ground dried peas and pepper, and this is a really good and easy basic veggie burger recipe.

Makes a batch of about 15 burgers.

1 cup red lentils

1 cup ground dried peas

1 vegetable stock cube

1 pointy yellow romano pepper

1 large red onion

2 garlic cloves

1 tsp parsley

1 tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

2 eggs

1 ½ cups spelt flour

Vegetable oil for frying

Ciabatta rolls

Tomatoes

New onions of the season

Gem lettuce

Rinse the lentils and cook them in water with added vegetable stock cube until they are soft. Add the ground dried peas just before the end, in order to cook them also for a couple of minutes. Drain the lentils and peas well and let them cool.

Chop the romano pepper, onion and garlic very finely.

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and shape burgers from the mix. Add more flour, if needed for the firm texture. I normally add a couple of tablespoons of the mix and shape the burgers on the hot pan.

Heat vegetable oil in a large pan and fry the burgers on both sides until golden brown.

After the frying place them on kitchen roll to get rid of excess oil.

Serve as burgers with ciabatta rolls, tomato slices, new onions and gem lettuce.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Lentil and watercress salad

I'm still keeping the French theme up, as I again got some inspiration from The French Market Cookbook by Clotilde Dusoulier, and today's recipe will be the tasty Crunchy lentil and watercress salad – Salade croquante de lentilles et cresson (Please also have a look here at my take on Clotilde's other salad recipe). 

I cut a couple of corners here, impatient as I am, but the salad ended up being a nice fresh, crunchy and spicy spring salad. This recipe makes enough salad for four people, as the ingredients are quite filling.

Ingredients

Salad:

1 cup green dried lentils

1 shallot

1 bay leaf

200g radishes

200g watercress

8 fresh mint leaves

20g fresh chives

Dressing:

2tbsp olive oil

1tbsp cider vinegar

1tsp honey

1tsp ground mustard seeds

Ground black pepper

Sea salt

Method

Rinse and cook the lentils in water with the bay leaf and finely chopped shallot for about 20 minutes until tender. Remove the water and let the lentils cool.

Chop the radishes into small cubes, and also chop the mint and chives finely.

Mix the dressing ingredients together and add it to the salad just before serving.

Combine all the components and serve the salad cool.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Curried cauliflower and lentil soup

I don't know what's going on, but the weather is playing crazy here in England. One minute it's warm and sunny, and then heavy rain and wind the next. Well, I guess that basically is what you'd call an English weather. This can only mean one thing: soup time for The VegHog!

This recipe is not very much originally Indian apart from the spices, but I think that it's sometimes nice to make a comforting curried soup, and all these vegetables go perfectly with the curry flavours. So here are my simple making instructions.

Ingredients

2 shallots

3 garlic cloves

1 small dried chilli

1tbsp vegetable oil

2tbsp Garam Masala spice mix

4 small potatoes

2 carrots

1 cauliflower

About 1l water

1 cup dried red lentils

Fresh coriander leaves

1-2tsp ground turmeric

Naan bread for serving

Method

First make your Garam Masala spice mix (you can also use a ready made one, but making it from scratch is fun!). My instructions for making it are here.

Chop the shallots, garlic and chilli finely and cook them in the vegetable oil in a large saucepan until soft. Peel the potatoes and carrots and chop them coarsely and remove the cauliflower florets.

Add the Garam Masala to the saucepan and then the chopped potatoes, carrots and cauliflower florets. Cook for a few minutes and then add about 2/3 of the water (you can add more later depending on the desired thickness) and the rinsed lentils. Let the soup simmer under lid until all vegetables are fully cooked and the flavour has developed in the desired way. Stir the soup occasionally. Season with fresh coriander leaves and turmeric to taste.

Once everything is cooked and you're happy with the seasoning, purée the soup. Then serve it warm with warm naan bread on the side and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Green lentil soup

 

A while ago I posted a photo of this dish to Guardian Witness' recipe swap on the subject “Cheap”, because that's what this dish is. However it doesn't mean that it's bad in any way. It's quite nice to get a lovely meal for a low price, isn't it? 

So this is just a green lentil soup with some additional potatoes, and of course other soup basics. I always tend to have these ingredients in my kitchen.

1 large onion

3 garlic cloves

1tbsp olive oil

250g potatoes

1tbsp vegetable stock powder + 1l water

1,5 cups green dried lentils

1tsp salt

½tsp black pepper

1tsp fresh thyme leaves

Chop the onion and garlic finely, and cut the peeled potatoes (no need to peel, if you use new potatoes) into cubes.

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and lightly fry the onion and garlic. Then add the potatoes and fry and stir for a couple of minutes more.

Prepare a vegetable stock of vegetable stock powder and water and add about the half of it into the pan. The other half will be gradually added when the soup is simmering. You might not need the whole litre depending on the desired thickness of the soup.

Rinse the green dried lentils and also add them to the pan. Let the soup simmer under a lid. Stir occasionally and add little more stock. Make sure that the lentils are covered with stock at all times.

When the lentils and potatoes are cooked soft, season the soup with salt, black pepper and thyme.

Serve warm with nice bread slices and that's the soup done!

Your VegHog

Red lentil and carrot soup

Here's an easy, cheap and convenient recipe for the winter: vegan red lentil and carrot soup. This is one of my basic soup creations, but I think it's very tasty and filling as well. Look how easy it is to make!

2 onions

2-3 garlic cloves

2tbsp olive oil

3 carrots

2 cups red split lentils

2tbsp vegetable stock powder + 1,5l water

1tsp salt

1tsp black pepper

Sage

Thyme

Chop the onions and garlic small. Peel and chop the carrots. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan and sweat the onions and garlic for a few minutes. Add the carrots and sweat some more.

Prepare the vegetable stock by combining the vegtable stock powder with water, and pour the half of it into the saucepan. Rinse the lentils and add them to the pan and let boil for a few minutes. Then reduce the heat slightly and add some more vegetable stock. Add more of the vegetable stock whenever needed and also depending on the desired thickness of the soup.

Let the soup simmer until the carrots and lentils are fully cooked and season it with salt, ground black pepper, sage and thyme. Then just puree it with a hand mixer. Taste, and add more seasoning if needed.

I told you it was going to be easy! Then just enjoy the warm soup with a nice bread. On this occasion I baked again my cider bread to be eaten with the soup.

Your VegHog

Flying saucer squash pies

Maybe some of you, dear readers, have already seen my mysterious #iwanttobelieve tweets predicting the arrival of a flying saucer squash recipe. I obtained a magnificent flying saucer squash at the Arundel food festival and wanted to feature it as my this year's spooky Halloween ingredient par excellence.

I thought hard about it how to use this wonderful vegetable and I decided to make two different dishes, as that huge squash easily made two full meals, and this is the first of them. I wanted to make a hearty autumn pie and I think it turned out to be very tasty. The pastry is also homemade and is partly made of spelt flour. This recipe can be made with any squash or pumpkin in case you can't get hold of a flying saucer.

The pastry

150g spelt flour

150g wheat flour

150g butter

4-8tbsp cold water

The filling

½ flying saucer squash

1 cup red lentils

1 cloveless garlic (or 2-3 cloves of regular garlic)

2 shallots

1 cup oak matured Somerset vintage cider (or other dry cider)

1tbsp vegetable stock powder

Vegetable oil (for roasting the squash)

Olive oil

A bunch of fresh thyme sprigs

A small chunk of Sussex Charmer cheese

Salt

Black pepper

1 egg (for brushing the pastry)

Method

Make the pastry first. Mix the flours together and pinch soft butter cubes among the flour until the mixture reaches a similar texture to breadcrumbs. Add cold water for binding the dough and knead it even. Wrap the dough in cling film and let it rest in the fridge during the other preparations.

Cut the flying saucer in half and save the other half for later (another recipe is coming soon to this blog!). Peel it, remove the seeds and cut it into small cubes. Place the cubes into an oven dish and brush them with vegetable oil. Roast the squash at 180C for about 30 minutes until soft.

Parallel to this rinse the red lentils and boil them in water until soft. Add vegetable stock powder to the water for boiling.

In another large pan heat some olive oil and sweat the shallots and garlic. Then add the roasted squash and make a cider addition to the pan. Let it simmer and the cider evaporate. Then also add the lentils and season the pie filling with salt, pepper and generous amount of fresh thyme. Add some grated hard cheese and add more vegetable stock powder or cider if you want a heartier taste.

Then roll out the pastry and place it into one large baking tin or smaller tins or ramekins. Put the squash filling in and close the lid on them. Make some air holes on the lid, which can be decorative. Brush the pastry with a beaten egg and place also some more thyme leaves on the top. You can also brush the edges of the pie with the egg before placing the lid on. That way it will stick better to your main pie.

Bake the pie(s) at 200C for about 20-25 minutes. Enjoy and let the lovely pie goodness warm your heart!

Your VegHog