Mexican mac’n’cheese

I hope you are all having a nice weekend. It was a public holiday here in Denmark on Friday, so I have been enjoying a relaxing long weekend. The weather has been beautiful, it was really warm yesterday and we properly started some gardening on our balcony. More posts will follow about that. As I've said before, I’m excited to get into growing my own veg after a few years’ break. Today we will be pottering around on the balcony some more and a pineapple and olive pizza is planned for dinner. I’m happy.

Today I want to share a recipe of a dish with you that has lately become a huge favourite of mine. I’ve made this style Mexican mac’n’cheese with beans and Mexican spices a few times now and I absolutely adore it. Maybe mac’n’cheese isn’t quite accurate as a description, as it’s quite a different recipe than traditional mac’n’cheese. But anyway, the dish does contain mini macaroni and cheese. I add some beans for a wonderfully fluffy coating when they are partially broken to the mix. In this recipe I used kidney beans, but butterbeans are actually my favourites for this. Sweetcorn also adds a nice veggie crunchiness to the dish. Sometimes I also add tomatoes or bell peppers. Here is my recipe.

Ingredients

1 large onion

2 garlic cloves

1 chipotle chilli

Vegetable oil for frying

230 g kidney beans

150 g sweetcorn

Smoked paprika to taste

Ground cumin to taste

Ground coriander to taste

4-6 tbsp tomato purée

1 cup mini macaroni

Fresh coriander leaves

Method

Cook the macaroni, drain, cool and set to side.

Chop the onion and start frying it in oil. Once the onions have softened, add the minced garlic and finely chopped chilli. Cook for a while.

Add the beans and sweetcorn to the mix and season. Cook for a while and break the beans up a bit. You can also add some water or vegetable stock, if needed.

Add the tomato purée and mix in the grated cheese. Then add the macaroni and let the dish heat through, season to taste and serve with fresh coriander on the top.

Your VegHog

Mac'n'cheese lasagne

It was my 6th blog anniversary yesterday, but I was too busy with work and couldn’t post anything then. I wasn’t able to celebrate it either, but when I think about it, I’m very proud that I’ve kept blogging for such a long time, and hopefully will continue for many years to come. And all that is thanks to you my lovely readers, so thank you so much for reading my posts, commenting and sharing your vegetarian cooking ideas. I couldn’t do it without you!

My first food post on this blog was a halloumi lasagne with grilled peppers and The VegHog’s special tomato sauce. I laughed out loud a bit when reading that first post today, but it was quite amusing. I still sometimes make my lasagne that way, but now I don’t normally make the sauce from scratch by skinning tomatoes etc.

Suitably to the theme, today’s post shall be a lasagne of a different kind. It’s a mac’n’cheese lasagne, and it contains exactly what the name promises, a vegetarian lasagne filled with mac’n’cheese layers. I won’t share any specific recipe for this, because you can basically just layer a lasagne with your favourite mac’n’cheese and then just bake it. I still also used normal lasagne sheets in this one and layered them with a homemade mac'n'cheese, which had been made with a thinner macaroni than my usual ones, garlicky tomato sauce and lots of cheese on the top.

I didn’t add anything else to the lasagne this time, but a range of veggies would also go well here. I just wanted the ultimate comfort and got it. It was a real guilty pleasure, and I don’t expect to make it that often, as it may not be the healthiest dish of them all. What do you think, have I crossed a line?

I hope you all have a really nice week!

Your VegHog

Mac'n'cheese sandwiches

Did you have a nice Christmas time? I had a good and relaxing time with my family in Finland, where there was snow, so it looked really Christmassy. Now I'm back to the rather grey and rainy Copenhagen.

Tomorrow we will just have a relaxed vegan taco dinner at home and go out a bit when there are fireworks at twelve. Last year everyone was shooting their own fireworks around the lakes closeby, and that looked quite impressive, so that's where we will be heading again.

I recently made these very comforting mac'n'cheese sandwiches from left-over mac'n'cheese, and I could actually see these as New Year's eve food. The contrast between the toasted crispy bread and the cheesy soft macaroni was great. For some more flavour, I added green jalapenos and fried red bell peppers as an extra twist to the sandwich filling. I served a fresh salad and tomatoes on the side to make the dish feel slightly more healthy. These sandwiches made a great evening snack for this season, and I will surely make them again.

Happy New Year everyone!

Your VegHog