Marinated mozzarella with tomato

I made this marinated mozzarella with tomato as a starter yesterday and it was a really striking looking dish and very tasty. The recipe is by Yotam Ottolenghi Marinated buffalo mozzarella and tomato from his vegetarian cookbook Plenty (p. 126-127). It can also be found online here. It's a simple and fine dish like Ottolenghi says.

I followed Ottolenghi's recipe otherwise, but scaled it down by the half, as there were only two eaters. The dish was exquisit: lemony, garlicky mozzarella with a punch of qualitative olive oil and a flavour of the fennel seeds going through accompanied by tasty local tomatoes. I will definitely serve this as a starter at a future dinner party and can only recommend it.

Your VegHog

Stuffed lumaconi in tomato sauce

I recently bought the chunky lumaconi pasta shells and thought that the first dish made with them should be a pasta bake, and that's what I made. I went with the classic combination of pasta, tomatoes, mozzarella and basil here. I stuffed the pasta shells with mozzarella cherries that had been rolled in pesto, covered them with a heirloom tomato sauce and a bit of extra cheese and baked in the oven.

The firm giant pasta stuffed with fragrant pesto, melting mozzarella and covered in fresh tomato sauce made a very good combination indeed. Here's my recipe.

Ingredients

Sauce:

3 large heirloom tomatoes

1 onion

3 garlic cloves

2 tbsp tomato purée

Salt to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

Stuffing:

Handful of basil leaves

2 garlic cloves

10 g pine nuts

4 tbsp olive oil

200 g mozzarella cherries

Pasta:

12 lumaconi pasta shells

Vegetarian pasta cheese

Method

Make the tomato sauce first by cooking the finely chopped onion and garlic until soft and then adding the finely chopped heirloom tomatoes. Let simmer and season to taste.

Prepare the stuffing by puréeing the pesto ingredients together and mixing them with the mozzarella cherries.

Cook the lumaconi in water until al dente, cool them down with cold water so that they are easier to handle.

Stuff the lumaconi with the mozzarella cherries and pour the tomato sauce on the top.

Grate little vegetarian pasta cheese for the top.

Bake at 180 C for about 20 minutes.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Heirloom tomato, mozzarella and pearled spelt salad

Today's dish is very easy, as it's only a salad. However I tried to make it slightly more filling with a pearled spelt addition and mozzarella balls. Of course tomatoes are an important ingredient here again, like in all my dishes this week, since I'm celebrating The VegHog's Tomato Festival. Have a look at the two previous posts and share your tomato recipe, if you feel like it. 

This one is quite a basic summer salad, but still a little alteration from the normal tomato and mozzarella salad.

Ingredients

6-8 tbsp pearled spelt

1 tsp vegetable stock powder

2 large heirloom tomatoes

½ red onion

50 g rocket

150 g mozzarella balls

Olive oil

Fresh basil

Salt

Pepper

Method

Cook the pearled spelt in water with the added vegetable stock powder until they are done.

Slice the tomatoes and the red onions. Quickly fry the onion slices in olive oil in a pan.

Assemble all the components onto a plate and drizzle olive oil on the top and season with basil, salt and pepper.

That's how simple it is, enjoy!

Your VegHog

Quick pasta using local tomatoes

I'm continuing straight from Sunday's post from my local street fest, as I purchased the tomatoes there that I'm using for today's dinner, a fresh pasta with fried tomatoes, mozzarella and basil. Through the method I prepared this dish, it really contains the fresh flavour of the tomatoes and the garlic gets only slightly fried complementing the other ingredients. Using a fragrant olive oil improves the dish immensely.

These are the ingredients I used today: Fresh tagliatelle, selected local tomatoes, garlic cloves, good quality olive oil, buffalo mozzarella, fresh basil, ground black pepper and salt.

This is a very quick dish to prepare. First prepare the tomatoes by cutting them into smaller pieces, halving or quartering, depending on the size. Tear the mozzarella and get the basil leaves ready. Chop the garlic finely and add it to a bowl with the chopped tomatoes to wait for the frying. Then start cooking the pasta in a pan of lightly salted water and simultaneously heat up a frying pan on medium to high. Once the pasta is almost cooked, put some olive oil into the pan and add the tomatoes and garlic and let them fry for a couple of minutes, just so that they heat through.

Put the cooked pasta onto a plate, then put the tomatoes, mozzarella and fresh basil on the top, season with salt and ground black pepper and add some of your best olive oil onto the dish. Serve immediately and enjoy.

This dish is wonderful served with some white wine, which you however might not want to drink on a weekday, and even I skipped it on this occasion.

Have a nice week!

Your VegHog

Start of the caprese season

I think that this is pretty much the start of the proper caprese season, for me at least it is. There have been times, when I could have lived through the whole summer on insalata caprese, also known as tomato, mozzarella and basil salad. I don't make it quite that often anymore these days, but can't think of many other perfect dishes for a hot summer's day. I'm still keeping calm here, as it isn't that hot yet, but seems to be getting more summerly.

Lovely local tasty tomatoes are appearing in the shops and basil grows nicely by my window. I hope to get my own tomato crops later this summer, too. On this occasion I used Pome Dei Moro tomatoes from Sussex. Of course good quality mozzarella is available in many shops, so there's nothing that can stop me from making this dish. I only use my best olive oil and balsamic vinegar or balsamic pearls for this salad and season it with little salt and ground black pepper.

The salad is wonderfully light on its own, but also great with crusty breads, pasta dishes, risottos, barbequed vegetables and so forth.

How do you like your caprese, traditional or more inventive?

Your VegHog

Balsamic glazed vegetables

The 1^st of May, Vappu with its eve Walburgis Night, is a big celebration and street carnival in Finland, other Nordic countries and Germany. Especially students love to celebrate it, but also children have their balloons and streamers. It's customary to eat nice finger food and baked goods, have lovely drinks and do picnics in the parks (weather permitting). These customs that I listed here are mainly Finnish and may be different in the other countries. 

I wasn't directly inspired by Vappu to make these balsamic glazed vegetables, but I thought that they could make a nice addition to a picnic or when having friends over for snacks. I can't believe that it's almost May, how quickly is this year actually going!? Anyway, this is how I made my balsamic glazed vegetables.

Ingredients

2 bell peppers

1 garlic clove

200 g baby plum tomatoes

200 g green olives

Fresh basil leaves

Oregano

Salt

Black pepper

Olive oil

Balsamic glaze
Pine nuts
Mozzarella pearls

Method

Cut the peppers into thin strips and chop the garlic finely. Cook them for a couple of minutes in a pan in hot olive oil.

Cut the tomatoes in halves.

Put the vegetables into a bowl and season them with the herbs, salt, pepper, olive oil and balsamic glaze.

Cover the bowl with cling film and let rest in the fridge for at least one hour. I prefer leaving these overnight.

Serve with salads, pasta, couscous, bread, whatever you can think of!

Hauskaa Vappua! And have nice time even if you are not specifically celebrating any of the early May festivities!

Your VegHog

Blood orange, courgette and mozzarella salad

Please don't think that I'm crazy when you see this dish, as the ingredient combination of fruit, vegetables and cheese might seem strange. And believe me, I got some suspicious glances for this at home, but in the end it was all eaten and more was requested... These flavours went surprisingly well together, even shallot with blood orange was very interesting and it was almost like a promise of the spring. This dish came about when I wanted a fresh starter salad and these were the ingredients I had available. I've been especially happy about the juicy blood oranges that I've been able to get at my local store at the moment, they are so lovely. I certainly think I'll make this sort of dish again!

So here's how I made it. These amounts make small starter salads for two persons.

1 courgette

6-8 cherry tomatoes

2 tbsp olive oil

1 blood orange

1 small shallot

Pomegranate seeds

Mozzarella pearls

I roasted the courgette slices and the cherry tomatoes in the oven in olive oil.

The shallot was sliced into thin half rings and the blood orange segments cut out.

Then I just combined all the ingredients on a plate and served.

What do you think? Is the combination too weird for you or are you willing to try?

Your VegHog

Fusilli with roasted tomatoes, mozzarella and basil-garlic sauce

Such a pasta dish, like the one I'm sharing with you today, is my go-to dish whenever I want to eat fairly quickly yet tasty or just want to have a lazy weekday meal. Tomato-mozzarella-basil-olive oil is such a winning combination that it's easy to keep it simple. The flavours work well together, the dish is tasty and quick to make – what's not to like?

This is what today's pasta dish consisted of:

Ingredients

300 g mini plum tomatoes

6 tbsp olive oil + some to be drizzled on the top of the ready dish

2 garlic cloves

A bunch of fresh basil leaves

250 g mozzarella

300 g fusilli pasta

Sea salt

I also had some shop bought garlic bread on the side.

Method

Place the whole tomatoes into an oven dish and drizzle olive oil on the top. Roast them at 180-200C for about 10 minutes until they start bursting open.

In the meanwhile boil the pasta in salt water until al dente.

Purée the garlic with the basil leaves and olive oil and set to side. This will be drizzled on top of the dish just before serving.

Tear the mozzarella. Tearing doesn't just look nice on the dish, but it also contains the moisture in the mozzarella.

Serve the pasta with the tomatoes, basil-garlic sauce, mozzarella, little sea salt and good quality olive oil. It's ready to be enjoyed!

I'm sharing this recipe with this month's Pasta Please challenge. Pasta Please is a monthly vegetarian cooking challenge by Tinned Tomatoes blog hosted this month by Knead Whine blog with the theme “dishes that can be on the table in twenty minutes”. I thought that my recipe fits the category, and quite often quick pasta dishes are what I choose to cook after a hectic weekday.

Your VegHog

Cooking a summer recipe off-season

I tried to defy winter today by cooking this rather summerly dish. It's light and the ingredient combination reminds of summer, so not a typical February dish today. This is just what I would imagine eating al fresco on a summer holiday.

Last Saturday I picked these lovely colourful heirloom tomatoes up from a food market, and was since then wondering what to cook with them. Then I remembered this dish that I posted in August and have made occasionally, Heirloom tomato and mozzarella pasta and made today's dish in a pretty much identical way to that. Go and have a look at the original post, if you fancy making such a dish!

This small summerly cooking and dining session at least cheered me up after a long and busy Wednesday. I also start thinking that there's actually hope that we are slowly going towards the summer, as the days are getting longer all the time. It's still chilly and we saw the first snow here yesterday, but hey, spring is bound to come soon!

I hope that everyone's having a good week!

Your VegHog

Fried heirloom tomato pizza

Fried pizza is my new passion. You can read my first post on the subject here, with all the drama around my scorched hand. Now I made a simple basic tomato and mozzarella pizza that was pan-fried first and then grilled quickly in the oven. This method gives the pizza an incredibly crispy crust and a slightly smoky taste.

I can only dream about the lovely tomatoes I purchased in France in the summer (*see the dreamy picture below), but luckily farmers' markets have some nice ones over here as well.

Here's how I made these small pizzas.

Spelt pizza dough

400 g spelt flour

1 tbsp dry yeast

2 tsp salt

350 ml lukewarm water

3 tbsp olive oil

Toppings

Tomato sauce (Tomatoes, shallot, garlic, olive oil, basil, salt and pepper)

Heirloom tomatoes

Buffalo mozzarella

Method

First make the dough by combining the dry ingredients, then by adding the water and olive oil and kneading. Let the dough rise for about one hour in room temperature.

Then make a basic tomato sauce, although you can skip this step completely and just put fresh tomatoes onto the pizza. That's also a very good alternative. This time however, I also added a tomato sauce.

Once the dough and the sauce are done, slice the heirloom tomatoes and tear the mozzarella, and you are ready for the frying bit.

Heat a non-stick and oven-proof frying pan very hot on the hob, and also heat the grill setting of the oven as hot as possible. Then place the stretched pizza dough and the toppings into the pan. You can also add the mozzarella onto the pizza after the frying and grilling, then it's nice and fresh.

Leave the pizza in the pan until the crust gets slightly brown below and then pop the whole thing into the oven under the grill for a further couple of minutes. My grill doesn't get that hot, so I had to leave the pizza for about five minutes to get nice colour. The first frying bit is also only a few minutes, so it's a very quick way to make a tasty pizza.

Then repeat the frying procedure to make a few more pizzas, unless you used a large pan that could accommodate the whole dough. This is the bit to be very careful at, as the pan and its handle will be extremely hot.

Drizzle some basil, chilli or garlic infused olive oil onto the pizzas just before serving. These always give a nice edge and extra flavour.

So how about making such pizzas on the weekend?

Your VegHog

Panini with tomato, mozzarella and pesto

Good morning! Today I'm writing about a breakfast or lunch tip, which is always a favourite of mine and easy to make. I like panini very much, and I think that a tomato-mozzarella combination is one of the best for the filling. That's why I chose those ingredients now as well and also added pesto to the panini.

These are the ingredients I used:

• Panini bread
• Tomatoes
• Mozzarella
• Basil pesto

Then all you need to do is to slice the tomatoes and mozzarella, and possibly make the pesto. Here is one basil pesto recipe of mine, but you can also use a ready made pesto. 

Cut the panini bread in half and place the ingredients on it. Press the panini halves together.

Grill the panini on a dry grill pan on both sides until there are grilling marks and the cheese is melting.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Fried pizza with aubergines and mozzarella

Fried pizza is all the craze now, and I decided to make a few of those as well. But here comes a serious WARNING! Be very careful at all times when handling those hot pans! They have been to a very hot oven, and that should not be forgotten. The VegHog wasn't careful enough and scorched its hand severely enough to have to visit a doctor! I'm fine again, and this injury hasn't scared me away from making more fried pizzas as they were absolutely delicious. The frying adds a certain smokiness to the base and makes it crispier than you would achieve in a normal oven.

If you got curious about fried pizza, I would recommend you to read also this Guardian article. There are many good tips for making a good fried pizza. 

So here's how I made my first fried pizza ever.

Spelt pizza crust:

It of course depends on the size of your pan, how many pizzas you'll get out of this amount of dough, but it should be at least a few small ones. And this time I made my crust a bit thicker than usual.

2 tbsp dry yeast

400 g spelt flour

2 tsp salt

350 ml lukewarm water

3 tbsp olive oil

First make the crust. I made a spelt crust, because I recently bought spelt flour in bulk. You could also make a half spelt, half wheat crust, which is what I normally make.

Toppings:

4 tomatoes (mine were tomato tigerellas from my own garden)

1 red onion

1 garlic clove

½ tsp ground black pepper

½ tsp salt

Fresh basil leaves

200 g buffalo mozzarella

4 mini aubergines

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp oregano

What to do:

Make a quick basic tomato sauce by chopping the onion, garlic and tomatoes finely and cooking them in olive oil until the flavours blend nicely. Season the sauce with salt and pepper. You can also make a pizza without a tomato sauce and just put some tomato slices on the base. That is just as good, only a bit different.

Roast the mini aubergine slices brushed with olive oil and oregano at 220C for about 10 minutes until tender and golden brown.

Heat a non-stick frying pan with a metal handle (it has to be able to take the heat of the oven) very hot and also heat the grill setting of the oven as hot as possible. Then place the stretched pizza dough and the toppings into the pan. I put my toppings onto the base in this order: tomato sauce, some mozzarella (more will be put on after the baking), basil leaves and roasted aubergines.

Leave the pizza in the pan until the crust gets slightly brown below and then pop the whole thing into the oven under the grill for a further couple of minutes. My grill doesn't get that hot, so I had to leave the pizza for about five minutes to get nice colour. The first frying bit is also only a few minutes, so it's a very quick way to make a tasty pizza.

When the pizza comes out of the oven, tear some buffalo mozzarella on the top and serve, but still be careful with that pan! I also made a different one with extra heirloom tomato slices on the top.

Have you tried this sort of pizza before, and what do you think of the idea?

Your VegHog