Foodie gifts and festive food

 

I wanted to share with you some of the foodie gifts that I received for Christmas and also some of the festive food that I ate with my family. We had the perfect Christmas weather in Finland, lots of powdery light snow and -20C. That certainly called for mulled wine!

We had some friends over before Christmas and I made these vegan sausage rolls for them. They are not veggies, but loved the rolls so much that next time I’ll have to make more of them. On the second picture you can see our sustainable and allergy-friendly Christmas tree. We also brought a fir in from the balcony and decorated it. Soon it will be returned back outside.

It is traditional to have rice pudding with cinnamon and sugar on Christmas Eve, which is the main celebration day in Finland. Here are also some parts of our Christmas dinner with the vegan centerpiece, the pigless tofu roast. Is anyone interested in the recipe? I think it’s quite good.

I got loads of chocolates, sweets and coffees for Christmas. Now I’m trying to get through them, so no veganuary for me…

 

These are a Danish Christmas classic, Æbleskiver = lit. apple slices, but they haven’t even seen an apple. They are basically puffy pancake balls that are traditionally served with strawberry jam and icing sugar. This is a plantbased edition of the classic.

 

Then a few drinks: a festive edition of my favourite Danish soft drink Faxe Kondi, a Medieval mulled wine like spiced wine and a sour beer featuring a Finnish comic character, the swearing hedgehog.

 

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Your VegHog

 

New Year's Day veggie roast

I prepared a vegetarian roast dinner yesterday to welcome the new year. As you can notice from the heaviness of this meal, I'm not planning to have a diet or anything... well but seriously, these are all quite healthy things on the plate, aren't they. I didn't make anything new or experimental, these are all components I make fairly often, but maybe in other combinations. I have already posted some of these recipes, so I have added links below to the old posts.

Here are the components I had on the plate yesterday:

Sweet potato and bean Schnitzel – Recipe here 

Redcurrant and chilli jam – Recipe here 

Roasted potatoes – Brush small potatoes with olive oil, paprika and sea salt and roast in the oven until done.

Steamed flower sprouts – Steam the flower sprouts until done.

Cauliflower and cheese bake – Steam or boil the cauliflower florets a little. Cook finely chopped garlic soft in olive oil and add little vegetable stock, salt, black pepper and thyme and pour on the cauliflower florest. Cover with cheese and bake until done. This can of course also be made with cream, recipe for example here.

Chestnut mushrooms with onion and garlic – Simply cook the onion, garlic and chestnut mushrooms in olive oil until nicely done. Season with sage, salt and pepper.

Tomato and mixed leaf salad with pine nuts and pomegranate molasses dressing – Dressing recipe here and otherwise just throw in whatever you like in a salad. This combination is probably my most used as a side salad.

Roasted mini shallots – Peel the shallots and brush them with olive oil. Roast in the oven covered with a foil at low temperature until fully cooked.

That was it! Did you have a special meal for New Year's Day?

Your VegHog

My year 2014

Okay, it's New Year's Eve and it's time to look back at 2014. I have collected here my favourite photos, moments and recipes from 2014 and linked back to the posts (obviously not all recipes aren't originally mine, and when that's the case I have mentioned it). There were many dishes made this year, and I have selected here some of my favourites. I didn't want to make a too long post, so I had to be very selective with the recipes, and also chose to add picture collages instead of the individual photos.

As I was looking back at the year, I realised how lucky I have been with all these wonderful travels and good food. I had more trips than ever, mostly to my home country but also to others. I certainly appreciate a lot that I was able to do this.

January

In January I celebrated my first blog anniversary and grew more and more fond of blogging the whole time. I visited Oxford, where I try to go at least once a year and stay in the hotel Malmaison, which used to be a medieval gaol and Victorian prison just next to a Norman castle. I have many favourite pubs in Oxford, but one of them is The Eagle and Child, where the local literary group the Inklings used to drink. I love making my own pasta and made red pepper ravioli.

February

In February I was often cooking British food, and one dish in this category was Scottish tattie scones – what a perfect breakfast it was! I also baked traditional Finnish Runeberg's torte, a recipe that I'm trying to perfect each year. I'm a big fan of veggie pizza, so one evening I had a mini pizza party.

March

Spring came to England in March and I feasted on homemade falafel, followed an Ottolenghi recipe for roasted aubergines, drank mojitos and made zucchini and feta pancakes. There was also a big celebration as the dearest of them all, my granddad, turned 90.

April

In April a dream came true for me and I got to visit Paris for the first time! Spring in Paris really is well worth experiencing. During this month I was inspired to cook a lot French style, but also posted some Easter recipes such as lemon and white chocolate muffins.

May

In May many Paris posts still appeared on the blog, but I also visited the Swanage Railway Diesel Gala and Beer Festival in the idyllic Isle of Purbeck in southern England. I made my first veggie sausages and as rhubarb was in season, I baked a rhubarb pie.

June

I started June by making my “most accomplished curry so far” (says my partner), which was a pineapple curry. I've made it a couple of times since and it has always been well received. Also in June I celebrated Midsummer in chilly Finland and made a three-part burger post consisting of basic burger buns, pea and leek burgers and broccoli and cheese nuggets.

July

I just loved the whole warm summer this year, and July was a particularly busy month for me. My brother visited me with his girlfriend and we showed them some of the southern English countryside and London, but I think that the shetties and their foals in New Forest were the highlight. Then I returned to France to make holiday in Avignon and its surroundings. July was the right time for eating salads and I made among others this mixed summer salad. Balcony gardening was going well and I was able to bake spelt and carrot rolls from my own small carrots, which were the first carrots I've grown on the balcony.

August

In August I was being a clumsy cook as I burned my small hedgehog paw when frying a pizza made from Provencal produce. The fried pizza was so tasty though that I didn't mind the injury too much. Then I had another great holiday when I visited my family in Finland again. It was a great summer, weather being warm throughout.

September

In September I admired the growth of my tomato Tigerella and balcony garden plants in general. I started serious squash cooking and posted an onion squash tart recipe. I also cooked some pepper nuggets and crushed potatoes.

October

October was all German themed. I wrote my first trilingual post about a German classic Currywurst, but of course made its vegetarian version. Later that month I visited Hamburg and Bremen for a few days.

November

With November the cold and rain came to England and due to that my cooking got very autumnal and I ended the tomato growing season by making green tomato chutney from the last of the crops. Among others a garlic soup and a Moroccan style squash stew were warming me during the chilly weather. I finally managed to make a vegetarian sushi post thanks to the rice cube gadget that I purchased and I posted my first cooking video ever.

December

In December we got to my favourite holiday and I started posting all things Christmas. I baked a flourless chocolate cake and set Spike on top of it. I made a warm and cold acorn squash, halloumi, lentil and pomegranate salad. Then I spent Christmas with my family in Finland. Yesterday I got back from a short trip to Oxford, where I got a huge shock when I detected that my favourite tree (and that of J.R.R. Tolkien), the magnificent old Pinus Nigra, had been felled. Of course the Botanic Garden wouldn't fell it just for the sake of it, but there had been an incident in the summer, when two large limbs had suddenly fallen off the tree. As the result they had no other option than to fell the whole tree, as it had become structurally unsound. It was an extremely sad sight and I had to shed a few tears when I saw it. Below is a photo taken of the tree in January this year and then the chopped pile of wood from December, and also a visiting squirrel on the pile (there's also another photo from the Garden with the pine on it in the January section).

 

Obviously this wasn't the best ending for the year, but I still feel that I have been very lucky and happy this year and am excited to see what 2015 will bring.

Now I want to thank you all for this year and wish you a wonderful New Year! See you next year!

Your VegHog

Kabocha squash fritters

Happy New Year dear Hoggers!

I wish you all a successful year 2014, and hope that we can continue sharing and discussing vegetarian cooking here! I'm very grateful for the last year, which was also the first year of this blog, and was happy to see so many people reading this blog and commenting on my recipes. So I'm highly motivated to keep posting my recipe experiments in this new year as well and of course keen on improving my vegetarian home cooking. I hope to see you along the way!

If you have read my blog before, you might know that I absolutely love veggie burgers. I have decided to start the year off with a new veggie burger recipe. I used orange kabocha squash as the main ingredient of these fritters and served them with homemade seed rolls and hand-cut chunky oven chips. Kabocha is a sweet winter squash and well worth trying.

Ingredients

1 small kabocha squash

1 large onion

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

1 cup dry soya mince

1tsp vegetable stock powder

Little fresh thyme

Little fresh parsley

2tsp nettle salt (or herb salt)

1tsp black pepper

3 eggs

2-4tbsp rye flour

Vegetable oil for frying

Method

This is how you can make these easy squash fritters. First of all soak the cup of soya mince in 1,5dl water with added 1tsp vegetable stock powder so that the soya gets hydrated. You can also add a dash of olive oil. After the soaking remove any excess water.

Quarter the squash and remove the seeds, but there's no need to peel the squash. Grate the squash pieces with a cheese grater.

Chop the onion and the garlic very finely and mix them with the soya and grated squash. Season the mix with the fresh herbs, salt and pepper, and also stir the flour in.

Then also add the eggs and mix it all into an even and fairly firm paste. Add only 2 eggs if the squash is quite small, and you can add more flour if needed. The mixture needs to be firm enough to stick together when shallow-fried in oil.

Heat a generous amount of vegetable oil in a pan on a medium heat. Shape small fritters from the mixture by basically just dropping a suitable amount of it straight into the pan and then shaping it a little bit into a round form. Then fry the fritters on both sides until slightly crispy and golden brown on the surface and fully cooked throughout. This takes 5-10 minutes per side depending on the heat of the pan. When you have removed the fritters from the pan, remove the excess oil with kitchen roll.

Serve them warm as suggested above or combine with any tasty bun and salad or cheese and enjoy with beer or cider. These fritters can also be fried and re-heated quickly whenever needed.

Stay hungry this year also!

Your VegHog