Butterbean hummus with red pepper and walnut paste

This Butterbean hummus with red pepper and walnut paste recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi is such a good one to try. I simply had to make it once I saw the recipe in the Guardian. It looked so good and there can never be enough good dip and paste ideas. In that article there are also a few other good dip recipes, you should definitely have a look!

This plateful consists of two parts, a creamy garlicky butterbean hummus and a paste made from roasted peppers, chillies and walnuts. Hummus is always so good and it's nice to use different pulses to make it. I also love it when peppers are roasted until soggy with black skins. The walnuts just completed this plate.

It was such a good combination and I served it with buttery homemade spelt garlic rolls. This was just the perfect summer spread.

Your VegHog

Thai red lentil soup

I made a warming yet summery light vegan red lentil soup with Thai flavours. The recipe is from Yotam Ottolanghi's vegetarian cookbook Plenty More (p. 100-101) and it has also been published in an older Guardian article The new vegetarian: Thai red lentil soup. In the recipe in the book there's an addition of aromatic homemade chilli oil as finish on the soup, which makes such a warming and nice addition. There are also crunchy sugar snap peas on the top of the soup to add a different texture to it and to make it more interesting. I made my own red curry paste for this soup (similar to this one). 

The soup recipe on the web page is pretty much the same as in the book, so I am not going to repeat it here, but I will write the chilli oil ingredients below, as I think that it can make a wonderful addition to many dishes.

Chilli-infused oil

180 ml sunflower oil

1 shallot

1 garlic clove

1 tsp ginger

½ red chilli

½ star anise

2 tsp curry powder

1 tsp tomato purée

Zest of ½ lemon

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the finely chopped shallot, garlic, ginger, chilli, star anise and curry powder and fry at low heat for five minutes.

Add the tomato purée, the remaining oil and lemon zest. Simmer for 30 minutes. Let cool and strain through a muslin.

As this dish is quite legume-centric I would like to share this recipe with My Legume Love Affair #96 June Edition 2016 hosted by Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen.

Have a good weekend all!

Your VegHog

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

Courgette Baba Ganoush

This Courgette Baba Ganoush dip is brilliant served as a starter with a crusty bread and it can suit any kind of summer gathering. It's also fairly quick to make, apart from the courgette grilling time, but they can grill while you prepare other dishes. I have adapted this recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty more (p. 162-165). I skipped the goat's yogurt, Roquefort and egg in order to keep my dish more simple. I also scaled the recipe down a bit, as I only had three courgettes. My version is easy to veganise by replacing the butter with a vegan alternative. Otherwise I pretty much followed Ottolenghi's instructions and here is how the dish is done.

Ingredients

3 courgettes

10 g butter

15 g pine nuts

Pinch of chilli flakes

1 tsp lemon juice

1 small garlic clove

Pinch of za'atar

Salt & black pepper

Method

Grill the courgettes in the oven under the highest grill setting for about 45 minutes. Turn them a few times during the grilling. The aim is to get them scorched outside and soft and smooth inside.

When taken out, let them cool a little bit and then scoop the flesh out from the skins. Mash the flesh into a smooth paste and drain the excess liquid off.

Melt the butter and cook the pine nuts in there until browned. Add the chilli flakes and lemon juice.

Add the finely chopped garlic, salt and pepper into the courgette mix.

Drizzle the chilli butter and za'atar on top.

Serve with a lovely crusty bread, like the sourdough baguette I had, and enjoy!

Your VegHog

My Cookbooks Part V – Plenty by Yotam Ottolenghi

When I first got Plenty, I almost couldn't believe my eyes. That's how wonderful vegetarian cookbook it was and still is! I was familiar with Ottolenghi's recipes through the Guardian before I got the book, but of course in a book format things look so much nicer and a fully new world was opened to me. 

Ottolenghi isn't a vegetarian himself and that might give him some sort of an advantage to be able to think outside the box and have a fresh approach to veggie recipes. That man certainly understands flavours and the book is full of beautiful food photos as well. This is a highly recommended book by me.

I have cooked many dishes from this book and even posted some on the blog. I absolutely adored the Aubergine with buttermilk sauce (p. 110-111) and Green pancakes with lime butter (p. 150-151) and cooked my own versions of these dishes (aubergine here and pancakes here). Funnily enough my most read recipe so far on this blog is Crusted harlequin squash wedges adapted from the Crusted pumpkin wedges with soured cream (p. 72-73) in this book. When I made paella for the first time, I also took guidance from Ottolenghi (p. 80-81).

I would strongly recommend getting familiar with Ottolenghi's vegetarian recipes, if you haven't done so yet! I'm sure I will be posting more recipes from this book sooner or later. Before long I will also review the second book in series, Ottolenghi's Plenty More, which is yet another triumphant vegetarian cookbook. 

These are my previous posts in My Cookbooks series:

Part I 

Part II 

Part III 

Part IV 

 

Vegetable paella with bell peppers, broad beans and black olives

A mixed vegetable paella has been in the planning for a while for me, and for the first one I'd ever cook, I thought I'd better follow a recipe. My partner has been a little reluctant whenever I've been suggesting a vegetable paella, but now I finally got my way, and of course in the end he loved it, too!

I adapted this dish from Ottolenghi's Multi-vegetable Paella recipe in Plenty (p. 80-81), which has also been published in The Guardian. I do find that Ottolenghi cooks just perfect food for this season, and that's why I have been following more of his recipes again lately.

I made some alterations to the paella ingredients, but pretty much followed the method in the recipe. I'm posting my own version below. Mine is kind of a basic vegetable paella, but it was so nice – smoky and full of vegetables – and I will be cooking it again. I guess the Ottolenghi version is more spectacular, but I liked mine as well.

So here's how I made my Vegetable paella with bell peppers, broad beans and black olives.

Ingredients

2 shallots

2 garlic cloves

2 bell peppers

2 tbsp olive oil

2 bay leaves

150 g paella rice

150 ml sherry

450 ml vegetable stock

200 g broad beans

15-20 black olives

12-15 mini plum tomatoes

4 lemon wedges

¼ tsp smoked paprika

½ tsp ground turmeric

¼ tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp saffron threads

Salt to taste

Method

Chop the shallots and bell peppers into long thin strips and the garlic finely.

Heat up the vegetable stock.

Heat the olive oil in a pan and fry the onions for a few minutes.

Add the peppers and after a while the garlic.

Then add the bay leaves, paprika, turmeric, cayenne pepper and the paella rice.

Stir through for a couple of minutes before adding the sherry and saffron.

Let cook for a couple of minutes and add the vegetable stock and little salt to taste.

Simmer the open pan for about 20 minutes until the rice is cooked and most liquid has been absorbed. Avoid stirring, and this is what makes paella quite different from a risotto.

In the meanwhile prepare the broad beans by boiling them and then removing the skins. These will be added just before serving so that they can just heat through.

Cut the mini plum tomatoes in halves and scatter them and the olives into the pan. I also added the lemon wedges at this stage, but you can also add them for serving only, if you prefer.

Let it all rest under the lid for about 10 minutes. Add any of the spices to taste, if you are not happy with it yet.

Serve warm and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Noodles with smoky tofu, spring onions and soy beans

Last year I reserved Plenty More by Yotam Ottolenghi months before it was published, as I already knew that it would be another brilliant cookbook. I really like Plenty and Ottolenghi's vegetarian recipes in the Guardian, so it was a given that I would buy this one too. I will review the book at some point, but now I'm only introducing one recipe, as I (nearly) followed it. I say nearly, because I made some additions and used slightly different ingredient amounts, depending on availability.

The Ottolenghi recipe Rice noodles with spring onions and soy beans is on pages 68-69 in Plenty More and a digital version of it can be found here. 

Below is my version. I added some smoky tofu and garlic to the dish as well and used buckwheat noodles instead of rice noodles. I liked this dish very much, and it's also quick to make.

Ingredients

200 g buckwheat noodles

225 g smoky tofu

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 bunch spring onions

2 garlic cloves

2 red chillies

200 g frozen soy beans

2 tbsp sesame oil

3 tbsp sesame seeds

2 tbsp rice wine vinegar

15 g fresh coriander

1 lime zest

Method

Cook the noodles first, drain and rinse and set to side.

Cut the tofu into small cubes and fry them in vegetable oil until golden brown and bouncy. Also set them to side.

Cut the spring onions into about 3 cm long pieces. Chop the chilli and garlic finely.

Heat vegetable oil in a pan or wok and cook the garlic, spring onions and chilli for a few minutes.

Cook the soy beans quickly in water, drain and add to the pan.

Also add the noodles and tofu to the pan.

Drizzle sesame oil, sesame seeds, rice wine vinegar, coriander and lime zest on the top.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

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

Roasted aubergine with pomegranate and buttermilk sauce

This recipe is from Yotam Ottolenghi's vegetarian cookbook Plenty (p. 110-111), of which I'm a great fan. The original recipe Aubergine with buttermilk sauce can also be found here. The taste of this dish is out of this world, and when I first made it I thought, I'd never eat anything else ever again. In the meanwhile my views might be less extreme, but still, this is one beautiful dish and I can't wait to make it again!

I didn't change much from the original, but here's my version anyway.

Ingredients

2 large aubergines

80ml olive oil

2tsp lemon thyme leaves

1 pomegranate

Sea salt

Black pepper

Ingredients for the sauce

140ml buttermilk

100g Greek yoghurt

1tbsp olive oil

1 garlic clove

Salt

Method

It's easy to start with the sauce as you only need to chop the garlic and then just stir all the ingredients together. The sauce can be placed to the fridge while you are preparing the aubergines.

Cut the aubergines in half and make diamond shape cuts to the inside of them, be careful not to pierce the skin. Place them in a baking dish and brush with the olive oil until all of the oil has absorbed into the aubergines. Sprinkle some lemon thyme, salt and pepper on the top and roast at 200C for about 35-40 minutes. Let them cool after the roasting.

Spread the sauce on the aubergines and sprinkle the pomegranate seeds on for serving. You can also sprinkle some additional olive oil and lemon thyme on the top. Then enjoy this beautiful dish!

Your VegHog