Pea Schnitzel with potato mash and marinated carrots

Collecting fresh pea pods from the field was one of my favourite childhood pastimes in the summer. Now I still think of those times fondly and am always happy to see the new season pods to appear in the shops and markets. Still, the self picked field ones were the juiciest and tastiest ever. This dish is basically built around the idea of summer peas, although my Schnitzel are made from dried pea crush. I served them with potato mash and marinated carrots that were just the perfect side for such a summer feast with thyme flavour running through. I only rarely marinate vegetables, which is a shame, as they are so good and I should be doing more of it.

Here are the instructions how to make the marinated carrots and pea Schnitzel.

Marinated carrots:

3 large carrots

1 garlic clove

1 tbsp maple syrup

1 tbsp olive oil

Sprinkle of salt

Few twigs of fresh thyme

Peel the carrots and cut them into about 6 cm long and 3-4 mm thick slices. Heat some olive oil in a pan and quickly fry the carrots in the pan. Stir them there for a couple of minutes only. Add the finely chopped garlic to the pan, stir and let cool.

Mix the marinade of maple syrup, olive oil, salt and fresh thyme and pour it onto the carrots. Close them into an airtight container and let rest in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

Pea Schnitzel:

1 cup dried pea crush

1 tbsp vegetable stock powder

2 onions

2 garlic cloves

Olive oil

3 wedges of queens squash or other squash

Few twigs of fresh thyme

Salt

Ground black pepper

1 egg

4-6 tbsp breadcrumbs

Vegetable oil for frying

Cook the pea crush in water with the added vegetable stock powder for about 10 minutes. Drain any liquid off and let cool.

Chop the onion and garlic and cook in olive oil until the onions are lightly browned and softened. Add them to the peas once cooled.

Grate the squash wedges and add to the pea mix.

Season with thyme, salt and pepper.

Then also add the egg and breadcrumbs. The mixture should hold together even without the egg, so you could try to veganise the recipe.

Heat vegetable oil in a pan, shape Schnitzel from the mix and fry them on both sides until properly fried and coloured.

Serve with potato mash, fresh peas and the marinated carrots and enjoy!

This is my own Eat Your Greens contribution for this month due to the dried peas in the Schnitzel and the fresh ones in the serving. I'm hosting the event this month and Shaheen is my co-host and we hope to see many green veggie recipes from you, so please share!

Your VegHog

Glamorgan sausages with potato mash and salad

When my partner made a humble request that I should cook Glamorgan sausages again, I was surprised, not because he requested them, but because I became aware that I hadn't made them for a long while. I love these breaded Welsh leek and cheese sausages and should make them much more often. Anyway I was instantly ready to make some and planned a simple dish around them. I though they would be good in a rustic combination with potato mash and some side salad.

So I just made a smooth buttery potato mash on the side from lovely English potatoes. To add some freshness to the dish, I chopped tomatoes and a small shallot and seasoned them with salt, pepper, olive oil and lemon juice. My salad was extremely simple, just some mixed leaves on the side.

You can find my Glamorgan sausage recipe here and I followed this same recipe again. They become so wonderfully crispy in the oven, yet still had a fluffy and tasty inside. The six chunky sausages also disappeared pretty quickly.

What would you serve the Glamorgans with?

Your VegHog

Irish Colcannon

As St. Patrick's Day is approaching, I thought I'd cook something Irish and ideally green. After a while of browsing vegetarian, or potentially vegetarian, Irish recipes I found Colcannon (Irish: cál ceannann "white-headed cabbage"). However I didn't use cabbage for this recipe, but thought that kale would nicely update the dish into a more modern version. Also the cabbages at my local shop were so white that no green would've been to be seen. This organic kale was just perfect for the purpose. After having read a few traditional Colcannon recipes, I decided my ingredients and started cooking.

I once spent St. Patrick's Day in Dublin, but missed the parade, as I found a nice pub quite early on the day with my friend. We could see some of the parade on television in the pub (!) when it was just a few metres away outside... and then when we decided to leave the pub, the parade had passed our point and only piles of rubbish were left on the streets. Oh well, it was a fun experience nevertheless. Needless to say that we then continued to another pub. I still like to tell the story, which is possibly still a bit funnier than actually having watched the parade. And now after this interlude, to the cooking of the dish.

Ingredients

1 kg potatoes

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

3 leeks

180 g kale

50 g butter

100 ml dry cider

150 g mature cheddar

Salt and pepper to taste

On the side: 6 Cumberland veggie sausages + olive oil for frying + salad

Method

Peel the potatoes, boil them until soft and then mash. Chop the onion and garlic finely and cut the leeks into thin slices.

Start cooking the onion, garlic and leeks in butter until they are soft. Then add the kale and cook until it's wilted a little. Add the cider and let it mostly evaporate. Then also add the grated cheddar and season with salt and pepper. Combine the mash with the leek and kale mix and serve.

If you also want to serve veggie sausages on the side, fry them in olive oil until browned. Also prepare any side salad that you want to serve with the dish. I chose to serve just mixed salad leaves on the side.

In all its greenness I also want to submit this dish to this month's Eat Your Greens challenge. This is a vegetarian cooking challenge for dishes using green vegetables by Shaheen from A2K - A Seasonal Veg Table. 

Enjoy the dish and happy St. Patrick's Day next week!

Your VegHog

Vegan Schnitzel with potato mash, roasted baby carrots and creamy mushroom sauce

It is possible to make a really filling vegan meal, for example something like this vegan Schnitzel with potato mash and creamy mushroom sauce. The vegan Schnitzel are shop bought, but everything else is made from scratch. The creaminess to the sauce comes from oat cream, a great vegan ingredient. Have a look how easy it can be to get absolutely stuffed from a vegan meal.

Ingredients

4 vegan Schnitzel

1 kg potatoes

2 tbsp margarine

4 tbsp soya milk

1 tsp salt

10 baby carrots

2 tbsp olive oil

200 g baby chestnut mushrooms

2 shallots

2 garlic cloves

250 ml oat cream

Method

Boil the peeled potatoes for the mash for about 30 minutes, mash and add margarine, soya milk and salt.

Brush the baby carrots with olive oil and roast in the oven until nicely browned.

Chop the mushrooms into thin slices and the shallots and garlic finely. Heat olive oil in a pan and fry the shallots and garlic until soft. Add the mushroom slices and cook for further 5 minutes. Then add the oat cream and let simmer for about 15 minutes until the cream has been infused with lovely mushroom flavour.

Heat the Schnitzel in the oven for a more low-fat result.

Combine the components on a plate and serve. Maybe something green could also be added to this meal.

And have a great weekend!

Your VegHog

Homemade vegetarian sausages

I'm quite fond of veggie sausages, and for a while now I've been planning to make a homemade vegetarian sausage variation. Now I finally got into experimenting with my own sausage mix and method. I wanted to make very savoury sausages and serve them with a hearty meal, potato mash was a must, and I think that the result was rather good. I made a similar mix to a nut roast, which means that you can also bake these ingredients as a nut loaf, if you prefer.

Here is my first ever own veggie sausage recipe, which makes about six veggie sausages.

Ingredients

2 large carrots

2 parsnips

25g dried porcini mushrooms

2 shallots

2 garlic cloves

240g cooked and peeled chestnuts

50g grated cheddar

1tsp salt

½tsp ground black pepper

1tsp thyme

1tsp vegetable stock powder

1tbsp soy sauce

Breadcrumbs for binding the mix

Method

Peel and chop coarsely the carrots and parsnips, and then boil them in water until soft and mash. Soak the crushed porcini mushrooms in water for about 10 minutes. Cook the finely chopped shallots and garlic in olive oil until soft. Add the drained porcini and the seasoning to the pan.

Combine the carrot and parsnip mash with the shallots, and add the grated cheese and the mashed chestnuts. Mix everything and add breadcrumbs depending on the moistness of the sausage mix. I added about one cup of breadcrumbs in order to get a firm sausage mix. Then let the mix cool down fully in case some ingredients are still warm after cooking.

Cut small sheets (about 20x20cm) from baking paper and aluminium foil. Wrap parts of the mix in sausage shape first in baking paper and then foil, close the wrapping around the ends. Place them on a baking tray and bake at 180C for about 45 minutes. The sausages will be fairly soft when cooked in this fashion, so if you wish to have a crunchier sausage surface, open the foil and baking paper parcels after about 30 minutes of baking.

Serve the sausages with a side salad, potato mash and onion gravy. I also served some mini leeks fried in butter on the side. Enjoy the filling meal!

Your VegHog

Vegetarian cheesy oven sausages

This dish took me back in time to Finland of the 1980s and I want to take you there with me. I remember this honest and basic classic well from my childhood and now I have created a vegetarian version of it. This is a recipe for oven sausages with cheese served with potato mash. I really love it and sometimes it's just the best thing after a hard working day, especially in the autumn and winter! This is also a great dish for kids.

Sausages:

6 Lincolnshire vegetarian sausages or any other veggie sausages of your choice

Some hearty cheese slices, I used Emmental cheese

Mash:

Potatoes

Milk

Butter

Salt

Side relish:

1 red onion

1 yellow romano pepper

1 garlic clove

Pine nuts

Salt

Pepper

Olive oil

Prepare the potato mash as usual by boiling the potatoes soft, mashing them and adding little milk, butter and salt. This makes a lovely smooth mash. As decoration and extra flavour I sprinkled my nettle salt on the top for serving.

While the potatoes are boiling heat the oven to 180C. Make a few cuts across the sausages and place cheese slices into the cuts. Bake for about 20 minutes until the sausages are done and cheese has melted and partly crispy.

The side relish can be prepared in parallel. Slice the onion and pepper and chop the garlic. Heat a small pan and first roast the pine nuts in the dry pan until they develop a nice roasted flavour. Then set the pine nuts to side and add olive oil into the pan. Slowly sweat the onion and pepper rings at moderate heat until they reach a slightly sweet flavour. Later add the garlic and the pine nuts and season with salt and pepper. A fresh simple salad also goes well with this dish, if you don't want to make this relish.

Serve all these components together and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Honey glazed flying saucer squash with chipotle chili mash

This post is related to my #iwanttobelieve campaign and thereby also to yesterday's post. I'm using the other half of my funny flying saucer squash today. Please read more about it and have a look at the Flying saucer squash pies.

This dish is a great mix of sweet and spicy and smoky. I think that the honey glaze works very nicely with squash accentuating its natural sweetness, and chipotle and smoky cheese make a great extra flavour to a potato mash.

For the squash

½ flying saucer squash

2tbsp olive oil

2tbsp honey

About 10 fresh sage leaves

1tsp sea salt

For the mash

500g potatoes

1 dried chipotle chili

1 garlic clove

100g Applewood smoked Cheddar

1tsp sea salt / chipotle sea salt

Butter

Cut the squash into generous wedges along the star shapes of it. There's no need to peel it. Place the wedges into an oven dish and brush them lightly all over with olive oil. Roast them at 180-200C for about 30 minutes and sometimes turn them over.

Now also start the mash. Peel the potatoes and boil them in salted water until they are done, in approximately 30 minutes. Chop the chipotle and garlic finely and grate the cheese.

Prepare the glaze for the squash. Pour honey into a bowl and add about one tablespoon olive oil to it. Chop the sage finely and add it and and salt to the bowl.

When the squash is already mainly roasted, glaze it with the honey mix and put back into the oven for further 20 minutes or until you are happy with the glazing and the squash. Also now keep turning the wedges over occasionally and brush more glaze on them if needed.

Heat some butter in a pan and lightly fry the garlic and chipotle in there. When the potatoes are boiled, mash them and add the garlic, chili, salt and cheese to them. Mix to a smooth texture.

Serve the squash with the mash and enjoy! Happy Halloween everyone!

Your VegHog

Crusted munchkin pumpkin slices with potato mash and salad

And it's pumpkin time again! I liked this dish very much and I think I made quite a cute presentation out of it. I absolutely love potato mash, it just goes with anything and whenever, and it really goes well with pumpkin. These crusted pumpkins are similar to the Crusted Harlequin squash wedges, a recipe inspired by Yotam Ottolenghi.

This is how you can prepare this dish.

The salad

Purple gem lettuce

Small tomatoes

Bread for homemade croutons

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Nettle salt (or normal salt)

Black pepper

The pumpkins

1-2 munchkin pumpkins

Vegetable oil

Breadcrumbs

1 lemon's zest

Thyme

Rosemary

Parsley

Black pepper

The potato mash

300g potatoes

25g butter

100ml milk

2tsp salt

You can make the salad first as it can wait in the fridge for the rest to be prepared. I made my croutons of walnut bread, but you can use any nice bread that you have. Dice the bread and place the dices in an oven dish. Sprinkle olive oil and salt on them, stir and bake until crispy. Stir couple of times during the baking. Cut the tomatoes in half and the gem lettuce in slightly smaller pieces. Make a simple dressing of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper and mix it into the salad. Place the croutons on the salad just before serving.

For the crusted pumpkins I used again the cute small munchkin pumpkins. Prepare a crust mix for the pumpkins by mixing breadcrumbs with thyme, rosemary, parsley, lemon zest and black pepper. Use fresh herbs if you have some as the herbiness is then more intense. Slice the pumpkins into thin slices and place them into an oven dish. Brush them with vegetable oil and sprinkle the herb crust on them. Bake the crusted pumpkin slices at 180C for about 30 minutes until the pumpkins are fully cooked and the crust is crispy.

Make the potato mash parallel to the crusted pumpkins. I normally put butter, milk and salt into my mash. For presentation I sprinkled nettle salt on the top of the mash.

Place all the components nicely on a plate for serving. This can be an autumnal vegetarian Sunday roast or just a nice dinner.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog