Blood orange and radish salad with coriander

Finally weekend although the weather is pretty gloomy, but maybe this colourful salad can cheer up a bit. I was again reading in The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit and this is another flavour combination recommendation for coriander leaves: oranges, radishes and onion. Instantly when I read about the combination, I wanted to make such a salad. And as it happens I still have blood oranges left, so it was perfect. Is the blood orange season maybe a bit longer this year? I'm not sure, but I was able to get quite a few of them this year, possibly also due to my hoarding. This salad was very vibrant, punchy and healthy and the flavours really did compliment each other very well.

Here's how I made the salad as a light lunch:

3 blood oranges

Handful of radish

¼ sweet onion

Handful of fresh coriander leaves

Slice the blood oranges and radishes.

Chop the onion finely.

Mix everything together and scatter coriander leaves on the top.

Enjoy!

I'm sharing this recipe with this month's No Croutons Required cooking challenge hosted by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes and co-hosted by Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen. I will probably be making more and more salads now when the fresh spring produce properly hits the shops.

Enjoy your weekend!

Your VegHog

Radish leaf pesto with macaroni

A simple weekday pasta is where it's at right now! I just can't resist all the lovely seasonal summer greens that can make amazing salads and pasta dishes. So many leaves can be used to make pesto, just pick your favourite! I think that radish leaves are brilliant additions to pasta dishes, either a bit wilted or as pesto. Until a few years ago, I didn't even know that they are edible! Now of course I hate to waste them and always try to incorporate them into cooking. An easy radish leaf pesto with macaroni was just the right choice for this weekday dinner.

These are the ingredients I used:

Leaves from a bunch of radishes

Olive oil

Garlic

Macaroni

French breakfast radishes

Vegetarian pasta cheese shavings

And the making was obviously very easy:

Purée the radish leaves with the olive oil and garlic clove into a smooth pesto.

Cook the macaroni al dente and combine it with the pesto.

Serve the dish with a few french breakfast radishes and vegetarian pasta cheese shavings (hold the cheese, if you want a vegan meal).

Enjoy and have a great week!

Your VegHog

Healthy summer snacking platter

Okay, so it's the hottest July day on record in the UK today and I promise you, it feels just that hot! It's no fun being at work all day and then on a delayed train without air conditioning, but now that I'm finally home I feel like a nice and light summer supper (nothing too hot of course). I still wanted to include a couple of cooked elements, but they can also be eaten cooled down just as well.

This vegan platter is just one example of what wholesome yet easy dishes you can eat in the summer. This platter contains a few warm and filling components and then fresh local vegetables.

Not too bad of a mix on a hot day.

Here are the things I had on my platter this time:

Hummus

Croutons

Spring onions

Radishes

Mixed leaves with beetroot shavings

Puy lentils

Black quinoa

Pumpkin seeds

I cooked the lentils and quinoa in water with some added vegetable stock powder and the other ingredients on the platter were raw.

I found that the croutons added something nice and also more substance, although I only rarely eat them otherwise. Maybe I should do so more often.

Now it's back to lazily lying around for me and maybe having a cooling drink to end the evening with. Luckily it's already starting to cool off here, I was just able to sense some oxygen in the air!

Have fun and stay cool!

Your VegHog

Rye crisps with fresh vegetables and cottage cheese

Guess what, I'm on holiday again. Last week was very hectic, busy, full of work etc., but now I can have a little break. I'm visiting my family in Finland, so it's a suitable time to post about rye crisp canapés. I made them with different vegetables and cottage cheese. These were very nice spring snacks, yet somewhat filling thanks to cottage cheese and rye.

These are the ingredients I used:

Rye crisps

Baby plum tomatoes

Cucumber

Radishes

Fresh basil

Cottage cheese

Salt + ground black pepper

I'm buying the rice crisps in Finland whenever I'm on holiday, but you can maybe get similar products where ever you live.

To make the canapés I just chopped baby plum tomatoes, cucumber, radishes and fresh basil into small cubes and filled some rye crisps with them and cottage cheese. 

Have a nice week!

Your VegHog

Radish leaf pasta

The first batch of my own radishes is ready to be harvested, some are more individual looking than the others. They turned out really tasty this year. I like to utilise also the radish leaves, as they are quite useful in the kitchen. I simply love radish leaf pesto, and this dish that I saw in Clotilde Dusoulier's The French Market Cookbook (Radish-top pasta, p. 26-28), is quite a brilliant weekday meal also using the radish leaves.

This is how easily my version of this dish can be done (even easier when some of the ingredients come from the own garden).

Leaves of 1 bunch radishes

About 15 walnut halves toasted

250g fusilli pasta

Olive oil

3 shallots

2 garlic cloves

Nutmeg

Sea salt

Black pepper

Vegetarian hard cheese

Remove the radish leaves and wash them carefully.

Crush the walnut halves slightly and toast them in the oven.

Cook the pasta al dente and in the meanwhile cook the shallots and garlic in olive oil until soft.

Wilt the radish leaves in the pan briefly.

Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper.

Add the pasta and the walnuts to the pan and mix.

Serve with vegetarian hard cheese on the top.

I told you it was going to be easy!

Your VegHog

Lentil and watercress salad

I'm still keeping the French theme up, as I again got some inspiration from The French Market Cookbook by Clotilde Dusoulier, and today's recipe will be the tasty Crunchy lentil and watercress salad – Salade croquante de lentilles et cresson (Please also have a look here at my take on Clotilde's other salad recipe). 

I cut a couple of corners here, impatient as I am, but the salad ended up being a nice fresh, crunchy and spicy spring salad. This recipe makes enough salad for four people, as the ingredients are quite filling.

Ingredients

Salad:

1 cup green dried lentils

1 shallot

1 bay leaf

200g radishes

200g watercress

8 fresh mint leaves

20g fresh chives

Dressing:

2tbsp olive oil

1tbsp cider vinegar

1tsp honey

1tsp ground mustard seeds

Ground black pepper

Sea salt

Method

Rinse and cook the lentils in water with the bay leaf and finely chopped shallot for about 20 minutes until tender. Remove the water and let the lentils cool.

Chop the radishes into small cubes, and also chop the mint and chives finely.

Mix the dressing ingredients together and add it to the salad just before serving.

Combine all the components and serve the salad cool.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Garden salad with chili oil dressing

I made this salad as a side salad and am revealing in tomorrow's post what I served it with. Some of these ingredients came from my own balcony garden: the radish pods and the chilies for the chili oil. If you let radish grow to seed you can then harvest fresh pods that taste exquisite. I'm planning to dry some of them as well in order to get seeds for next year. Radish is a brilliant balcony plant as all of its parts are edible. I have already posted some radish recipes and will be posting more, for example salads featuring radish flowers.

I made my own chili oil about a month ago and let it infuse in a closed bottle since then. I just added four red chilies and some chili flakes into a small bottle and filled it up with olive oil and now it has become nice and spicy chili oil. It's perfectly okay to use a ready made chili oil as well for this dressing.

The salad:

Lettuce

Red chard

Edible flower petals

Pea shoots

Radish shoots

Radish pods

Wash the ingredients and trim off the hard ends of the radish pods and place them into a salad bowl.

The dressing:

3tbsp chili oil

2tbsp cider vinegar

Ground black pepper

Herb salt

Mix the oil and vinegar and add pepper and salt to it. Then shake it in a small sealable container or a bottle. Sprinkle the dressing on the salad and mix.

Enjoy as just a fresh salad or combine with a variety of summer foods. As promised my serving suggestion will be published tomorrow.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog

The VegHog's garden update

I have promised to update you of my urban garden's progress throughout the summer, so here is a little post about it again. In the meanwhile my balcony is blooming and green and I'm so happy with it.

My first vegetable crops of the year were radishes. I ate the radishes, used the leaves for a pesto and now I let them flower. The flowers are edible and have a nice peppery taste, so I have used them to garnish salads.

The zucchinis are growing pretty fast and are trying to take over my whole balcony. First I didn't think they would grow that well in pots, but I was wrong. I have tried to be inventive with what to make with them. I've even made a courgette flower dish.

My bush tomatoes have been flowering for a good while now and I'm excited to see whether they can produce a fruit. Same goes for the French dwarf beans.

The outdoor and indoor herbs are also doing well. They love the light and warmth that will hopefully last for a while longer. I have recently planted some lettuce and chard, so we'll see how they'll come along when planted a bit later.

As decoration I'm growing sweet peas. They have lovely flowers and they also attract bees.

I will be posting another gardening update and more recipes I have cooked with my homegrown produce soon.

Your VegHog

Related posts:

The joys of balcony gardening 

Homegrown 

Radish and leek summer soup

Now this is what I call healthy food, at least this soup looks like it. It's green, it's vegan and it's low fat. The radishes in my balcony box grew a bit out of control and I had to get creative again, so I made this nice and light soup for a summery lunch.

Ingredients

1 leek

4 radishes with leaves

2 cloves of garlic

Vegetable stock

Olive oil

Cress

Salt

Pepper

Wash the vegetables and chop them. Heat oil in a pan and quickly fry the chopped leek and garlic. Prepare a vegetable stock and add it to the pan. Then add the chopped radishes and radish leaves. Let simmer for about 20 minutes and then season and puree the soup.

Enjoy if you dare to make this greenness!

Your VegHog

Steamed new potatoes with radish leaf pesto

The first harvest from The VegHog's garden (apart from herbs) has been made and I instantly cooked something with my new radishes. These radishes grew incredibly quickly in my small balcony box and I'm now going to plant the second batch. It's incredibly rewarding to be able to cook with the produce from your own garden that you watched growing.

I grew French breakfast radishes and like with other varieties the leaves are edible. Therefore I decided to make a radish leaf pesto. Of course the leaves have other uses as well, which I may explore at a later stage. Generally I'm a great appreciator of radish anyway but I very much liked this meal, which also is a fully vegan and you can basically make it in the blink of an eye.

Ingredients:

New potatoes – Source them locally and steam them until cooked. Steaming of course keeps the vitamins in and there's no need to peel new potatoes as the peels are very thin and also nutricious.

For the radish leaf pesto:

The leaves of three radishes

1 clove of garlic

A handful of cashew nuts

Olive oil

Salt

While your potatoes are steaming you can prepare the pesto. Firstly blanch the radish leaves for ten seconds in boiling water and quickly transfer them into cold water and then drain. Puree the leaves with the garlic, cashew nuts, salt and olive oil and your spicy vegan pesto is done!

When the potatoes are steamed mix them with the pesto and serve the actual radishes on the side and enjoy!

You might have already guessed that this won't be my last radish recipe as the homegrown produce just keeps coming. Please also share your vegetable growing experiences with us!

Your VegHog

Tofu and vegetable noodles

Today I'm trying out my Asian style cooking skills because I was inspired by a friend's dish. It's slightly out of my comfort zone but I think the result was fairly nice tasting. I'm not going to be very precise with the ingredient amounts (see approximately how much I used on the ingredient photos) as there needs to be a certain experimental approach for the seasoning.

Ingredients

Wholewheat and buckwheat noodles

Smoked tofu

Shiitake mushrooms

Sugarsnap peas

Radish

Shallots

Garlic

Ginger

Chili

Soy sauce

Rice wine

Umami paste

Groundnut oil

Sesame oil

Chop the tofu into small bits and start frying them in the groundnut oil. The smoked tofu is a nice touch as there's no need to marinate it beforehand. Also chop the chili, shallots, garlic and ginger.

When tofu is fried so it's bouncy and firm add the chili, shallots, garlic and ginger to the pan. Fry these for a while and then chop the shiitake and add them to the pan. Add some sesame oil as well at this stage. Finally add the sugarsnap peas, cut them in half if you prefer, and add good splashes of soy sauce and rice wine until it tastes right. Then you can also add a little umami paste or miso to make the dish more savoury or just add extra soy sauce. The sugarsnap peas are done within a few minutes if you want them to be a bit crunchy.

Simultaneously boil the noodles in water. When they are soft drain and stir them in to the rest of the mix. Slice the radish as garnish. Check for seasoning and serve!

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog