Mushroom and Emmental sandwiches

I'm on my autumn holiday and having a great time. We already went on a small city break to Norway's capital Oslo earlier this week and saw the magnificent fjords again. Now I'm just taking it easy at home in Copenhagen and will attend a culture night event tonight. That is one of my favourite events of the year, when museums and other public buildings that may not be accessible otherwise open their doors for the public and have different events. Our first stop will be a railway control tower with a great view over Copenhagen and a champagne bar on the top. We should be there just on time for the sunset.

Some of my family members will also come over for a visit tomorrow and stay a few days with us, so I'm also shopping food and planning what to cook for them. Any ideas for 4 adults and one kid? The weather hasn't been the greatest, it's raining a bit again, but I'm still happy to have whole two weeks off work, enjoy the autumn scenery and spend time with family.

What could be a better way to start the day than with crispy and cheesy mushroom and Emmental sandwiches. I could eat this sort of sandwiches at any time of the day, and I often do. Now in the autumn it's so nice to use different seasonal mushrooms in the cooking, and the combination of mushrooms and Emmental cheese is just perfect. Here is my simple recipe for these sandwiches.

Mushroom and Emmental sandwiches

Ingredients

2 breads, rolls or baguettes

200 g closed cup mushrooms

2 garlic cloves

Salt to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

Fresh thyme to taste

1 tbsp olive oil

100 g grated Emmental cheese

Method

Slice the mushrooms and chop the garlic finely. Cook them in olive oil and season with salt, ground black pepper and fresh thyme.

Cut the breads in halves and brush a little olive oil on the cut sides. Place the mushrooms and cheese on them. Bake at 180C for about 15 minutes.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Sundried tomato and mozzarella sandwiches

Hot summer weather has returned this week, so the summer isn't over quite yet. It's a lovely weather today and I can't wait to get out to a culture festival all around Copenhagen Harbour. There are different performances, exhibitions and events everywhere and the weather is just perfect for it. So I guess the plan for today is settled, but I'm not sure yet what to do tomorrow. Of course the festival still continues tomorrow, but let's see how much we manage today.

Last weekend I made these delightful little sundried tomato, mozzarella, olive and basil sandwiches or panini. The bread was a really nice artisanal rosemary and sea salt bread. It was just perfect for this dish.

Sundried tomato and mozzarella sandwiches

Ingredients

2 artisanal breads

125 g mozzarella

100 g sundried tomatoes

50 g green olives

2 tbsp garlic butter

Fresh basil leaves

Salt to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

Method

Heat a grill pan on the stove and preheat the oven to 180C.

Chop the mozzarella, sundried tomatoes and green olives coarsely and mix them with the basil leaves, salt and pepper.

Cut the breads in half, spread the garlic butter on each side inside and fill the breads with the mozzarella and tomato mix.

Close the breads and grill them on a grill pan so that they get some grilling marks. Finish them in the oven and bake them for about 5-10 minutes depending on how crispy you want the bread to be.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Pulled bean pitas

I hope that everyone is having a pleasant weekend. Mine is fairly quiet, just some nice potterings in the kitchen and walking around. It got a bit chillier again, so spring is not yet fully here.

I bought this new pulled beans product by Hälsans Kök, and used it in these vegan pitas with a spicy mix of romano peppers and onions. The pulled beans were very easy to cook with, just straight to the pan from frozen and cooked for a little while in the mix. The texture was also very nice, and it's quite a versatile product. I just wanted to try these pitas with it.

Pulled bean pitas

Ingredients

1 romano pepper

6 cherry tomatoes

1 large onion

3 garlic cloves

1 red chilli

Vegetable oil

Frozen spinach

Pulled beans

1 vegetable stock cube

Ground cumin to taste

Ground coriander to taste

Smoked paprika to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

Salt to taste

Pickled red onion

Pita bread

Method

Slice the romano pepper, tomatoes and onion.

Chop the garlic and chilli finely.

Heat Vegetable oil in a pan and fry the onions and peppers.

Then add the garlic, chilli and tomatoes.

Also add the frozen spinach and pulled beans and fry for a while.

Season to taste.

Heat the pita breads and stuff them with the pulled beans filling and pickled red onions.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Mac'n'cheese sandwiches

Did you have a nice Christmas time? I had a good and relaxing time with my family in Finland, where there was snow, so it looked really Christmassy. Now I'm back to the rather grey and rainy Copenhagen.

Tomorrow we will just have a relaxed vegan taco dinner at home and go out a bit when there are fireworks at twelve. Last year everyone was shooting their own fireworks around the lakes closeby, and that looked quite impressive, so that's where we will be heading again.

I recently made these very comforting mac'n'cheese sandwiches from left-over mac'n'cheese, and I could actually see these as New Year's eve food. The contrast between the toasted crispy bread and the cheesy soft macaroni was great. For some more flavour, I added green jalapenos and fried red bell peppers as an extra twist to the sandwich filling. I served a fresh salad and tomatoes on the side to make the dish feel slightly more healthy. These sandwiches made a great evening snack for this season, and I will surely make them again.

Happy New Year everyone!

Your VegHog

Summer vegetable sandwiches

Here's just a quick post from me after a busy weekend. We had visitors from England this weekend, so we did some of the touristy stuff. It was great though, as I'm not getting tired of the Copenhagen sites yet, and tried to recommend some of my favourite sites to visit. We went to a couple of museums and mainly just walked around looking at the architecture. Luckily the weather was fairly nice throughout.

We also got to enjoy some nice veggie meals out. It's always nice to get to know new restaurants. But after all this walking, I just want to relax for the rest of the Sunday evening, and I hope that I'll get to post more next week.

Now I'm just posting about some sandwiches that I recently made. These sandwiches contained slices of corn, roasted aubergine, peppers and tomatoes, fried halloumi and fresh pomegranate seeds. They were a bit more unusual than my regular roasted vegetable breads, but they were quite tasty nevertheless, and also looked very colourful.

Have a good start to the new week everyone!

Your VegHog

Fishless finger sandwiches for breakfast

I just had my one year anniversary of living in Denmark. It's incredible how quickly the time has passed. I've really been enjoying every minute here, and I'm so happy that I took that decision to move. It has been a very busy year with many things going on in my life and many changes, but luckily I have managed to blog at least a little bit. And of course I'm planning to blog further.

The lifestyle in Denmark is more similar to what I'm used to from Finland, so it was easy to feel like home straight away. Copenhagen is a very international city and there are so many interesting places to see. I don't even want to travel anywhere else on holiday, I'm just happy strolling around in my own city. I've learned a lot of Danish and can already have short conversations in Danish. It's only hard to practise, as everyone switches quickly to English, if you're not fast enough, but I do like to try.

Now to today's dish. I wanted to celebrate the anniversary with a vegetarian version of a weird and wonderful British dish: the humble fish finger sandwich. I never managed to eat anything like it while I lived in Britain, so I wanted to create a version of this classic dish now. Do Brits even eat this, or is it just an urban legend?

I recently bought some vegan fishless fingers and they were perfect for this dish. They don't taste fishy at all, which is good, but the texture seemed to be similar to what I remember of fish fingers. I refined the sandwiches a little bit by using sourdough bread and topping them with tomatoes, spinach and vegan chipotle mayonnaise. I don't think that those things are included in the traditional recipe. This was actually quite a nice dish and definitely hit the spot as breakfast. 

Have a nice Sunday!

Your VegHog

Grilled cheese sandwiches

Sometimes it’s refreshing to have just a simple grilled cheese sandwich for dinner. I tried to make these a bit different though, as I got a lovely loaf of olive and cheese bread on our trip to Sweden. Sweden of course is just about 40 minutes train ride away from us, so it’s nice to visit the other side of the pond occasionally. They have some amazing bakeries there, and we also got these amazing rum and chocolate balls there. At the moment Malmö is lit with nice Christmas lights and the Christmas markets are on. They also have a great covered market with street food and other food stalls. That's where we bought the bread. It was really cosy over there.

But now to these breads. I made a spread from olive oil, garlic and smoked paprika that I brushed the bread with. Then I added some fresh spinach and Maasdamer cheese on the top, and baked the breads in the oven. The spinach was only an attempt to try to make them healthier and slightly green.

The breads were very good, but I love this kind of melted cheese breads anyway. It's just perfect on busy evenings or cosy film nights at home. What about you, is the grilled cheese sandwich also your hero?

Your VegHog

Seitan sandwiches

How is everyone? It's quaint summer weather here in Denmark: it's quite warm in general, but often cloudy and rainy too. For example this morning 7:30 am was so hot and sunny, and in the afternoon by 2 pm we were in an extremely dark thick cloud and the rain started. There were no heatwaves or anything like that here yet, but I've been quite happy about the generally surrounding warmth. That's better than nothing.

My partner will join me here this weekend, so we can properly start our new life in Denmark. I very much enjoyed my initial familiarising period with the city on my own, but it's going to be even better now with someone to share. I can't wait to show him some of the places I've already detected. I will also soon get my own computer and cooking stuff here, which should improve the quality of life (and probably also this blog). However I'm not looking forward to all the unpacking.

Now to the sandwiches that I recently made, and that this post is actually about. I'm so happy that some of my nearby shops sell seitan products. I found that stuff so hard to come by in Britain (unless you would make it yourself), and now I can get it from normal small supermarkets! Only sky is the limit now with my seitan cooking.

If you're not familiar with seitan yet, it's wheat gluten that has a chewy texture and can be used in cooking in a versatile way. The flavour is mild, so it needs a bit of spice whatever it's served with.

These thin seitan slices were very handy to use and tasty for making such sandwiches. It was perfect quick weekday grub. To make these sandwiches, I took some seedy wholemeal buns and stuffed them with pan fried seitan pieces, fried onions, grated carrot, tomatoes, lettuce and chilli mayo. But I think that you can use basically any vegetables that you have available, and they would be tasty.

Your VegHog

Pulled jackfruit sandwiches

This is a dish that I have been planning in my head for a long time, and finally now I made my first version of it: vegan pulled jackfruit sandwiches. Ever since I first tried jackfruit, I was very impressed, what a versatile fruit to use in vegan and vegetarian cooking. It's only a shame that it's fairly difficult to get around here. I ordered mine online. 

By the way I really like my new disposable pine wood food trays. They are from a sustainable source and look so cute. Of course disposable plates aren't really the way to go, but for the occasional presentation they are fine. They add a little bit of a street food vibe to these.

These sandwiches were really nice, but I'm sure that I can still improve things with a little practise. Fried halloumi would go nicely in these, if you want to make a non-vegan version. Have a look at the recipe below, if you're interested.

Pulled jackfruit sandwiches

Ingredients

280 g can of jackfruit

1 tbsp vegetable oil

Vegetable stock extract to taste

Liquid smoke to taste

1 onion

1 garlic clove

Mixed salad leaves

Spiralised yellow and red beetroot

Cherry tomatoes

4 ciabatta rolls

Method

Cook the jackfruit in a pan in little oil and vegetable stock until it's soft and falls apart. Keep adding water or stock regularly so that the pan doesn't dry out. Just before serving mix in the liquid smoke.

Cut the onion into half rings and fry them in a pan. Chop the garlic clove finely and cook it with the onion for a few minutes.

Mix the jackfruit with the onion.

Prepare the fresh veg for the sandwiches and bake the rolls.

Fill the rolls with the veg and jackfruit mix and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Chestnut and squash balls

Here comes another Christmas recipe, but slightly different to the regular vegetarian roast dinners. These are chestnut and squash balls, which were marvellous in crusty bread with spicy sauces, cheese and baby spinach. Chillies are not usually used in my Christmas cooking, but maybe I have been wrong, as this combination was really lovely. 

These sandwiches could be something to serve for guests or just to have a pretty ultimate Christmas roll for work lunch. Of course these balls can also be served with salad or vegetables or anything else you can think of.

Chestnut and squash balls (about 16 balls)

Ingredients

1 small onion squash

Olive oil

1 cup cooked black badger peas

240 g cooked and peeled chestnuts

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

1 tsp sea salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

Breadcrumbs for coating

2 half ciabattas or baguettes

Tomato sauce

Chilli pickle

Baby spinach

Havarti cheese

Method

Cut the squash into cubes, roast them in the oven, and mash when cooked.

Purée the cooked black badger peas and crush the chestnuts coarsely.

Chop the onion and garlic finely and cook in the pan until soft.

Purée the cooked black badger peas and mic with the onion squash mash. Also add in the chestnuts by breaking them, but not fully mashing.

Season the mix and shape balls from it. Coat them with breadcrumbs.

Bake the balls at 200 C for about 25 minutes until crispy.

Serve them for example on ciabatta breads with tomato sauce, chilli pickle, baby spinach and cheese.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Mozzarella and pickled beetroot sandwiches

For this breakfast recipe I used the beetroot and carrot root vegetable bread, which you may have seen in my foodie shopping from Finland post. However any bread is good here, even just regular slices of toast. I decided to add a little bit more beetroot to these breads by pickling thin beetroot strings. I let them pickle overnight, but I'm sure a shorter pickling time would also be fine.

I absolutely love the look of the vibrant beetroot. I never want it to be a dominating flavour, but in small doses it's great, almost as seasoning. I enjoyed these breads very much and they made a nice change to my regular breakfasts.

Ingredients

1 sweet beetroot

4 tbsp white wine vinegar

1 tsp sugar

½ tsp salt

Sprinkle of ground black pepper

250 g mozzarella

Handful fresh rocket

1 small garlic clove

4 slices of bread

Method

Cut the beetroot into spirals. Briefly heat the pickle mix for the beetroot and leave it overnight in the pickle. I'm sure you can use these earlier, if you don't want to wait overnight.

Slice the mozzarella and cut the garlic clove in half.

Toast the bread slices and rub the cut sides of the garlic onto the bread.

Fill the breads with rocket, mozzarella and pickled beetroot and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Halloumi and red pepper sandwiches

Here is only a quick post to say that I'm still here, even though mainly quiet. I'm only keeping quite busy, so unfortunately don't have too much time for posting. I really hope that I can catch up a bit more over the weekend, even though I do have many plans for then, *sigh...

So anyway, in this post there's a food theme as well. These halloumi and red pepper sandwiches are just my kind of breakfast or lunch when I want something more substantial. For these I used wonderful olive ficelle as bread, fried halloumi slices golden brown and topped with fresh red pepper slices. I quickly toasted the cut sides of the ficelle on a frying pan and brushed them with a garlic clove. These sandwiches were very good, but try adding some hummus and they would be getting even better!

I promise that I will post something better soon. How is your week going?

Have a nice Friday and weekend!

Your VegHog

Grilled sourdough sandwiches

The weekend is finally here and I'm only going to do a quick post before I go to town. I want to do some shopping at the health food store and maybe eat out or sit in a pub relaxing.

I made these grilled sourdough sandwiches a while ago and it's about time that they come to the blog. I love sourdough bread, halloumi and oak smoked slow roasted tomatoes and they all came together in this dish or snack.

Sourdough bread slices

250 g halloumi

1 tsp vegetable oil

1 yellow romano pepper

1 red onion

1 garlic clove

1 tsp olive oil

Pea shoots and baby leaves

Oak smoked slow roasted tomatoes

Fresh oregano

Slice the halloumi and fry the slices in vegetable oil until golden brown on both sides.

Pan fry the sliced red onion and romano pepper and also cook the chopped garlic in olive oil.

Char-grill the sourdough bread slices.

Assemble the sandwiches with all components and enjoy!

Have a nice weekend!

Your VegHog