Tagliatelle with slow-cooked tomato sauce, mozzarella and garlic-basil oil

New week has started and new pasta ideas are needed again to get through the week. Well, this is not really a new idea, as it is essentially pasta with tomato sauce, but with the addition of fragrant fresh basil and garlic oil the dish gets a special touch. Also the torn mozzarella is a nice filling agent and very tasty. The sauce needs slow cooking, but not much work, so you are free for your other evening chores while this is cooking. I used fresh pasta from the supermarket, so it was very quickly cooked.

Ingredients

1 onion

3+1 garlic cloves

Olive oil

300 g baby plum tomatoes

Tomato purée to taste

Salt to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

Fresh basil leaves

125 g mozzarella

Grated vegetarian pasta cheese

Tagliatelle

Method

Chop the onion and three garlic cloves finely and start cooking them in olive oil. Once they have softened, add the chopped tomatoes. Let simmer slowly under the lid.

Make the basil and garlic infused olive oil by chopping the basil leaves and garlic very finely. You can even gring these into a paste, if you like. Then add them into little olive oil and let infuse in a closed container.

Season the sauce and cook the pasta. Serve the tagliatelle with the slow-cooked tomato sauce, torn mozzarella, grated vegetarian pasta cheese and garlic-basil oil.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Koshari

Koshari is an Egyptian dish made with rice, lentils, macaroni, vermicelli and chickpeas and topped with a tomato sauce and fried onions. I've had it quite a few times as street food and have totally fallen in love with the dish. What scared me off making it myself previously, was the amount of components. I was basically fearing I wouldn't have enough pots to cook everything separately. Now I felt brave enough and started making Koshari. It turned out that it wasn't such a horrible multi-tasking exercise, but quite straight forward instead, as most of the processes are simple. I used for example ready made fried onions to save that stage. There can be several variations of Koshari and the below recipe is my version of the dish.

Tomato sauce:

300 g tomatoes

1 small onion

3 garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp tomato purée

Chilli flakes

Ground cumin

Ground nutmeg

Ground black pepper

Salt

Other ingredients:

1 cup brown rice

1 cup puy lentils

1 cup macaroni

1 cup vermicelli pasta

1 can chickpeas

2 vegetable stock cubes

½ tsp smoked paprika

Fried onions

Method

First make the tomato sauce. Chop the onion and garlic cloves finely, cook them in olive oil, add the tomatoes and cook slowly under lid. Season to taste. Add more chilli flakes and other seasoning, if you prefer a very spicy sauce. When the sauce is almost done, start with the other preparations.

Cook the rice and the lentils with a vegetable stock cube each in separate pots. Basically everything is cooked separately and layered into a bowl in the end.

Cook the macaroni and vermicelli (break the vermicelli into about 1 cm long pieces first).

Warm the chickpeas up and season them with smoked paprika. Normally I would use dried chickpeas, but this time I chose the canned ones in order to save some additional cooking time.

Layer the components, top with tomato sauce and fried onions and enjoy.

This dish is also my contribution to this month's My Legume Love Affair (MLLA) #86 cooking challenge. It's hosted this month by Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen. MLLA was started by Susan from The Well Seasoned Cook and now administered by Lisa from Lisa's Kitchen. I thought that koshari would be a suitable dish to this challenge, as it's quite rich on lentils and puy lentils.

Have a good week everyone!

Your VegHog

Spicy Veggie Dogs

I'm generally not too keen in replicating meat eaters' favourites as veggie versions, but sometimes I do try to create such dishes. This time I made vegetarian hot dogs, aka veggie dogs, with cheese, spices and a homemade tomato sauce. I can't imagine that a meat version could ever be better than this and I can only wish that some meat eaters would admit that. Of course I personally think that meat never improves things. However I must confess that I have never eaten a hot dog in my life! You might be shocked by this, but it has just been that way, as I already was a vegetarian when such dishes would've been available to me. They are not very typical food in Finland in the countryside. So I'm not sure how authentic today's recipe is, but then again, I'm sure that these were pretty good what comes to veggie dogs. Do you have any experiences with vegetarian hot dogs?

Ingredients

8 submarine rolls

8 vegetarian sausages

1 tsp vegetable oil

2 tbsp smoky firepit rub (consisting of smoked paprika, chipotle chilli and herbs and spices)

200 g grated mature Cheddar

Chilli flakes

Fried onions

Tomato sauce: 1 onion, 1 garlic cloves, 1 tsp olive oil, 200 g plum tomatoes, fresh oregano, tomato purée, salt and pepper.

Method

Make the tomato sauce first. Chop the onion and garlic finely and cook them in olive oil. Add the tomatoes and let simmer. Season with fresh oregano, tomato purée, salt and pepper. Finally purée it all into a smooth sauce.

Fry the vegetarian sausages in the vegetable oil until golden brown. Towards the end, add a sprinkle of the smoky firepit rub and toss the sausages in the pan.

Make a cut into the submarine roll and place the sausage into the roll. Put some grated cheese and chilli flakes on the top.

Bake in the oven at 200 C until the cheese has melted.

Put the fried onions on the top and serve the veggie dog with the tomato sauce (warm or cold depending on preference).

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Slow-cooked tomato sauce with tagliatelle

My very productive tomato vines on the balcony, have persuaded me to cook a tomato dish again. Not that I have anything against tomatoes, quite the contrary. At the moment my vines save me quite a bit of shopping as tomatoes would always be on the shopping list. If you want to know more about my tomato growing ventures, also read yesterday's post TomatoTigerella – A love story.

So this time I decided to slow cook my sauce to make it really intense with tomato taste. I find that a tomato sauce should either be made very quickly or slow-cooked. This is how I made mine.

Ingredients

400 g tomatoes

2 garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp basil infused olive oil

20 g vegetarian pasta cheese

Fresh basil leaves

Ground nutmeg to taste

125 g buffalo mozzarella

250 g tagliatelle

Method

Chop the garlic finely and cook it in olive oil until soft. Also chop the tomatoes and add them to the pan. Simmer the sauce under lid for at least one hour by stirring occasionally. If the sauce gets too liquid, simmer also without the lid on.

Once you are happy with how the tomato taste has developed, add the basil oil, grated vegetarian pasta cheese, basil leaves and nutmeg. You can also add salt and pepper to taste.

Boil the tagliatelle until al dente. Serve the pasta with the sauce and torn mozzarella.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Tofu & tomato pasta sauce

I made this pasta sauce a while ago when I was in Finland, but I didn't get around posting it yet. I haven't posted many other pasta dishes lately either, so that needs to be corrected. On that note may I present you a simple recipe for a tomato pasta sauce with a bit more substance, and that substance is tofu. This sauce is very easy to make as I even cheated a bit and used a ready made tomato sauce this time instead of fresh tomatoes.

Ingredients

150g tofu

400g tomato sauce/pureed tomatoes

1 red pepper

1 red onion

1 garlic clove

Fresh chives

Fresh parsley

Ground black pepper

Salt

Vegetable oil

Oltermanni cheese (That's my favourite Finnish cheese that I used on that occasion, you can take your preferred pasta cheese)

Tagliatelle pasta (any other pasta will also do)

Method

Chop the onion and garlic finely. Also chop the pepper. Dice the tofu into very small dices and start the sauce by frying the tofu dices in a pan in vegetable oil. The tofu needs quite a while to fry with frequent stirring and turning. Once the tofu has reached a bouncy consistency and is golden brown, the chopped onion can be added to the pan.

Fry until the onion is glassy and then add the red pepper to the mix. Fry for further 10 minutes, then add the garlic and continue frying for a few minutes more. Finally pour the tomato sauce over the tofu and vegetables. Season the sauce with black pepper, salt, chives and parsley. Let it simmer for a few minutes and cook your pasta in the meanwhile.

Serve the pasta and sauce with some grated cheese and enjoy the pasta goodness!

Your VegHog

Rye nachos

I bought such lovely sesame and sea salt rye nachos in Finland and combined them with some char-grilled vegetables, cheese and sauces. Any nachos are great with some extra veg, but these rye variations are especially tasty and filling. They are like thin rye bread crisps.

Here's how I made this nacho dish.

Tomato sauce:

200g tomatoes

1 garlic clove

1 small onion

Olive oil

Fresh basil

Black pepper

Salt

The tomatoes for this sauce came from my own garden, and it's quite a basic sauce. Chop the onion and garlic and fry them in olive oil. Add the tomatoes and let it simmer. Season the sauce with basil, pepper and salt and finally puree it. This sauce can be served either warm or cold, whichever you prefer.

Green pepper butter:

1 green bell pepper

Parsley

Chili flakes

Black pepper

50g butter

This was a quite nice addition to the nachos and especially melted over the char-grilled corn cob that I served with the nachos.

Chop the pepper very finely and mix it with parsley, chili flakes, black pepper and soft butter. Done!

Nachos:

1 bag of sesame and sea salt rye nachos (or other nachos or rye crisps)

1 red bell pepper

1 small zucchini

½ onion

Oltermanni and Emmental cheese (other cheeses can be used)

1 Corn cob on the side

Vegetable oil for grilling

Quarter the bell pepper and slice the zucchini. Cut rings of the onion. Char-grill these and the pre-boiled corn cob.

Place the pepper, zucchini and onion rings on the nachos into an oven dish. Grate cheese on them and bake at 180C for about 10 minutes until the cheese is melted and the nachos warmed through.

Serve with the sauces at a film night or a party or just give yourself a treat and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Char-grilled vegetable nachos

Nachos are just a snack, I hear you cry? Certainly not in The VegHog's kitchen! These nachos form a full meal and are covered with succulent char-grilled vegetables and beans and are swimming in cheese. I just adore this dish and it's just the perfect thing for sharing during a cozy film night.

A bag of nachos

3 peppers

1 aubergine

500g canned black beans

Coriander

Grated mozzarella

2 red onions

3 garlic cloves

200g tomatoes

Salt

Black pepper

Olive oil

Vegetable oil

Make the salsa first. This time I only made a plain old tomato and onion salsa as a dip, but check out my guacamole recipe as well, if you want to have it with these nachos. Sour cream is also always a good addition to this dish.

Chop the onions and garlic. Heat some olive oil in a saucepan and add the tomatoes. Let them simmer under the lid until they become saucy. Add ½ of the chopped onions and ½ of the garlic to the pan and let it simmer further. Season with salt and pepper. Once everything is cooked puree the salsa and let it chill.

Heat some oil in a pan and fry the other ½ of the onions and ½ of the garlic. Then add the black beans and let simmer at moderate heat for about 15 minutes. Remember to stir occasionally. Season the beans with coriander and with some pepper if you like.

Slice the aubergine and cut the peppers in half. Heat a grill pan and brush vegetable oil on it. Char-grill the aubergine and pepper slices until they have grilling marks and are getting soft.

Put the nachos into a heat resistant oven dish. Then put the beans on them, the grilled vegetables and finally the cheese. Warm it up in the oven at 180C for about 10 minutes until the cheese has melted.

Enjoy some great nacho moments!

Your VegHog

Butternut squash and pepper lasagne

This is a fine lasagne made out of homemade lasagne sheets and char-grilled vegetables. The freshness of it all can be tasted and it's oh so colourful. Butternut squash brings a certain sweetness to the table that works well with the contrast of the smokiness.

Here are the ingredients you'll need.

For the lasagne sheets:

400g grade 00 pasta flour

4 eggs

A sprinkle of salt

For the sauce:

400g piccolini cherry tomatoes

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

Olive oil

Salt

Pepper

Fresh basil leaves

For the filling:

1 butternut squash

1 orange romano pepper

Grated mozzarella

Make the pasta dough first. It can rest in the fridge while you are making the other preparations. Mix the pasta flour and salt with the eggs and knead thoroughly. Add more flour if needed. Wrap the dough in a cling film and leave in the fridge for about one hour.

Then you can start preparing the sauce. Simply wash the tomatoes and heat olive oil in a pan. Fry the tomatoes under the lid until they start breaking apart. Then add the chopped onion and garlic and simmer for about 20 minutes. Season with salt, pepper and fresh basil leaves. You can puree the sauce if you would like.

Cut the butternut squash into thin slices and just cut the pepper in half. The pepper can be chopped into smaller pieces after the grilling. Char-grill the butternut squash and romano pepper in a griddle pan until they have distinct grilling marks.

Process the pasta dough through a pasta machine by making thin sheets. Cut them into smaller lasagne sheets with a pasta cutter. I left mine in more rustic shapes because it's more fun and they fit well into my oval shaped oven dish.

Then you can start layering the lasagne into an oven dish. First put a little bit sauce and mozzarella on the bottom, then some vegetables and then lasagne sheets. You can also add extra basil leaves. Repeat this until you reach the top of your dish. Put more mozzarella on the top.

Bake at 180C for about 45 minutes until cooked with golden brown cheese on the top. Serve with watercress and a fresh white wine, for example Riesling. I also added some of my radish leaf pesto to the side.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Tomato and grilled pepper salsa

This week we're going Mexican and every day I'm going to post a different stage to a vegetarian Mexican meal and the end product should be ”Homemade tortillas with char-grilled vegetables, refried beans and sauces”. Obviously it'll only be a humble hog style feast but with nice homemade tortillas and sauces. I decided to split the posts for a week as there were quite many stages preparing this meal and of course each component can be combined with other meals as well.

Today we'll start with a simple tomato and grilled pepper salsa. It can be combined with many dishes and eaten warm or cold.

Ingredients

250 g cherry tomatoes

1 red pepper

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

1-2 red chili

Oil

Pepper

Salt

Char-grill the pepper and roast the tomatoes in the oven brushed with oil. 

Chop the onion, garlic and chili and fry them in oil for a moment. 

Mix everything together, season with salt and pepper and puree to a sauce.

Easy! And tomorrow we'll continue with making another sauce.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog

Pizza funghi

I thought I'd make another pizza again. Can there ever be too much pizza, especially mushroom pizza? Here's my previous variation and this one is going to be fairly similar. 

Ingredients

For the base:

Wheat flour

Rye flour

Dry yeast

Salt

Olive oil

Water

For the sauce:

Tomatoes

Garlic

Onions

Basil

Olive oil

For the topping:

Closed cup mushrooms

Red onion

Mozzarella cheese

Method

First make the dough for the base. I deliberately didn't give the amounts as this is something I always do by feeling the texture of the dough. With just a little bit of practice you'll know when it feels right. Mix the dry ingredients together, add lukewarm water and knead. When you have the correct texture add some olive oil and knead little longer. Then let the dough rise in a bowl covered with a tea towel.

Then prepare the tomato sauce by de-skinning the tomatoes, chopping the onions and garlic and frying it all in a pan until it has a saucy texture. Season with basil or with oregano if you prefer.

Chop the mushrooms and onion for the topping and grate the cheese. Roll out the dough thinly and put the sauce and toppings on it. Bake for about 15 minutes at 220C and enjoy hot.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog