Pasta with walnuts and roasted courgettes

Happy Sunday everyone! I hope, you've had a brilliant weekend. I had a good pub night on Friday and visited friends yesterday. Today just chilling is planned, and then I'm ready for next week.

Today's autumn pasta recipe consists of walnuts and roasted courgettes with chilli and cheese. I really do like this combination. I added a slight twist to the dish by putting some freshly sprouted alfalfa on the pasta before serving. It added a nice fresh and peppery taste. I'm almost constantly sprouting, and try to use the sprouts sometimes in other dishes than salads. Do you have any good tips for sprout usage, my dear readers?

Here are the ingredients and the method to make this easy pasta, which is very suitable as a weekday meal.

Ingredients

Fusilli pasta

2 medium courgettes

Olive oil

2 garlic cloves

100 g walnuts

50 g emmental

Chilli flakes

Salt

Ground black pepper

Alfalfa

Method

Cut the courgettes into cubes. Brush them with olive oil and roast in the oven. It's best to finish this phase before you start the other preparations, as the other parts cook quickly while the pasta is boiling. This is quite a fast dish to make, therefore a perfect weekday pasta!

Crush the walnuts a little bit smaller and toast them in the oven.

Chop the garlic cloves finely and cook them in olive oil. Then add the chilli flakes, roasted courgettes, walnuts, grated emmental, salt and pepper. Season to taste. I'm not so fond of too spicy foods, so I go quite easy on the chilli, but it's nice to have some. Salt is my bane and I usually use a bit too much. Just taste the mix, when the spicing is right for you.

Boil the pasta in salt water al dente.

Add couple of tablespoons of the pasta boiling water to the walnut mix.

Serve everything together with the alfalfa and enjoy! It couldn't be much easier!

Your VegHog

Potato and spelt flatbreads with walnut pesto and roasted courgette

I made some potato and spelt flatbreads filled with walnut pesto, roasted courgette and salad fixings. It was quite the ultimate bread and it was filling enough to be had as the main meal of the day. Making these requires a little bit of effort as bread baking is involved. However these flatbreads are pretty much the easiest kind of breads that you could be baking. And isn't it so nice to have fresh homemade bread? This huge yellow courgette grew in my garden, and now it was time to get rid of it. It was still surprisingly firm considering its size, it hadn't gone yet quite a marrow.

Potato bread is very nice tasting and can easily be made from left over potato mash. The walnut pesto adds a crisp, sharp taste to it and the roasted courgette and other vegetables are just full of freshness. Here is how I made my breads.

Potato flatbreads

500 g potatoes

1 egg

1 dl spelt flakes

2 dl barley flour

1 tsp salt

This recipe makes 2-3 large flatbreads.

Peel the potatoes and boil them until soft. Then chase them through a potato ricer or just mash them as usual and let cool.

Add a little water to the spelt flakes to moisten them, but pour any excess water off that they aren't absorbing.

Then add the egg to the potatoes and stir. Also add the spelt flakes, barley flour and salt and knead until the dough is even.

Shape large flatbreads of the dough and place them on a baking paper. These should be rolled out quite thinly.

Stab with a fork on the top of the breads and bake them at 200C for about 20-30 minutes until they have received brown marks.

Walnut pesto

50 g walnuts

1 garlic clove

80 g fresh rocket

5 tbsp olive oil

Pulse all ingredients together with a hand mixer and let cool in the fridge. This pesto will be later spread on the flatbreads.

Topping

1 large courgette

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp oregano

3 spring onions

3 tomatoes

Fresh rocket

50 g Sussex Charmer cheese

Roast the courgette slices at 220C for about 20 minutes brushed with olive oil and oregano. Turn them a couple of times during the roasting. They should still be a little bit firm, so don't roast them for too long. At least that's the texture that I like more.

Chop the spring onions and cut the tomatoes into slices. Also cut small pieces or make shavings of the cheese.

Assemble the breads by spreading the pesto on the bread and then layering all the ingredients onto it. You can enjoy them either open or closed.

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

Chili and walnut pasta

I recently bought this lovely vegetarian cookbook Alice Hart's Vegetarian. As I bought my copy in Germany mine is called Gemüse satt! This book has so many inspirational and tempting recipes. I want to try so many of them. The first recipe I tried from this book was the rigatoni pasta with chili and walnuts (p. 166-167) as a quick weekday supper. I cut a couple of corners, such as using dried thyme, and that's why mine looks a bit pale. However I can assure you that it was absolutely delicious and very easy to make. I'm certain I will make this many times more in the future.

This is my way of making this dish.

Ingredients

250g rigatoni pasta

150g walnuts

1 garlic clove

1 red chili

1tsp thyme (use fresh thyme if possible)

5tbsp vegetarian pasta cheese

Olive oil

Salt

Ground black pepper

Method

Roast the walnuts in a dry pan and chop them smaller after the roasting. Chop the chili and garlic finely and heat them in a pan with some olive oil at low heat. Grate some vegetarian pasta cheese and add it and thyme to the pan. Remove the pan from heat and add the walnuts, salt and pepper to it.

Boil the pasta until it's al dente. Add couple of tablespoons of the boiling water to the walnuts. Mix the walnut mix with the pasta and the dish is ready to be served.

Your VegHog

Pear and walnut salad

I wanted to post a fresh and quick salad on this occasion just as a change to the autumn style dishes. This salad can be enjoyed at any time of the year. A pear and walnut salad is a classic, but I wanted to make somehow a different one. I first was reluctant to use a garlic and honey vinaigrette in this salad, but it turned out to be a rather interesting choice.

The salad:

Pear

Walnuts

Rocket

Ricotta cheese

The vinaigrette:

Garlic

Olive oil

Honey

Vinegar

Salt

Make the vinaigrette first. You could also use another salad sauce for this salad or even leave it as it is as pear is quite a juicy fruit.

Heat some olive oil in a pan and fry the finely chopped garlic. Add honey and vinegar and simmer for a while. Add salt and the vinaigrette is done. Add more of any ingredient depending on the taste.

Roast the walnuts in a dry pan for a few minutes. Peel the pear and make thin shavings of it with a peeling knife. There are quite many possibilities to present the pear, but this time I decided to make the thin shavings.

Mix the rocket leaves with the vinaigrette and place them on a plate. Put the walnuts, pear and ricotta on the top and the salad is ready to be enjoyed. Easy!

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog

Warm lentil and halloumi salad with walnuts

The VegHog feels that salad needs to contain some wholesome ingredients like cheese, eggs, roasted vegetables or nuts in order to be a stand alone main dish. Side salads can be lighter combinations.

For this particular salad The VegHog got its influence from a renowned Northern Irish restaurant but their original recipe has been altered slightly. The main idea is that the cheese and lentils are served warm on a cold salad. You can use either fried halloumi or goat's cheese, both taste good with walnuts and lentils.

Ingredients

Halloumi (or goat's cheese)

Watercress, rocket and spinach mix

Walnuts

Green lentils

Vegetable stock

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar 

Salt

Pepper

Start by preparing the lentils: Rinse and boil them until tender. I boil them in vegetable stock so that they taste more intense. 

Slice halloumi and fry it in oil until brownish; If you use goat's cheese instead, gently warm it in the oven. Cut walnuts in half. Wash salad and place it on the plate, throw walnuts on there. When lentils are cooked, put them on the salad and finally the fried halloumi on the top. Spice the whole thing up with salt, pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

And there you have it, enjoy!

TheVegHog