Happy Christmas!

I hope that you are all having a nice Christmas. Christmas Eve is the main day for us and I've been fairly busy today cooking, eating and spending time with my family. Tomorrow we'll just try to relax.

I wish you all a very merry Christmas!

Your VegHog

 

Christmas beers 2015

I had to make my yearly Christmas beer review again and chose these seven Christmas and winter beers for tasting. They were all excellent and very seasonal.

Weird Beard - Black Christmas, A Cranberry Christmas Stout 4,5 %

• very dark brown
• toasty, dark malts and caramel with a mild fruity cranberry background

Wiper and True – Plum Pudding Porter 5,9 %

• very dark brown
• spicy foretaste
• rich, bitter malty caramel giving way to an aftertaste of burned notes and plums
• full of notes of citrus peel

The Ilkley Brewery Co. – Mary Christmas, Spiced Amber Ale 4,7 %

• dark amber
• malty, spicy start
• lots of nutmeg giving way to bitter fruits and dark toffee

Fourpure Brewing Co. – Northern Latitude, Winter Ale 6,4 %

• dark brown
• scent of resins, hops and caramel
• treacle, resin, pine and citrus notes with a little tropical fruit in the background
• not unlike a black IPA, very drinkable for such a strong beer

Flying Dog – K-9, Winter Ale 7,4 %

• reddish brown
• toffee, raisins, slightly spicy foretaste
• aftertaste has got alcohol, caramel and bitter hops

To Øl – Shameless Santa 10 %

• reddish brown
• rum, raisins, caramel and booze
• finish is rich, full of smooth malts and lingering bitter citrus

De Dolle Brouwers – Stille Nacht (2015) 12 %

• amber
• scent of toffee and banana
• toffee, nutty, rum, raisins and banana fading to rich boozy notes with a slightly bitter hoppyness

Enjoy your seasonal drinks!

Your VegHog

Onion squash nut roast

Here is a new nut roast idea from me, as I felt like posting one again for this Christmas. This onion squash nut roast could be cooked for a vegan Christmas dinner, and I think I'll make similar ones again for the big day.

I used one of my favourite squashes, the onion squash, as the main ingredient paired with chestnuts. These were really nice little nut roasts and very easy to make. I made them as mini versions in eight silicone muffin baking cases, which reduced the cooking time and made them into a nice shape. Here's my recipe.

Ingredients for the nut roast

1 onion squash

Olive oil

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

1-2 carrots

Fresh thyme

Salt

Pepper

240 g cooked and peeled chestnuts

3-4 tbsp breadcrumbs

Served with

Roasted ruby gem potatoes

Roasted heirloom carrots

Turnip mash (3 turnips, salt, butter, 1 garlic clove)

Method

Roast the onion squash after peeling and cutting to pieces. Mash it after the roasting.

Chop the onion, garlic and carrots finely and cook them in olive oil until soft. Season the mix with fresh thyme, salt and pepper.

Combine the squash mash with the onions, crushed chestnuts and breadcrumbs and mix into an even mixture.

Put the nut roast either into silicone muffin cases or into a large baking tin.

Bake the nut roast in the oven at 200 C for about 40 minutes.

Serve with all nice veggie roast fixtures and fittings.

Your VegHog

Flower sprout pie

It has been all about tarts and baking recently, as I wanted to make some Christmassy food for the blog, and this is how I will continue for now. I also want to let you know that I will be travelling to Finland for Christmas, so it may become quieter in the blog. Hopefully I will have time to post a few times from there as well.

Here comes one of my original ideas that I came up with when I wanted to create a recipe with flower sprouts. Flower sprouts are a hybrid between brussels sprouts and kale and they are very tasty and cute indeed. They have now been in the shops a lot, so it's the perfect time to use them in cooking. I thought that they may be nice in a cheesy pie or tart with some root vegetables. So this is how this recipe came to life.

Ingredients

160 g flower sprouts

2 carrots

1 parsnip

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

Salt

Ground black pepper

Thyme

Vegetable oil

320 g shortcrust pastry

250 g Cheddar

Method

Steam the flower sprouts for one minute and set to side.

Cut the carrot and parsnip into thin slices and pre-roast them for about 10 minutes in the oven brushed with oil.

Cut the onion into thin slices and chop the garlic finely. Cook them in a pan in oil until soft and then season.

Place the rolled out shortcrust pastry into a baking tin and layer the ingredients onto it: the onion mix, parsnips and carrots, grated Cheddar and finally the flower sprouts.

Bake the pie at 200 C for about 30 minutes. The flower sprouts on the top will have turned partly crispy and the pie should be baked golden brown. I love the flower sprouts when they are a little bit crispy, similar to kale of course.

The theme for Shaheen's vegetarian cooking challenge Vegetable Palette in December is Wonderful Greens, so I want to share this seasonal recipe with the challenge. Shaheen has a lovely veggie blog A2K -A Seasonal Veg Table with constantly inspiring recipes and I try to take part in her monthly cooking challenges. 

Have a nice pre-Christmas time!

Your VegHog

Joulutortut – Christmas pastries

Joulutortut (“Christmas tarts”) are an iconic Finnish Christmas pastry and they are eaten in most Finnish households at Christmas. Normally they contain plum jam, but I decided to use raspberry instead, as I'm not such a big fan of the plum variation. Red is also a nice seasonal colour for these.

Ingredients for 12 tarts

320 g all butter puff pastry

12 tsp raspberry jam

1 tbsp icing sugar

Method

I forgot to take a photo of the shape how the puff pastry should be cut, so I made a basic pattern for you. First cut the puff pastry sheet into even squares, about 7x7 cm. Then cut the corners of each square as shown below.

Put one teaspoon of raspberry jam into the middle of each square.

Fold every other corner to the middle and lightly press them together.

Bake at 220C for about 10 minutes.

Dust the pastries with icing sugar and enjoy. Be careful if you eat them straight away as the jam will be very hot for a while.

Your VegHog

Roasted crown prince squash with chickpeas and peanut sauce

Nigel Slater can create such magical veggie dishes from simple ingredients and he has done it once again! My partner saw this recipe first and suggested that we should make it, so it came to pass very swiftly. The recipe in the article that I followed was for a Roast pumpkin with peanut sauce. Have a look at the article though, as there are also other veggie Christmas recipes by Nigel. 

I put my own twist to this recipe, as I wanted to use my beautiful crown prince squash instead of a pumpkin. Crown prince squash has a rather odd, greyish, pale green colour, which may not be fully appealing to cooks and diners, but the content is pure gold! I really love its nuttiness and versatility. In this recipe it goes wonderfully with the chickpeas that deliver an additional filling agent and the great peanut and tomato sauce. I will definitely make this dish again. It was only a bit too dangerous, as I ate too much... So I will write my version of the recipe below, as I changed a few things. 

Ingredients

1 crown prince squash

4 carrots

Olive oil

Salt

5 garlic cloves

1 onion

150 g peanuts

250 g cherry tomatoes

25 g parsley

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

660 g chickpeas

50 g butter

2 tbsp olive oil

Method

Peel the crown prince squash and cut it into wedges. Also peel the carrots and cut them into long pieces. Roast them in the oven with olive oil and salt until done.

Toast the peanuts on a dry pan.

Chop the garlic and onion finely and cook them in olive oil until soft. Add the roughly chopped tomatoes into the pan and keep cooking for a few minutes. Add the peanuts, parsley and balsamic vinegar and purée into a paste. I liked to keep this warm for the serving.

Heat butter and olive oil in a pan and cook the chickpeas until they have turned golden brown.

Serve the components together as one comforting dish and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Gingerbread and orange chocolate

This homemade chocolate is full of flavours of Christmas: chocolate, gingerbread and orange. I baked too many gingerbread cookies that I don't have time to eat, so I wanted to use part of them elsewhere, and this was just the perfect way.

These chunky chocolate pieces could make a nice homemade present. Here are the simple instructions how to make them.

You'll need these:

300 g dark baking chocolate

Zest of 1 orange

4-5 gingerbread cookies

This is what you do:

Gently melt the chocolate in a pot in a water bath until it has fully melted.

Grate the zest of the orange.

Crush the gingerbread cookies into various sized chunks.

Mix some of the orange zest and gingerbread cookie chunks into the melted chocolate.

Spread the chocolate on baking paper and sprinkle the rest of the gingerbread cookie pieces and orange zest on the top.

Let rest in the fridge for a few hours.

Then break it into smaller pieces and enjoy!

Your VegHog