Bread and pumpkin fondue

When I saw this recipe for a bread and pumpkin fondue by Yotam Ottolenghi I instantly knew that I would have to make it at some point. And here we are, I have made my own slightly different version of this dish and it turned out to be the perfect dinner for a chilly day. It's nice and tasty, cheesy and savoury and very simple to make. I love the combination of sage and pumpkin.

Ingredients

1 small pumpkin

2 small turnips

120g gruyère cheese

120g emmental cheese

3 slices of sourdough bread

350ml dry white wine

200ml vegetable stock

2 garlic cloves

½tsp nutmeg

10g sage leaves

Butter

White pepper

Salt

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 190C. Cut the pumpkin and the turnips into small chunks and place them into an oven dish.

Gently fry the garlic in butter in a pan. Then add the chopped sage leaves, grated nutmeg, pepper, salt and the vegetable stock and finally add the wine. Pour 2/3 of this liquid on the pumpkin and turnip chunks into the oven dish.

Toast the bread slices and place them on top of the vegetables. Place the grated cheese on the breads and pour the rest of your seasoning liquid on the top.

Cover the dish with a foil and bake for about one hour. Then remove the foil and bake the gratin for further 15 minutes.

Serve with lovely dry white wine or cider and keep warm!

Your VegHog

Pearl barley and porcini Schnitzel

Guess what? It's veggie burger time, and that always means good times for me! Today's burger Schnitzel is a mushroomy one paired with healthy and earthy pearl barley.

Ingredients

15g dried porcini mushrooms

150g pearl barley

1tbsp vegetable stock powder

2 garlic cloves

1 onion

4tbsp barley flour

1 egg

Ground black pepper

Nettle salt

Vegetable oil for frying

Method

Soak the pearl barley overnight in water. On the next day boil the pearl barley in water with added vegetable stock powder for about one hour until tender. Drain the pearl barley and remove all excess fluid.

Chop the garlic and onion and crush the dried porcini. Soak the porcini for about 30 minutes. Mix all these ingredients with the pearl barley.

Add the flour, egg and seasoning to the bowl and mix carefully. The mixture should reach a fairly firm texture so that the Schnitzel hold well together. Shape Schnitzel of the mixture.

Heat vegetable oil in a frying pan and fry the Schnitzel on both sides until they are golden brown.

Serving suggestion

Serve the Schnitzel with smoked pepper hummus, potato flatbreads and sweet potato oven chips on the side.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog

Tofu and potato stew

A friend of mine taught me how to make this magnificent Japanese style vegan stew. It's incredibly easy to make even though some ingredients are slightly outside my comfort zone. Just follow these simple instructions to make this autumnal dish.

Ingredients

500g miniature potatoes

2 garlic cloves

Fresh ginger (same quantity as garlic)

1 onion

1 small chili

Groundnut oil (for frying the tofu)

Sesame oil

200g smoked tofu

2 leeks (green beans also work well)

1tsp vegetable stock powder

1tbsp miso

2tbsp maple syrup

2tbsp mirin rice wine

Soy sauce

Method

Chop the tofu into small cubes. Heat some groundnut oil in a pan and fry the tofu until it's firm, bouncy and golden brown. I used smoked tofu for a special taste, but also plain tofu is perfectly fine.

If your potatoes have thin skins, there's no need to peel them. Just wash and cut in half or quarter them. Chop the onion, garlic, chili, ginger and leeks.

Heat some sesame oil in a separate pan and sweat the onion and then add the garlic, chili and ginger. Fry these for a few minutes and then add the potatoes.

Add some rice wine and then water and vegetable stock powder. The water should reach approximately the middle of the potato pieces, otherwise it might take ages to get the potatoes soft. Let this simmer under lid by occasionally stirring until the potatoes are almost fully cooked. Add the leeks and let simmer some more.

Towards the end, when you're happy with the texture of the leeks and potatoes, add the pre-fried tofu to the pan.

Season the stew with miso, maple syrup, soy sauce and further rice wine if needed. I would recommend to make it fairly savoury with the help of miso and soy sauce.

Serve the warm stew when you are happy with the seasoning and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Tomato and basil risotto

So dear readers, it' stime to post another risotto recipe. Vegetarian risottos are so nice that I just can't get enough of them. This time I made a slightly different risotto than I usually would as this one is mushroom-free. I liked this one a lot as it's very fresh and it defines tomato and mozzarella combination all over again. This is how to make it:

Ingredients:

200g arborio rice

250g baby plum tomatoes

100g sweet baby peppers

2 garlic cloves

1 onion

1l vegetable stock

1 tomato and herb stock cube

30g butter

1dl white wine

Olive oil

Fresh basil leaves

Salt

Ground black pepper

Emmental cheese grated

Mozzarella balls for serving

Method:

First of all remove the tomato skins, which can be done for example by my regular method. Make small x-cuts on each tomato's skin and dip them for a few seconds into boiling water and then dip them into cold water. After this treatment the skins should easily come off. Save a few tomatoes for the presentation as the topping and the rest will go into the actual risotto in a moment.

Prepare a vegetable stock or use a ready made vegetable stock. Chop the peppers, onion and garlic. Heat a little olive oil in a pan and first sweat the onion and then add the pepper and garlic. Add butter to the pan and let it melt. Then add the arborio rice, stir it in the pan until it's translucent.

Make a white wine addition and let the wine evaporate. After that add a few scoops of the vegetable stock and the tomatoes. Let the risotto simmer under the lid and stir it often. Make some further stock additions when needed.

Once the rice starts being al dente, season the risotto with salt, ground black pepper, a generous amount of chopped fresh basil leaves and emmental cheese. Also add a tomato and herb stock cube. Taste if possibly more wine or butter is needed as well.

Once you're satisfied with the texture and the seasoning serve the risotto with mozzarella balls and decorative tomatoes.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog

Leek flame cake

Today I made a traditional dish from the Alsace region: in Alsatian flammekueche, in German Flammkuchen, in French tarte flambée. I have just translated it as a flame cake here. I obviously turned that usually non-vegetarian dish into a vegetarian one. It's also normally baked in a wood-fire oven, but since I only own a regular oven that'll have to do. I became familiar with Flammkuchen in Germany and I absolutely adore its leek version. Sometimes you even get this sort of vegetarian version served at some public events.

The dough:

125g wheat flour

1tbsp oil

1tsp salt

50ml water

The filling:

1 leek

1 small onion

1 garlic clove

Fresh basil leaves

2tbsp crème fraîche

2tbsp oat cream

70g grated Emmental cheese

Ground black pepper

Salt

Chop the leeks into rings and onion and garlic finely. Mix the crème fraîche and oat cream and season the mix with salt, pepper and chopped fresh basil leaves. Also add the finely chopped garlic and onion to this mix.

Mix the dry ingredients for the dough together, then add the water and knead. Finally add oil and knead again to reach a firm dough. Then roll out the dough very thinly into a similar shape with a pizza pie.

Then spread the crème fraîche mix thinly on the base (quite as you would do with a tomato sauce on a pizza), place the leeks and grated cheese on the top.

Bake the flame cake at 250C for about 10 minutes until some ”flame” marks appear and then enjoy the crispy base with lovely leeky and cheesy flavours on the top.

Your VegHog

Honey glazed flying saucer squash with chipotle chili mash

This post is related to my #iwanttobelieve campaign and thereby also to yesterday's post. I'm using the other half of my funny flying saucer squash today. Please read more about it and have a look at the Flying saucer squash pies.

This dish is a great mix of sweet and spicy and smoky. I think that the honey glaze works very nicely with squash accentuating its natural sweetness, and chipotle and smoky cheese make a great extra flavour to a potato mash.

For the squash

½ flying saucer squash

2tbsp olive oil

2tbsp honey

About 10 fresh sage leaves

1tsp sea salt

For the mash

500g potatoes

1 dried chipotle chili

1 garlic clove

100g Applewood smoked Cheddar

1tsp sea salt / chipotle sea salt

Butter

Cut the squash into generous wedges along the star shapes of it. There's no need to peel it. Place the wedges into an oven dish and brush them lightly all over with olive oil. Roast them at 180-200C for about 30 minutes and sometimes turn them over.

Now also start the mash. Peel the potatoes and boil them in salted water until they are done, in approximately 30 minutes. Chop the chipotle and garlic finely and grate the cheese.

Prepare the glaze for the squash. Pour honey into a bowl and add about one tablespoon olive oil to it. Chop the sage finely and add it and and salt to the bowl.

When the squash is already mainly roasted, glaze it with the honey mix and put back into the oven for further 20 minutes or until you are happy with the glazing and the squash. Also now keep turning the wedges over occasionally and brush more glaze on them if needed.

Heat some butter in a pan and lightly fry the garlic and chipotle in there. When the potatoes are boiled, mash them and add the garlic, chili, salt and cheese to them. Mix to a smooth texture.

Serve the squash with the mash and enjoy! Happy Halloween everyone!

Your VegHog

Flying saucer squash pies

Maybe some of you, dear readers, have already seen my mysterious #iwanttobelieve tweets predicting the arrival of a flying saucer squash recipe. I obtained a magnificent flying saucer squash at the Arundel food festival and wanted to feature it as my this year's spooky Halloween ingredient par excellence.

I thought hard about it how to use this wonderful vegetable and I decided to make two different dishes, as that huge squash easily made two full meals, and this is the first of them. I wanted to make a hearty autumn pie and I think it turned out to be very tasty. The pastry is also homemade and is partly made of spelt flour. This recipe can be made with any squash or pumpkin in case you can't get hold of a flying saucer.

The pastry

150g spelt flour

150g wheat flour

150g butter

4-8tbsp cold water

The filling

½ flying saucer squash

1 cup red lentils

1 cloveless garlic (or 2-3 cloves of regular garlic)

2 shallots

1 cup oak matured Somerset vintage cider (or other dry cider)

1tbsp vegetable stock powder

Vegetable oil (for roasting the squash)

Olive oil

A bunch of fresh thyme sprigs

A small chunk of Sussex Charmer cheese

Salt

Black pepper

1 egg (for brushing the pastry)

Method

Make the pastry first. Mix the flours together and pinch soft butter cubes among the flour until the mixture reaches a similar texture to breadcrumbs. Add cold water for binding the dough and knead it even. Wrap the dough in cling film and let it rest in the fridge during the other preparations.

Cut the flying saucer in half and save the other half for later (another recipe is coming soon to this blog!). Peel it, remove the seeds and cut it into small cubes. Place the cubes into an oven dish and brush them with vegetable oil. Roast the squash at 180C for about 30 minutes until soft.

Parallel to this rinse the red lentils and boil them in water until soft. Add vegetable stock powder to the water for boiling.

In another large pan heat some olive oil and sweat the shallots and garlic. Then add the roasted squash and make a cider addition to the pan. Let it simmer and the cider evaporate. Then also add the lentils and season the pie filling with salt, pepper and generous amount of fresh thyme. Add some grated hard cheese and add more vegetable stock powder or cider if you want a heartier taste.

Then roll out the pastry and place it into one large baking tin or smaller tins or ramekins. Put the squash filling in and close the lid on them. Make some air holes on the lid, which can be decorative. Brush the pastry with a beaten egg and place also some more thyme leaves on the top. You can also brush the edges of the pie with the egg before placing the lid on. That way it will stick better to your main pie.

Bake the pie(s) at 200C for about 20-25 minutes. Enjoy and let the lovely pie goodness warm your heart!

Your VegHog