Carrot and spelt mini loaves

When the evenings grow darker and it's chillier outside, I like baking fresh bread and rolls. Evening is normally the time of day when I get my baking urges. Sometimes it's purely because I notice that there isn't any bread for the next day. And since the root vegetable season is upon us, I have been using them more in cooking again. Carrots are a wonderfully healthy and tasty addition to homemade bread. Have you ever tried such bread? It's quite a normal thing in Finland.

I baked this bread pretty much following my previous recipe for Carrot and spelt rolls. Only this time I used just spelt flour and baked mini loaves instead of rolls, which makes the shaping phase slightly easier. I purchased these mini loaf cases a while ago, and was keen to bake something in them. They would also be very good for baking slightly bigger muffins. I got seven mini loaves with this recipe, but you could of course also make one large loaf of bread.

These mini loaves make a great breakfast or lunch with some added butter and cheese. Or how about filling them with fresh salad, tomatoes, cucumber, peppers... anything you like! I could also see them as cute additions to the dinner table to go with pasta or salad.

I don't think it's necessary to repeat all the instructions here as the full recipe can be found here. 

 

Have a good weekend!

Your VegHog

Harvest pasta

I call today's dish a harvest pasta as the tomatoes, the bell pepper and the basil come from my own small balcony garden. I posted an update yesterday of what's happening there (have a look here, if you missed it!). It is very satisfying to prepare such a meal. However I feel a little bit bad that I was too lazy and didn't make my own fresh pasta to go with these fine ingredients, because that would've made this dish even better. Well maybe next time, the plants are still very productive, and there's nothing wrong with a quick weekday pasta, is there.

For seasoning of the sauce I used again my sea buckthorn salt. I'm pretty sure, I've mentioned it before, but here's a bit more info. It's slightly pink Himalayan salt seasoned with sea buckthorn berries from the Ostrobothnian west coast in Finland, and it can be used just like regular salt, but it has some health benefits. Remember when I made a post about the Old animals' home in Ylistaro? Anyway, these berry salt products, and much more, are manufactured there at Wanha Markki. When I visited them in August, I obviously had to extend my salt supplies.

And now to the making of this pasta dish. This recipe makes two large pasta bowls.

Ingredients

6 tomatoes

3 garlic cloves

1 large yellow bell pepper

Handful of fresh basil leaves

Olive oil

Sea buckthorn salt (regular salt is also fine)

Ground black pepper

125 g mozzarella

Farfalle pasta

Method

Chop the garlic finely and the tomatoes more coarsely. Heat olive oil in a saucepan and cook the garlic there for a few minutes and then add the tomatoes. Simmer the tomato sauce slowly, for an hour or two until it has reached an intense tomato taste. Season with fresh basil, salt and pepper, once the sauce is pretty much done.

Chop the bell pepper into generous bits and roast them brushed with olive oil in the oven until they are soft and have some roasting marks. I love this method for cooking pepper, they get so insanely sweet in the oven.

Cook the pasta al dente. I used farfalle this time, which isn't normally so frequently used by me, but it's a nice pasta shape. Once the pasta is cooked, mix it into the tomato sauce.

Place a portion of the pasta with the tomato sauce into a bowl and add the roasted pepper bits and torn mozzarella on the top. Sprinkle some fragrant olive oil also on the pasta and serve.

This is a pasta dish full of good flavours, my favourites in fact.

Have you been growing veg or herbs this year, and what would your ideal harvest meal be?

Your VegHog

Harvest time

This summer and autumn have been so good weather wise here in southern England and my small balcony garden has been thriving. This week is the first rainy and somewhat chillier week. I'm happy to have more autumnal weather now anyway. Many things are still growing on my balcony, mainly tomatoes and peppers. Of course I already dedicated a whole post to my Tomato Tigerella, which are still giving a proud daily harvest. I'm very grateful for any new ones and hope that they'll keep it up for a while still. They have been incorporated into quite a few summer and autumn recipes now, and I haven't had to purchase any tomatoes for the past couple of months. 

The courgettes, yellow and green, also had a good run this year, but they've now slowed down in growth. And I pretty much decided that I won't be growing any courgettes next year, as they take awfully lot of room away on a small balcony. Now after two years of growing plants here, I've had wonderful courgette crops and maybe a gap year is in order for them. I didn't get sick of them yet, though. There are so many good dishes, where courgettes can be utilised.

At the moment the best growers are the peppers. I find such joy in following them grow and turn colour. I only harvested the first large one a few days ago, but there are plenty more of them coming. A second ripe one surprised me among the tomato wines. I had no idea any more that there were pepper plants in that pot, since the tomatoes properly took over. Many caterpillars plagued the pepper plants earlier in the summer, so the leaves got a bit eaten, but they survived and are doing fine. I let my friend remove the caterpillars in a humane way. Here are some photos of the development of the peppers and I'm sure that also recipes will follow.

Nutty vegetable pie topped with coquina squash mash

Oh, poor old me has been suffering from a bad cold since Sunday evening. Now I forced myself to the computer with a hot blackcurrant juice, as being active does make you feel slightly better. No doubt that I will soon be returning to bed to rest. However I wanted to post this recipe for a pie that I made a while ago. At the moment I don't have much strength for cooking. My favourite meal, when I'm sick, is spaghetti with little butter, salt and grated cheese. That's the glamorous food I'm planning to eat today as well. It's just suitably tasteless, but keeps you going.

So, quite the contrary this recipe is full of flavour. It's for a lentil, black bean and hazelnut pie with roasted coquina squash top. It really oozes autumn and warms you up on a chillier day.

Please have a look how easy it is to make.

1 coquina squash

Olive oil for roasting

½ tsp salt

1 cup breadcrumbs

Peel the coquina squash, remove the seeds and cut to wedges. Brush the wedges with olive oil and roast at 180-200C until soft with roasting marks. Mash the squash and season it with salt. I added breadcrumbs, as the squash mash can be fairly liquid, more so than a potato mash would be. So the breadcrumbs help to make it a sturdy top layer for this pie.

150 g hazelnuts

Cut the hazelnuts in half or into smaller crumbs and toast them in the oven.

1 cup green lentils

1 mushroom stock cube

Rinse the lentils and boil them in water with the mushroom stock cube until fully cooked.

240 g / 1 can black beans

3 shallots

3 garlic cloves

Olive oil for frying

1 cup dry cider

2 bay leaves

2 tbsp vegetable stock powder or two vegetable stock cubes

1 tbsp miso

Salt and pepper to taste

Chop the shallots and garlic finely and start cooking them in olive oil. Once the shallots and garlic are cooked soft, add the beans, cooked and drained lentils and toasted hazelnuts into the pan.

Cook for a couple of minutes and then add the cider and season with bay leaves, vegetable stock powder, miso, salt and pepper. Also add the miso to taste.

Let the mix simmer slowly for about 15 minutes. Then remove the bay leaves and layer the lentil mix into ramekins or a large oven dish.

Spread the squash mash on the top and bake the pie at 180C for about 40 minutes.

Enjoy your autumn pie!

Your VegHog

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

The VegHog's great India Pale Ale tasting – Part II

Do you remember the India Pale Ale post I made a while ago? Today the tasting series is going to continue, but this time I only want to introduce one IPA, and that's from BrewDog's Hello my name is... series. 

I couldn't quite believe my eyes when I saw the bottles of Hello my name is Päivi in Finnish Alko. Of course I bought a couple, only to realise that I was one of the lucky ones who got this beer as it was sold out very quickly. I think there was a competition, which Finnish person should be chosen for this, and politician Päivi Räsänen won the voting. Read her Wiki, if you want to know who she is. The VegHog won't be commenting politically.

The photos have been taken this summer in Finland, the tasting took place a bit later in England.

Hello my name is Päivi is a unique double IPA, 8,2% strong and powered by sea buckthorn berries, as is very suitable for a Scottish-Finnish IPA. So, here are my tasting notes:

• Strong grassy, piney aroma with a fruity background
• Notes of sea buckthorn in the middle and aftertaste, in the aftertaste it even overpowers the hops
• Toffee and plum notes in the aftertaste
• It's like fir needles in a forest, like drinking the Finnish woods

Have a beautiful weekend! It's still beer garden weather here, so who knows... can't get a Päivi, though.

Your VegHog

Savoury spelt crêpes with cheese and tomato

The router broke and I was internetless (well, mobile network only) for ALMOST TWO DAYS – panic! It's incredible what happened then. I was so active, read books, walked, exercised, cooked, baked, drank no alcohol and watched no TV! Well, it's back on now, so I can at least post this recipe and catch up a bit. I think however, I will voluntarily try to keep such days without surfing in the future, it was so refreshing.

So, now to the actual recipe. Ever since I fell in love with spelt flour, I have been dreaming of spelt crêpes. Now the time has come that I tried them, and they were so good! A Nutella crêpe is a really nice thing, but the savoury ones still always win for me. I thought I'd combine my first spelt crêpes with quite an established and tasty mix of tomato, garlic, cheese and basil. 

This recipe will make about four large crêpes.

Batter ingredients:

2 eggs

4 dl milk

2 dl spelt flour

1 tsp sugar

½ tsp salt

Other ingredients:

Butter for frying

4 tomatoes

1 garlic clove

Handful of fresh basil leaves

100 g mozzarella and cheddar mix

Salt and ground black pepper

Method

Whisk the crêpe ingredients into a smooth batter and let it rest for about 30 minutes in the fridge.

In the meanwhile you can chop the crêpe fillings: slice the tomatoes, chop the garlic finely and grate the cheese.

Heat some butter in a pan and fry the crêpes golden brown on both sides.

Place the filling into the middle of the flat crêpe while it's still in the pan. Turn the crêpe corners over the filling in order to cover it. Let it in the pan for few moments so that the cheese can melt a little and the flavours blend.

Serve instantly and enjoy!

This is a wonderful breakfast or snack, a little bit naughty of course (butter + cheese...), but still also containing fresh ingredients. And the spelt flour brings such a wonderful nuttiness to it. I will definitely be trying other savoury variations soon.

Your VegHog