Lebanese Dirty Rice with Halloumi

I have already published the recipe for Lebanese Dirty Rice here and it has become one of my favourites that I cook quite often. It's a simple yet tasty dish and also very cheap to make. 

So this week's cooking plan started with Lebanese Dirty Rice. I served fried halloumi slices with it and cut a couple of corners with the fried onions by using the ready made Ikea ones. I used puy lentils and brown rice as the main ingredients. This is a comforting choice for often so bleak Mondays and you'll get a healthy and nutritious start to the week. If you leave the halloumi out, the dish is vegan.

Weekly cooking plan

I wanted to share my cooking plan for this week with you. This is a fairly typical weekly menu for me, but of course there are always variations. I hope to get to blog about most of these dishes. I'm planning to cook every day apart from Friday, when I just want to relax in my local pub and enjoy their vegetarian cooking with a couple of pints. That's what I do on most Friday's, as I'm too knackered after the week to cook.

I don't make a cooking plan for every week, but sometimes it's nice to be organised and know what you need to buy for the week ahead. Some of these meals are either vegan or easy to veganise. I've been cooking surprisingly many vegan meals lately.

Here is the plan for this week:

Monday

Lebanese dirty rice with halloumi

Tuesday

Rye pasta

Wednesday

Chickpea, spinach and potato curry

Thursday

Vegetable grazing plate with hummus

Friday

Pub meal

Saturday

Veggie burgers

Sunday

Vegetarian Sunday roast

I'll keep you updated throughout the week, whether I'm sticking to this plan or not. Have a good week, which also happens to be the National Vegetarian Week 2015! 

Your VegHog

Potato and rosemary focaccia

I have baked loads of things with potatoes lately, potato pizza and potato pies, and now I've done it again. Now I baked potato and rosemary focaccias with lovely red ruby gem potatoes. I love the taste of these local potatoes and purchase them quite often. I used mainly spelt flour in the dough, which I haven't done before in focaccias.

Here is how I made these focaccias. The recipe makes four focaccias or one large one.

Ingredients

For the dough:

300 ml spelt flour

200 ml wheat flour

1 tbsp dry yeast

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

200 ml lukewarm water

2 tbsp olive oil

For the filling:

250 g small potatoes

Rosemary

Sea salt

20g grated mature Cheddar

Method

Mix the dry ingredients for the dough (flour, dry yeast, sugar and salt) and then add the lukewarm water and olive oil and knead to a dough. Let the dough rise for about 40 minutes under a teatowel.

In the meanwhile boil the potatoes until they are soft. Let them cool and cut them into chunky bits. I cut one small potato into 2-3 pieces. Mix the pieces in a bowl with a little olive oil, rosemary and sea salt.

Shape small round focaccias from the dough and place the potato pieces on them. Sprinkle grated cheddar on the top and some more sea salt and rosemary if you prefer.

Bake at 220 C for about 20 minutes and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Kekkonen, Kekkonen, Kekkonen...

When I was in Finland few weeks ago, I simply had to taste this new beer named after Finland's eighth president Urho Kaleva Kekkonen. Kekkonen's presidency is the longest in the Finnish history, it lasted for over 25 years. He is an iconic Finnish leader known for his active neutrality policy balancing a small country from the 1950s until early 1980s between the Soviet Union and the west. 

The title of my post refers to the vote counting in the presidential election of 1978, my year of birth. Back then the votes of the electors were read outloud, which formed a monotone reading, as Kekkonen was re-elected by a landslide victory. Watch a video clip here to get the idea of how it went. These scenes have basically become a running gag in the Finnish popular culture.

So this spring Kekkonen Keskiolut 4,2 % came to the Finnish beer market as a refreshing novelty. It's brewed by a small family brewery Saimaan Juomatehdas. I was already very keen on tasting it as soon as I heard of it, and on my holiday I finally had the chance. The design of the can is brilliantly lighthearted with Kekkonen's picture and quote. I photographed Kekkonen in the Finnish spring landscape in the countryside, I hope that he would have approved.

The colour of the beer is reddish and it's quite full-bodied. The taste has hints of toffee and bitter almost burned caramel with a light aftertaste of grapefruit. This is a very good beer and I need to get more of it soon!

Taste a Kekkonen if you can or just read about the man himself!

Your VegHog

Freekeh salad with barbeque flavours

Today was quite warm here, but I'm not sure if the good weather is going to continue. However now it's nice to dream of summer and eat a light salad with barbeque flavours at least. I found this tasty barbeque sauce and bought it even though it refers quite heavily to meat products. The product itself is of course suitable for vegetarians and quite tasty, so I try to ignore the name. I haven't used barbeque sauces for ages, maybe it's just not something that vegetarians do so often, but now I'm totally hooked. I can see this coating many vegetables for me and adding flavour. What are your thoughts about barbeque sauce?

I used these ingredients for the salad:

2 romano peppers

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp barbeque sauce

½ cup freekeh

1 garlic clove

1 tbsp vegetable stock powder

250 g halloumi

1 tsp vegetable oil

Mixed salad leaves

First I chopped the peppers into generous cubes and roasted them coated in olive oil. Once they were roasted, I coated them with the barbeque sauce and let marinade for a while.

Chop the garlic finely and cook it a little in olive oil. Add the freekeh, water and vegetable stock powder and cook until done.

Cut the halloumi into cubes and fry them in vegetable oil until they are golden brown.

Serve all these components with some mixed salad leaves. I served the freekeh, barbeque peppers and halloumi warm, but the salad is also tasty when served cold.

Have a nice week!

Your VegHog

Butternut squash speltotto

I have been a little bit disappointed with the squash offering in my local shops this winter and spring. It seems that mostly just butternut squash or coquina squash were available. Well, there's nothing wrong with them, but there are better squashes as well that I would have liked to cook again. However due to the squash variation shortage, I grew to like butternut squash more again. Today's recipe is just a basic speltotto (=risotto made with pearled spelt instead of arborio rice) that I cooked the other day from roasted butternut squash and pearled spelt. It was really tasty and the best kind of comfort food for me. Yesterday I ordered a new large batch of pearled spelt and I can't wait for it to arrive. If you have never tried it, I would really urge you to, it's really nice. And if you have tried, I would also love to hear your opinions, but now to the butternut squash speltotto recipe.

Ingredients

1 medium butternut squash

3 tbsp olive oil

2 shallots

3 garlic cloves

2 tbsp butter

1,5 cup pearled spelt

100 ml white wine

500 ml vegetable stock

25 g grated mature cheddar

50 g toasted pine nuts

Salt and black pepper to taste

Fresh basil leaves

Method

Peel the butternut squash and cut it into small/medium cubes. Roast the cubes in the oven with olive oil.

Chop the shallots and garlic finely and cook them in olive oil until soft.

Add butter and the pearled spelt into the pan and stir for a minute or so.

Add the white wine and let it mostly evaporate.

Then add about a third of the vegetable stock and let simmer.

Keep adding vegetable stock and stirring often until the spelt has cooked.

Towards the end, add the roasted butternut squash cubes and the grated cheese to the mix, season with salt, pepper and basil and serve with toasted pine nuts.

Your VegHog

Chilli with soya mince

I purchased this very handy dried soya mince. It's good to have in the cupboard for pasta sauces, chillies, Schnitzel or pasties. This time I made a soya mince chilli with peppers and beans and served it with rye nachos. I'm also very fond of my new smoked paprika and constantly want to add it everywhere!

Here is my soya mince chilli recipe, which is a very easy and basic one. I make this kind of a chilli quite often.

Ingredients

½ cup dried soya mince

2 red onions

3 garlic cloves

1 small chilli

2 bell peppers

500 g tomatoes

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 tsp ground coriander

2 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp paprika

240 g / 1 can black beans

1 tsp cocoa powder

4 tbsp tomato purée

50 g grated cheddar

Method

Cook the soya mince according to the instructions on the packet. Chop the red onions, garlic cloves, chilli, bell peppers and tomatoes.

Heat the vegetable oil and cook the onions, garlic, chilli and peppers for a few minutes. Add the soya mince to the pan a fry a little. Then add the ground coriander, cumin and paprika followed by the beans and tomatoes.

Let simmer under the lid and stir occasionally. Season with cocoa powder, tomato purée and add the grated cheese. Serve with the nachos and enjoy!

Your VegHog