Large homemade pizza

Saving money is the theme of the week. We're on The VegHog's CheapEats Week 2017 and I'm keen to cook for little money. There is still time also for you to share your economical recipe until midnight on Saturday. Click on the link to find more info.

By occasionally making your own pizza, instead of ordering a pizza or eating out, you can save a lot of money. I am a sucker for a good pizza and am too often tempted to eat pizza out, but actually a homemade pizza is so much a tastier that I should make one more often. A pizza doesn't even take that long to make. When the dough is rising, there's time to prepare the filling.

The beauty of a vegetarian pizza is also that you can put any vegetables that you fancy as a filling. This time I just thought that a plain tomato pizza would be nice. I made it with a semi spelt-wheat crust, which was also slightly thicker than usually. I very much enjoyed it as a dinner and the rest of the slices as a work lunch.

I used a variation of tomatoes in this pizza and slow-baked some of the halved cherry tomatoes in order to make them a little bit like sundried tomatoes (kind of like in this Oven Tomatoes recipe, but I didn't quite bake them as long as in that recipe).

Tomato pizza

Dough:

200 g spelt flour

200 g wheat flour

1 tbsp dry yeast

1 tsp salt

300 ml lukewarm water

2 tbsp olive oil

Mix the dry ingredients. Then add the water and knead. Then also add the olive oil and knead a little more. Let rise under a teatowel for about an hour.

Filling:

200 g selected tomatoes

½ cup tomato sauce

200 g mozzarella

Slice the tomatoes thinly. Make the tomato sauce or use a ready made sauce. Grate the mozzarella.

Roll out the pizza dough and put the fillings on the top. Bake at 220 C for about 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Red pea soup

And we're still on The VegHog's Cheap Eats Week 2017. Hopefully you are enjoying it and getting tips for cheaper eating. Actually homecooked vegetarian meals are always quite economical, if you have a basic larder of spices and a couple of sauces. Anyhow, I feel good if I can save a bit money sometimes.

Today's recipe is a Finnish style pea soup that requires quite a bit of patience. This particular soup I cooked for about seven hours before serving, so make sure you have a minimum of about four hours to spare. These red fox peas seemed to be a bit more sturdy than regular dried green peas. Many of these red peas stayed intact even after such a long cooking time. The target is to get many peas turn into full mash and become one with the vegetable stock forming a very thick soup. You don't need much of this soup to be full and this definitely is a very cheap soup to make.

Pea soup is traditionally eaten in Finland on Thursdays and on Shrove Tuesday, and it's also often served to the soldiers in the Finnish army.

Red pea soup

Ingredients

300 g dried red fox maple peas

2 large onions

3 garlic cloves

1 tsp vegetable stock extract

1 tbsp ground mustard seeds

Salt to taste

Ground white pepper to taste

Dash of liquid smoke

Sprinkle of smoked paprika

2 tbsp tomato purée

Method

Soak the dried peas overnight. Fill a large saucepan with water and boil the peas there heavily for the first 15 minutes.

Chop the onions and garlic and add the onions and the vegetable stock extract to the saucepan and let simmer under the lid for several hours.

Stir occasionally and add the seasoning towards the end.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Kalette and leek cakes

Clever usage of left-overs is key in an economical kitchen. Today's dish is made from the left-over leek and potato filling of yesterday's Twice-baked potatoes with leek and cheese. I just added kalettes to the potato and leek mix, made cakes from them and fried in butter. I served the cakes with lambs lettuce and they were absolutely tasty.

I wrote a recipe here, if you want to make these from scratch, in case you don't have the same left-overs like I did from the twice-baked potatoes.

Leek and kalette cakes

Ingredients

1 leek

1 onion

1 garlic clove

100 ml dry apple cider

Salt to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

2-3 cups potato mash

50 g grated Cheddar

100 g kalettes

50 g butter

Method

Cook the sliced leek, and chopped onion and garlic in the cider until soft. Season the mix with salt and pepper.

Mix them with the potato mash and cheese.

Cut the thick stems off the kalettes and also mix the leaves in.

Shape small cakes from the mix and fry them on both sides in butter until golden brown.

Enjoy!

This will be my this month's Eat Your Greens post. I'm hosting the challenge myself this month, taking turns with Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen blog.

And of course this recipe is also part of The VegHog's Cheap Eats Week 2017.

Your VegHog

 

Twice-baked potatoes with leek and cheese

It's time to start The VegHog's Cheap Eats Week 2017! I'm going to be all stingy this week and cook with cheaper ingredients. However it doesn't mean that the food needs to be bland or boring, I'm just trying to be more clever with my shopping and cooking.

My first recipe of the week is actually a big favourite of mine, twice-baked potatoes with leek and cheese. This dish is so comforting and not many ingredients are needed. Potatoes and leeks are such basics that they aren't expensive. With this recipe you can make eight generously sized filled potato skins that both children and adults like.

I have posted this recipe before, but I always keep coming back to it, as these twice baked potatoes are so great especially in the winter. I can't think of a cosier way to spend a winter's evening than curling up in a warm flat and eating these potatoes.

Twice-baked potatoes with leek and cheese

Ingredients

4 large baking potatoes

1 tbsp vegetable oil

2 tsp sea salt

4 leeks

2 onions

4 garlic cloves

20 g butter

1 cup dry apple cider

1 tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

200 g grated Cheddar

Method

Wash the potatoes and stab each of them several times with a fork so that some holes appear. Roll the potatoes in a bowl containing the vegetable oil and sea salt, place on a baking sheet and bake for about 1,5 hours until fully baked.

In the meanwhile prepare the leek mix. Slice the leeks and chop the onions and garlic finely. First cook the onion in the butter until soft, then add the leeks and garlic and cook for a while. Add the cider and let simmer under the lid. Season with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat once the leeks are fully soft and the cider has reduced. Mix in about 150 g of the cheese.

When the potatoes are baked, let them cool down slightly so that they are easier to handle. Cut them in halves and scoop out most of the insides leaving the potato skins with a little bit of potato attached.

Fill the potato skins with the leek mix and sprinkle the rest of the cheese on the top. Return to the oven and bake for further 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

In My Kitchen in February

Good to see Lizzy back hosting In My Kitchen after a festive season break! So I'm also going to share a few things from my kitchen in February.

First of all here's a little example of my typical weekly shopping containing vegetables, fruit, snacks, juice, veggie sausages, cheese and other things. I'm really glad to see that the blush and blood orange season has started and try to hoard as many of them as I can. 

 

Recently I purchased these cute Bento moulds to make wonderful animal onigiri etc. I already posted one Bento box post in January and can't wait to make more. 

 

Cactus water is incredibly refreshing, only a bit pricey, but sometimes I have to pamper myself with it. Drinking some early on a Monday morning can work wonders.

I wonder if I should be writing down recipes in my new Periodic Table of the Elements notebook?

I have mentioned pickling vegetables here and there on the blog and now I pickled some carrot strings. These are really nice additions to large roast meals, salads, lunchboxes etc.

Porridge oats are definitely an important staple in my dry cupboard. I often make a savoury Nordic style oatmeal porridge and also use the oats in my homemade spelt rolls. 

 

These fruit crisps are great in breakfast bowls, or just as snacks in between. I especially like the pineapple ones.

Tofu is a very important ingredient in my vegetarian kitchen and I quite like Clearspot's Cpt Beancurd character.

BrewDog's Chili Hammer is an excellent beer with some kick of chilli. Chilli is very interesting in beers, it's quite smooth and more than okay even for me who can't take too much heat.

Thanks for reading and have a good weekend!

Your VegHog

Polenta lasagne with roasted vegetables and halloumi + Cooking video

After a long while I made a little cooking video. I only filmed it on my phone and just a couple of times asked my partner to assist with the filming. Otherwise I held the phone in one hand and did whatever cooking steps with the other. It means the quality isn't the greatest by any means, but it's just a bit of fun. I hope you enjoy watching, and you may not have to read the method below, if you follow the video. Sometimes it's also much easier to show the steps rather than writing them down in a nice and concise way.

The dish itself is a lasagne with roasted vegetables and halloumi, where traditional lasagne sheets have been replaced by polenta sheets. I had planned this dish in my head for a long time, and finally I managed to execute it. It was a nice task for a Sunday afternoon with the different steps and very rewarding in the end. It was a really tasty dish, and I would make it again, if only I have the necessary time. Any vegetables really that you fancy can be used here, halloumi and extra mozzarella are optional and you can season your polenta in different ways.

Have a look at the video and the detailed recipe can be found below. The video is also on Youtube.

Polenta lasagne with roasted vegetables and halloumi

Ingredients for about 4 medium ramekins

Polenta lasagne sheets

650 ml vegetable stock

1 tsp sea salt

125 g polenta

50 g vegetarian pasta cheese (veggie parmesan)

Fresh oregano

Fresh basil

Dried marjoram

Filling

3 large romano peppers

400 g vine cherry tomatoes

2 shallots

4 garlic cloves

Olive oil for roasting

Fresh oregano

Fresh basil

Salt to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

250 g halloumi

Vegetable oil for frying

100 g grated mozzarella

Method

Make the polenta lasagne sheets first, as they need some resting time in the fridge. Cook the polenta and add the cheese and seasoning. Roll out into fairly thin sheets once cooled down, which is easy to do between two baking parchments. Let rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Chop the peppers into generous chunks and start roasting them in the oven. Add the cherry tomatoes, sliced garlic and shallot rings later and roast them also. Season the vegetables.

Slice the halloumi and fry it in vegetable oil on a hot pan until golden brown.

Cut the polenta sheets into suitable sized pieces for your oven dish. I even made a couple of stencils from baking paper for mine, which made it a lot easier.

Layer the polenta sheets, roasted vegetables and fried halloumi into an oven dish or smaller ramekins, cover with grated mozzarella and bake at 200 for about 30 minutes.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Eat Your Greens welcoming February recipes

It's my first turn this year hosting Eat Your Greens, and I'm as excited as ever to receive your beautiful seasonal green recipes. Should you need any inspiration, do check Shaheen's January round up here. There were just amazing recipes shared with us in January, such variety of creativity. I was really impressed.

In order to take part in February, just post a vegan or vegetarian recipe containing green vegetables on your blog and copy the link to the comment field below. Please do so before midnight on 27^th February, as this is a short month. Your recipe will then be featured in the round up at the end of the month. More instructions on how to take part can be found here.

I look forward to your green recipes!

Your VegHog