Pulled jackfruit sandwiches

This is a dish that I have been planning in my head for a long time, and finally now I made my first version of it: vegan pulled jackfruit sandwiches. Ever since I first tried jackfruit, I was very impressed, what a versatile fruit to use in vegan and vegetarian cooking. It's only a shame that it's fairly difficult to get around here. I ordered mine online. 

By the way I really like my new disposable pine wood food trays. They are from a sustainable source and look so cute. Of course disposable plates aren't really the way to go, but for the occasional presentation they are fine. They add a little bit of a street food vibe to these.

These sandwiches were really nice, but I'm sure that I can still improve things with a little practise. Fried halloumi would go nicely in these, if you want to make a non-vegan version. Have a look at the recipe below, if you're interested.

Pulled jackfruit sandwiches

Ingredients

280 g can of jackfruit

1 tbsp vegetable oil

Vegetable stock extract to taste

Liquid smoke to taste

1 onion

1 garlic clove

Mixed salad leaves

Spiralised yellow and red beetroot

Cherry tomatoes

4 ciabatta rolls

Method

Cook the jackfruit in a pan in little oil and vegetable stock until it's soft and falls apart. Keep adding water or stock regularly so that the pan doesn't dry out. Just before serving mix in the liquid smoke.

Cut the onion into half rings and fry them in a pan. Chop the garlic clove finely and cook it with the onion for a few minutes.

Mix the jackfruit with the onion.

Prepare the fresh veg for the sandwiches and bake the rolls.

Fill the rolls with the veg and jackfruit mix and enjoy!

Your VegHog

Craft Beer Rising London 2017

Last weekend we went to Craft Beer Rising beer festival in London's Brick Lane. This is a yearly tradition for us, and it was great once again. We met some old friends, made new acquaintances and tasted some excellent beers and ciders. Here is only a quick overview of the beers tasted, accompanied with a few photos.

Hoppy Seabird is a new craft beer range by Gower Brewery in Swansea in Wales. These were lovely new beers to get to know. They also had a friendly and enthusiastic guy talking about the beers and the brewery. I just loved their branding. 

My lovely partner won me a t-shirt featuring this dinosaur from the Butcombe Brewing Co.'s wheel spinning game. What a good win and nice beers to go with it. Their dinosaur beer's logo is one of my favourites anyway. I always appreciate good artwork on beverages and food, and that can be a major factor when making purchase decisions.

There were also some Scandinavians preset: Amundsen and Ægir breweries from Norway had brewed an excellent collaboration beer. We visited Ægir in Norway last autumn, so it was nice to see them in this country. I hope both breweries will be successful in the British market. From Sweden there was Kungsbryggeriet from Stockholm, once again great beers.

Prancing Pony Brewery from New Zealand was another new acquaintance for us. I really liked their beer and branding, and we also bought a couple of bottles to take home. We are still saving them for a special occasion.

We already visited UBREW last autumn in the Bermondsey Beer Mile in London, but I just had to get another dinosaur beer. 

Some of our old friends were luckily there, it's always nice to see a familiar face: Big Hug Brewery with their lovely beers and cans, Goose Island, who now even had a tap room downstairs, Caple Road ciders had some new products to taste, and on the snack side my favourites, Karkli, spicy handmade Indian style lentil snacks.

We didn't eat a lot there, as the vegetarian food offering seemed to be a little bit less this year. We managed to get a decent mac'n'cheese though. However I would have hoped for a bit more veggie food. 

 

So this was it, hopefully we can go again next year.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Your VegHog

Kalette stir fry

I still had some of this wonderful vegan and organic edamame and mung bean fettucine, so I thought that another stir fry would in place. Stir frys are in fact some of our absolute weekday favourites. You only need some noodles or rice, a few fresh veggies and maybe tofy for a more balanced meal, some seasoning, and that's it. It's so easy and fairly quick, normally a really satisfying dish to cook after work.

So in this stir fry I used the oh so lovely seasonal kalettes, a hybrid between kale and brussels sprout, as the main veg. They suited this kind of dish very well. I was quite pleased with it. Have a look at the recipe below, if you want to know more.

Kalette stir fry

Ingredients

150 g kalettes

200 g tofu

2 tbsp vegetable oil for

2 carrots

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

2 cm fresh ginger

1 chilli

Soy sauce to taste

Mirin to taste

Sesame oil to taste

100 g organic edamame and mung bean fettucine

Method

Cut the tofu into cubes and fry the cubes in a hot pan until firm. Remove them from the pan and set to side.

Chop the carrots into thin slices and also slice the onion and finely chop the garlic, ginger and chillies.

Heat again some oil in the hot pan and start cooking the onion and carrots. Cook until they are softened and slightly browned.

Add the garlic, ginger and chilli, and after a while the sauces.

Cook the noodles separately and then add them to the pan.

Also add the kalettes towards the ends, as they don't need much cooking.

Let simmer for a few minutes until the flavours have blended and add more sauce, if needed.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

Eat Your Greens February Round Up

First I thought that Eat Your Greens would be very quiet in February, as it's only a short month, but to my delight suddenly the posts started coming, and we have once again a very vibrant round up of green vegetarian and vegan dishes. Thank you so much everyone for taking part!

Johanna from Green Gourmet Giraffe shared a Chickpea tofu and pea curry. I haven't tried chickpea tofu myself yet, but I'm really interested, as it seems to be a nice cooking ingredient. I just haven't seen it anywhere in my local shops. This curry looks so tasty served from adorable bowls. And what's not to like about any pea curries, I absolutely love them!

Laura from Touch Wood posted 3 post workout protein fix: an egg, avocado, tomato and spinach bowl (depicted below); a protein bowl of mixed whole grains, kale, butter beans and sweet potato chips; and power smoothie starters including a great idea of frozen smoothie ingredients. These are all great ideas to add some protein to your diet and they all look very good and use a variety of veggies.

Corina from Searching for Spice wrote a very seasonal recipe, perfect for today as it's Shrove Tuesday, Leek Pancakes with Spinach, Kale & Ricotta. I'm a great appreciator of savoury pancakes and could tuck into these straight away. These pancakes look really lovely, especially with the semi-hidden leeks in the batter, and adding some more greens as a topping is a great idea.

Shaheen, my Eat Your Greens co-host, from Allotment 2 Kitchen shared a local delicacy from Wales Welsh Laverbread Cakes and a Piece of Toast. Laverbread is cooked and puréed seaweed that can be added to whole range of veggie meals. The cakes are made from laverbread and oats and can be served as a part of a vegetarian breakfast. I like the usage of local ingredients very much and the innovation is great in the recipe.

Sadhna from Herbs, Spices and Tradition posted a recipe for a Minty veg yoghurt salad (Raita). This salad looks so refreshing, not just due to the mint. It also contains cucumber, tomato and potato along with spices. She also shares in her post a lot of valuable information about mint. I don't use enough mint in my cooking, so I might have to experiment more.

 

We also received an entry from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, The Vegan Version blog, a Vegan choux de Bruxelles à la crème. These are blanched brussels sprouts, which are then cooked in almond cream. This would make quite a nice winter side dish

My own Eat Your Greens post was Kalette and leek cakes made from the left-overs of the previous day. These small potato cakes made quite a nice small dish, and so economical. 

Now it's over to Shaheen again for Eat Your Greens March edition, keep sharing your wonderful recipes with us!

Your VegHog

Strawberry and cream buns

It's Shrove Tuesday tomorrow, so I made these traditional Finnish Shrove Tuesday buns. I try to make them every year for this occasion, even though I don't bake much otherwise.

Ground green cardamom seeds give the buns their distinctive flavour and the buns are filled with lovely whipped cream and strawberry jam. Ever since my childhood I have loved these buns, they are just so tasty. This year my buns fell a bit flat. I might have put too little yeast or maybe the milk wasn't warm enough, so they became a bit more dense. They were still good, but didn't maybe look quite as appetising.

I have posted my standard recipe for the buns before, so please just have a look here, if you are interested in baking them.

Have a nice week!

Your VegHog

Thai rice with fennel, carrots and cashews

Light vegan Thai dishes are my favourites at the moment, and I can imagine cooking more this type of dishes towards the spring. I made once again a similar rice dish with Thai flavours, as I have done a few times before. You can use whatever vegetables you have, but as I have been also so fond of fennel lately, I chose to use fennel paired with the basic and economical carrots that go well in so many dishes. This was a very tasty and flavoursome dish.

Thai rice with fennel, carrot and cashews

Ingredients

1 fennel

2 carrots

1 onion

3 garlic cloves

3 cm fresh ginger

1 small chilli

1 tbsp vegetable oil

160 ml coconut cream

Bunch fresh Thai basil

Bunch fresh coriander

2 dried lemongrass stalks

1 lime's juice

2 tbsp soy sauce

150 g cashew nuts

1 cup jasmine rice

Method

Cook the jasmine rice in water.

Chop the cashew nuts coarsely and toast them on a dry pan.

Chop the fennel into slices and the carrots into slices. Also chop the onion, garlic, ginger and chilli finely.

Start cooking the onion in vegetable oil, and once it's soft and slightly browned, add the garlic, ginger and chilli to the pan.

After a while also add the carrots, soon followed by the fennel. Cook for a little while and then add the coconut cream and spices.

Let the mix simmer, and shortly before serving, mix in the rice and cashews.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog

One-pot spaghetti

I can't believe that I avoided making a one-pot pasta for this long, but now I have finally made it, I have joined the club of the one-pot cooks! This recipe by Anna Jones: Kale, Tomato and lemon zest one-pot spaghetti was the one that ultimately persuaded me. It turned out to be a really tasty pasta dish.

This dish was so convenient to make and such a revelation. My partner often makes remarks about how many pots and pans and bowls I usually use to make one dish, but now he was really surprised.

You can find the original recipe through the link, but I also made some small amendments of my own. I used kalettes instead of kale and only zest of one lemon, which I found to be enough lemony taste. Kalettes are pretty much my favourite greens of the season, they can go just anywhere. I also added some garlic to the recipe, as I simply don't seem to be able to cook without garlic. I chose spaghetti as my preferred pasta and it worked out very nicely. What a nice sauce the pasta cooking water shaped with the olive oil, tomatoes and other seasoning. It was really amazing and makes my other weekday pastas look quite lame.

What are your experiences with one-pot pasta dishes?

Your VegHog