In My Kitchen in July

It’s July and I just started my summer holiday, yay! I will only have one week’s summer holiday this year and I will be staying in Denmark. Nevertheless I expect it to be quite relaxing. The weather isn’t fully playing along, as it’s very windy and rain showers keep coming, but that won’t get my spirits down, we will just adjust our plans accordingly. Now I want to show you some things from my kitchen, I can’t believe that another month has passed again.

The highlight in my kitchen was probably the Rotten Fruit Box that I got from my brother’s family. It’s a huge box with several bags of different freeze-dried fruit and berries that are a great addition to breakfast bowls and baking, just to name a few uses. The idea behind this is to reduce food waste and to collect the fruit that has dropped to the ground, would be discarded and eventually it would start to rot. It’s a neat idea and the products are of a really good quality.

Another great present that I got was actually my company’s summer present (yes they do give us Christmas and summer presents, mostly kitchen gear): a cold brew coffee maker. I was sceptical at first, if I would ever use such a gadget, but then we tried a batch and the coffee was excellent. We’ve been cold brewing ever since. Now especially in the summer ice coffee is so refreshing. I walk to the station in the mornings and have my coffee cup with ice coffee with me. It’s so refreshing to drink the coffee on the train straight after the walk. It takes a long time to brew though, 12-24 hours, so it’s not that handy for a spontaneous coffee, if you’ve just ran out.

Then I’ve of course been cooking a lot and here are a few dishes. When I saw these cheese steaks in the shop, I had to buy them. They are just the perfect summer addition to vegetable dishes. I made a pita with hummus and a veggie burger with them and more dishes will be coming.

Here’s another veggie burger with “dirty” mac’n’cheese with roasted red pepper on the side.

Risotto is another great dish to cook in the summer. Now I have plenty of arborio rice, as I bought this large pack from an Italian store. This risotto is a mushroom and asparagus one.

I’m sharing this post again with Sherry from Sherry’s Pickings blog, who is hosting the In My Kitchen event.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Your VegHog

Summer brunch

It is so nice to have some outdoor meals in this glorious weather. It is quite hot here, but in the shade with a little breeze from the harbour you can just about survive. This morning I prepared a little spread on our balcony table with iced cold-brew oat latte, watermelon slices, nectarines, red currants, yogurt with granola and dried berries and freshly baked cheese-sausage-horns with vegan chorizo. It was such a nice relaxing moment with no rush to go anywhere or to do anything.

Now we will go to a street food market to have further treats outdoors. I’m curious about vegetarian zucchini fritter gyros from a Greek stall. I think I’ll have to try that today, unless I'm still too full from this brunch. Let's see, anyway it will be a very relaxing day today.

Have you been enjoying some al fresco dining this summer?

Enjoy your weekend!

Your VegHog

Spicy sausage stew with mini polenta bites

It’s another cloudy day, but it’s still very warm. We will buy some garden/balcony supplies today and just potter around. I hope I don’t see any tempting new plants at the garden center, but I’m sure there will be some that I want to take home with me. Perhaps we would need a few decorative summer flowers, as most of our plants are grown for food.

Here is today’s plantbased recipe. I made this spicy sausage stew with vegan chorizo, roasted sweet potato, bell pepper and tomatoes and served it with fried mini polenta bites. The whole meal was vegan and a very pleasing combination. It was a nice summer dish, I would say. Here’s how I made it.

Sausage stew

1 sweet potato

1 bell pepper

10 cherry tomatoes

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

Salt to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

Smoked paprika to taste

4 vegan chorizo sausages

Vegetable oil for roasting

Cut the vegetables in cubes and roast them in the oven until done. Season with salt, pepper and smoked paprika.

Also slice the sausages and add them to the roasting tin. Roast for a while so that the flavours blend nicely.

Polenta bites

125 g polenta

650 ml vegetable stock

Fresh basil

Fresh thyme

1 tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

Vegetable oil for frying

Heat the vegetable stock with the seasoning and cook the polenta in it.

Once cooked, spread it on a baking paper and let cool in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Cut small shapes off the polenta with a cookie cutter and fry them in oil.

I served the stew and polenta with a green salad on the side, consisting of rocket, fresh peas and spring onion. I also added a tomato dipping sauce on the plate.

Have a nice Sunday!

Your VegHog

Mushroom and pea risotto

It has been very warm over here this week, but today started a bit rainy. I’m still optimistic that it will be a beautiful day. We will soon wonder to town to see what’s happening today. We might go back to our old hoods in Østerbro to see if anything has changed in a couple of months. Otherwise I don’t have many weekend plans once again.

I think risottos are good summer food, so I made a mushroom and pea risotto. I used nice and firm brown closed cup mushrooms, fresh Danish peas and new season onions with their lovely green stalks. It was a lovely combination and just perfect midweek meal.

What is your favourite risotto?

Your VegHog

Brown butter roast new potatoes with cauliflower cheese

We’ve been pampered with a lovely warm weather this weekend and we’ve been outdoors a lot. Yesterday we went to a street food market and it was almost like “in the olden days”, the pre-corona days… Today we’ll go to the vegetable market and will buy the veggies for next week. Do you have any cooking ideas? I’m currently not too creative. I think I’ll just buy what’s seasonal and local now.

There has been a cauliflower shortage over here lately. The shops haven’t had any for weeks and I’ve only been able to find some in the vegetable market. I’m not sure what could have caused this. Soon we should get the local new season cauliflowers, so maybe it’ll get better then. But don’t you know the feeling, when you can’t get something, then you really start graving it!

This dish was made with one cauliflower that I managed to find. It was just a roast dinner with cauliflower cheese, but the roast potatoes were a bit special. The recipe for the brown butter roast new potatoes is by Anna Jones and it’s published in this Guardian article. I would recommend this style for a change.

Have a good Sunday!

Your VegHog

Roasted new potatoes with asparagus and beurre rosé

I’m having a slow Sunday morning, but soon we’ll head for a little walk at the harbour. I don’t have any other plans for today and that’s fine.

Here’s just a little dish that could give inspiration to a seasonal vegetarian Sunday dinner. I made roasted new potatoes and steamed asparagus with beurre rosé made from rosé wine and pink peppercorns. My salad contained fresh local peas, spring onion stalks, tomatoes and feta, and I also served a vegetarian cheese Schnitzel with the dish. It was a comforting yet fresh dish full of vegetables. It’s a celebration for the good stuff that’s in season currently here in Denmark: new potatoes, asparagus and fresh peas. This dish is of course also easy to veganise by using a vegan Schnitzel and skipping or substituting the feta.

Your VegHog

In my kitchen in June

It has been all about good food and eating lately. The lockdown has lifted here, but let the comfort eating continue! I’ve also been quite keen on fresh salads now that the weather has even been summerly on a few days. It has also been inviting for such lovely organic vegan rosé wine. Here are some foods from my kitchen, because I haven’t been buying anything else.

Have you tasted Naturli’s vegan pizzas yet? I love both of the variants, but I think that the Capricciosa with plantbased cold cut, champignons and tomatoes is my favourite. It reminds me of a vegetarian ready meal baguettes from my study times that I ate more than it’s probably allowed. I’m happy to have detected similar flavours 20+ years later. The Mexicana with plantbased mince and red pepper is also very tasty, though.

I detected some Peas of Heaven products, vegan sausages and “Peacon”, which were a really nice quality. This brand is a new acquaintance for me, and I will be buying their products from now on.

The Pan-fry gnocchi pops were a spontaneous buy, but they were quite good. You only need to fry them and they’re ready. They are perfect for some quick working from home lunches. Both variants, spinach and mozzarella and tomato and mozzarella tasted good.

This blue chia pudding with coconut, pineapple and mango from the Fresh Market in Copenhagen is so nice and it’s actually a huge portion. I had it as breakfast on three mornings.

Feta salad

Fried potatoes

As usual I’m sharing this post with Sherry from Sherry’s Pickings, who is hosting the monthly In My Kitchen blogging event.

Have a nice Friday and weekend everyone!

Your VegHog