Veggie quesadillas

We have a bit of a heatwave here in Denmark right now. I already went for a morning swim in the harbour to cool down straight away after waking up. The water in the harbour is really clean and it’s nice to go for a little swim. I can’t swim for far though, because I’m so much out of shape. Otherwise I will try to stay out of sun for most of today.

Soon we’ll go out for a Mexican lunch and I’m very much looking forward to it. Before that I wanted to share my own recent homemade quesadillas with you. I love Mexican food and I also love cooking my own variations of it. I made these veggie quesadillas with beans, sweetcorn, bell pepper, rice and plenty of warming Mexican spices. They were so good. 

 

I hope you’ll all have a wonderful weekend!

Your VegHog

 

Decorated focaccia - Sunflowers

I made another decorated focaccia, because making the first one was so much fun. I was inspired by Vincent van Gogh this time and followed a sunflower theme. The bell peppers were also nice on the focaccia and I’m already thinking about my next theme. Do you have any suggestions or have you made a decorated focaccia?

We will go to the seaside in a minute and will just have a relaxing Sunday picnic there. I hope you’ll have a great day!

Your VegHog

In My Kitchen in August

I couldn’t believe it when I wrote that title above, In My Kitchen in August! But indeed, it’s already August in this year that has just flown by. Maybe it’s best not to think about that too much and just have a look at what has been happening in my kitchen lately.

Plants on my balcony are coming along very nicely and I've had the first tomato and romano pepper harvest. The tomatoes are an orange variant of San Marzano tomatoes and they are so so tasty. The onion squash is also growing fast.

I bought two Danish oils or dressings for my summer salads: a wild garlic oil and a sea buckthorn dressing. They are so handy to just sprinkle on lovely veg. I also got a quality Italian olive oil from an Italian grocery store. It is so nice and has an intense flavour. I also love the label.

There are two new plates in my kitchen, which I’m quite happy about.

I detected a nice new brand of ecological nuts.

I found this Hodmedod's British Vaal Dhal in my local supermarket and I'm delighted to try it soon. I used to buy a lot of Hodmedod's products in Britain and they were always qualitative.

I was equally delighted to find my old favourite, Applewood Smoked Cheddar, here. It’s such a tasty cheese.

We went to a farmer's market and got a wonderful haul of local produce: salad, garlic, onions, bread and cider. The salad was incredibly fresh and I enjoyed it very much on the side of these fried potatoes.

Here are some other dishes I’ve cooked.

Vegan tacos with watermelon

Spaghetti bake with salad

Cauliflower cheese with vegan frikadeller and veggies

As usual I’m sharing this post with Sherry from Sherry’s Pickings blog, who is hosting the In My Kitchen blogging event. Head to her blog to see great kitchens all over the world.

Have a nice weekend!

Your VegHog

Spaghetti with heirloom tomatoes and homemade cheesy garlic bread

How is your Sunday going? I hope you’ve all had a relaxing weekend. I will be going for a walk later, do some grocery shopping for next week and cook a Sunday dinner, no other plans for today. It’s a bit cloudy today, but that’s fine for a walk, at least it’s not too hot.

Here is a dish of spaghetti with fried heirloom tomatoes and mozzarella and homemade Cheddar and garlic breads. I got the fresh pasta from a local restaurant, Il Mattarello, in the covered market. They make excellent organic fresh pasta and you can even buy it to go!

As the pasta was such a quality product, I kept the rest of the dish simple. I got some really nice heirloom tomatoes from the market too, and just fried them in olive oil with some garlic, salt and pepper and added mozzarella on top. On the side I served garlic bread made from homemade rolls with some added Cheddar. This was a really nice and pleasing combination, really a favourite dish of mine.

Have a nice Sunday everyone!

Your VegHog

Tomatillo Pineapple

My holiday went past quickly and I’ve already been back to work for a couple of weeks. We had very nice time visiting the countryside and small towns around Copenhagen. The landscapes were so lovely and the holiday was very relaxing. We also visited a bunch of galleries and museums, as there is a government scheme in place that the tickets are half price to all cultural places during the school summer holidays. We saw loads of great art and today we will visit another gallery.

I recently made this salad. It was a creative combination of Tomatillo Pineapple, blueberries, lambs lettuce, basil flowers and feta. It was actually very nice with an olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing, great summer food!

I’m also growing a huge Ananaskirsebær, Tomatillo Pineapple, plant in my kitchen. It has already given a couple of fruits, but they were more green and not ripe and orange yet, but there are many lanterns ready to be harvested. I’ve kept the plant indoors, because it’s quite windy on the balcony and it has such long thin branches. Also I’m afraid that the lanterns would blow away. It has been an extremely windy July. The plant seems to be happy by the window too.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Your VegHog

Decorated focaccia

I’ve had a lovely week travelling in Denmark visiting many beautiful places on the shore and several museums. But above all, I’ve been taking it easy trying not to think about work, and it has been great. The government has a summer scheme and one part of that is that museum tickets are half price. I will go to one more museum today, as it’s the perfect timing for it now. The weather hasn’t been the greatest, a bit cloudy all the time, but that’s actually a good walking weather. Today seems to be a bit sunnier.

I’ve been admiring this trend of beautiful decorated focaccia breads for a while now and now I got experimenting myself. My bread is of course not nearly as beautiful as some of the creations I’ve seen online, but it turned alright. Such a bread would be really nice to offer to some guests. I will be practising more to make better ones. The bread dough was alright, I just made my basic pizza dough with a little addition of sugar and made it a bit softer. It was rising well and made a fluffy focaccia. The toppings were heirloom tomatoes, basil, fresh onion stalks, shallots and green olives with addition of sea salt and olive oil.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Your VegHog

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