In my kitchen in February

Welcome to have a peek to my kitchen this month! It's hard to believe that the long month of January is over and we are moving fast towards spring! I’ve been working on my Cheap Eats event cooking a lot of frugal recipes and it has indeed been good saving a little bit of money. If you want to know what the event is all about, have a look here. I would love to see your economical vegan and vegetarian recipes.

There was an absolute sadness last weekend when the storm Malik destroyed our both greenhouses on the balcony. We had tried to secure them, but the storm was just too strong and blew them across the balcony against the railings causing irreparable damages to the aluminium structures. I guess we are still lucky that they didn’t come through the windows or flew on a person. Also that was the only damage we had. This only means, we need a new arrangement for this year’s urban gardening, but luckily there is still some time to plan.

Otherwise I will show you some foods and snacks from my kitchen. This one liter wine box truly is for the frugal ones, it costs 29 DKK (about 3,90 €) only and it’s of decent quality. I especially like the name “Tread gently” and the plantbased carton.

 

I got myself a pizza cutter, because the old ones were either lost or blunt or both. It really is much nicer to cut pizza with a proper sharp cutter. This one is Danish design by Normann. And that pizza in the background will first bake to a crispy crust and then I will cut into it!

 

This vegan bearnaise sauce is really tasty and a life-saver when you don’t feel like making a sauce. It’s brilliant with roast potatoes, but I’ve even had it with pasta and it was good.

 

Last weekend I made vegan sausage rolls and they were really good.

 

I brought this fermented broad bean bits with basil from Finland. Again, it’s a great brand name “Bean better”.

 

I also got these mini rye crackers with sour cream and onion flavour in Finland. They are such good and filling snacks.

 

Talking about snacks, these plantbased truffles by Cocohagen are also excellent.

 

Here are dinosaur corn crisps – ultimately cute!

 

And these are fruity gelatine free Finnish sweets.

 

So, this is pretty much how my month is going. As usual I’m sharing this post with Sherry from Sherry’s Pickings and the In My Kitchen event.

 

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Your VegHog

 

Käsespätzle mit Zwiebeln und Weisswein

 

This is a lovely German style dish, one of my favourite comfort foods, small dough dumplings with onion, cheese and wine. The ingredients are very basic. All you need is some time and patience for making the dumplings. You can have Spätzle as a side dish on its own too, but I find that these cheese and onion Spätzle are superior. Have a look at my recipe below.

Käsespätzle mit Zwiebeln und Weisswein

Ingredients

Spätzle dough

2 cups wheat flour

½ cup polenta

2 tbsp potato flour

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 cup water

Other ingredients

2 onions

3 garlic cloves

½ cup white wine

150 g grated Emmental cheese

1 tbsp butter

Salt to taste

Ground black pepper to taste

Method

Make the Spätzle dough first. Mix it until it’s quite bouncy. Add more water or flour, if needed.

Bring water to the boil and press the dough through a Spätzlehobel or potato ricer to the boiling water.

Boil until the dumplings float on the surface and remove the cooked ones with a slotted spoon.

Heat the butter in a frying pan and add the finely chopped onions and garlic. Cook until they are soft and translucent.

Then add the cooked Spätzle to the pan followed by the cheese and wine, season with salt and black pepper and cook until the flavours have blended nicely and the cheese has melted around the Spätzle.

I served this cheese Spätzle with Emmental crisps, sunblushed tomatoes, homemade croutons and salad.

 

I’m sharing this dish with my Cheap Eats challenge. Check it out, you’ll still have plenty of time to take part.

Your VegHog

 

Tofu roast

 

I have made a tofu roast now for a couple of past Christmases/NYEs and it has been quite the hit and a great centerpiece at those dinners, so I decided to share this recipe with you. It is not my own recipe, I have adapted it from a Finnish one in Kotiliesi magazine, but I will provide a translation here. It could actually also qualify for the cheap eats, as it's quite a big roast made just with a few ingredients. I still have some leftovers in the freezer from the last batch and they will be good when I'm less inspired to cook.

Ingredients

600 g smoked tofu

2 onions

2-3 garlic cloves

4 tbsp vegetable oil

2 tbsp vegetable stock powder

1 tsp smoked paprika

2 tbsp tomato purée

½ dl soy sauce

2 tbsp brown sugar

1 dl almond flour

5 tbsp potato flour

For the topping

4 tbsp mustard

½ dl almond flour or breadcrumbs

Method

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

Blend the tofu to a smooth paste and add the onion and garlic to it.

Add the vegetable stock powder, smoked paprika, two tablespoons of oil, tomato purée, soy sauce and sugar. Then add the almond flour and potato flour and mix. Add more potato flour, if the mix feels too soft.

Shape the dough to a ball and wrap it in foil. Let it rest for 30-60 minutes.

Pre-heat the oven to 200 C and cook the tofu roast for about 45–50 minutes.

Let it cool completely. It is best to leave it in the fridge overnight.

Brush the surface with mustard and sprinkle almond flour or breadcrumbs on top.

Enjoy the roast as part of any roast dinner or make sandwiches with it. It is very good either way.

 

Your VegHog

The VegHog’s Cheap Eats Cooking Challenge 2022

 

Isn’t money always a bit tight in the beginning of a new year? There are a lot of bills to pay and I at least usually spend a bit too much on Christmas and New Year, which means that I’ll have to be more economical in January. That is why I also want to eat a bit more basic foods and not overspend on fancy ingredients. On that note I’ve decided to have a vegan and vegetarian cheap eats cooking challenge for sharing economical recipes and I would like you to join me in this cheapskatedness.

I have held a couple of Cheap Eats weeks in the past, in 2016 and 2017. This time I just wanted to extend the timeframe slightly over one week so that any willing participants would have more time to contribute.

If you want to take part in this event, please follow these simple rules:

• Publish your economical vegan or vegetarian recipe on your blog or social media latest on 15^th February 2022.

• Share the public link to the post with the recipe with me in the comments field below this post.

• Use the hashtag #theveghogscheapeats when posting the recipe (voluntary).

• You are also welcome to use my Cheap Eats banner on top of this page in your posts.

I will write a round up with all contributions after mid February. Have fun cooking and saving some money!

Your VegHog

 

Dinosaur ravioli

 

If you have dinosaur loving kids or are a dinosaur loving adult, this recipe might just be the right one for you. I made vegetarian t-rex spinach ravioli with a sunblushed tomato, garlic, basil, pine nut and mozzarella filling and wanted to share the recipe with you. The dinosaurs were quite thin so the sealing was a bit challenging, but I didn’t split any of them when cooking. You can of course make any shape of ravioli that you fancy with this recipe. The recipe actually yields quite a lot of pasta dough so you might want to make other shapes also that are quicker to make.

And note that my pasta dough is eggless, hence vegan, but I used Mozzarella in the filling. If you want to keep it vegan, you can find some alternatives to that. Have fun pasta making!

Pasta dough

100 g fresh spinach

1 ½ cups 00 pasta flour

1 cup semolina

1 tsp salt

½ cup water (add more if needed)

1 tsp oil

Filling

2 garlic cloves

70 g sunblushed tomatoes

2 tbsp pine nuts

50 g grated mozzarella

A few fresh basil leaves

Pinch of salt and ground black pepper

2 tbsp olive oil

Method

Wilt the spinach in the ½ cup water for the dough and purée it smooth. Mix it and the other ingredients for the pasta dough and knead to a firm ball. Wrap the dough in a cling film or beeswax wrap and let rest in the fridge for at least one hour.

Fry the garlic in olive oil and toast the pine nuts in a pan. Purée them with the other filling ingredients into a smooth paste.

Roll the dough out and work it through a pasta machine into thin sheets. Cut out dinosaur shapes with a cookie cutter and fill them with the filling. Seal carefully by brushing the edges with water and pressing them together.

Boil the ravioli in hot water for a few minutes and serve. I added just a little bit of brown butter on the ravioli for serving.

 

Your VegHog

Foodie gifts and festive food

 

I wanted to share with you some of the foodie gifts that I received for Christmas and also some of the festive food that I ate with my family. We had the perfect Christmas weather in Finland, lots of powdery light snow and -20C. That certainly called for mulled wine!

We had some friends over before Christmas and I made these vegan sausage rolls for them. They are not veggies, but loved the rolls so much that next time I’ll have to make more of them. On the second picture you can see our sustainable and allergy-friendly Christmas tree. We also brought a fir in from the balcony and decorated it. Soon it will be returned back outside.

It is traditional to have rice pudding with cinnamon and sugar on Christmas Eve, which is the main celebration day in Finland. Here are also some parts of our Christmas dinner with the vegan centerpiece, the pigless tofu roast. Is anyone interested in the recipe? I think it’s quite good.

I got loads of chocolates, sweets and coffees for Christmas. Now I’m trying to get through them, so no veganuary for me…

 

These are a Danish Christmas classic, Æbleskiver = lit. apple slices, but they haven’t even seen an apple. They are basically puffy pancake balls that are traditionally served with strawberry jam and icing sugar. This is a plantbased edition of the classic.

 

Then a few drinks: a festive edition of my favourite Danish soft drink Faxe Kondi, a Medieval mulled wine like spiced wine and a sour beer featuring a Finnish comic character, the swearing hedgehog.

 

Have a nice weekend everyone!

Your VegHog

 

Hatsapuri

 

Happy New Year 2022 everyone! I hope that you had a nice celebration. We did our usual thing: dinner and drinks at home and then watching some fireworks drinking mulled wine from a thermos mug. It was quite a calm party.

Before we went outside our late New Year’s Eve’s dinner was Hatsapuri, a Georgian cheese bread that is oozing soft melting cheese in the middle. I mainly followed a Finnish recipe by Valio for it, but below is my version with a few amendments. I used a blend of three cheeses and I think that it worked quite well. I was thrilled to find blood oranges at the local market, so we had a fresh blood orange salad on the side.

 

 

The starters: carrots and hummus and chocolates.

And some of the fireworks at midnight.

Hatsapuri

Ingredients

1 dl water
½ tbsp dry yeast
3 dl wheat flour
½ tsp salt
2 tbsp oil
100 g mozzarella
25 g cheddar
25 g smoked burrata

Method

Mix the lukewarm water with yeast and 1/2 dl of the flour. Leave it for about 30 minutes until it bubbles.

Add all other ingredients apart from the cheese and knead. Let the dough rise for 3 hours and knock it back hourly.

Roll the dough out thinly into a circle and fill it with the cheese. Fold the dough over the cheese to cover it.

Bake at 250C for about 10-15 minutes. Serve hot when the cheese is still soft and enjoy!

Your VegHog