Vegan Aubergine Schnitzel

[Schnitzel, das (ˈʃnɪtsəl) ~ German: cutlet, from ”schnitzen” to carve, ”schnitzeln” to whittle]

One of my passions is perfecting what I call the Veggie Schnitzel. Those are variations of different vegetarian burgers that can be eaten as veggie burgers or combined with many side dishes such as potato mash. This will be part one of many more Schnitzel entries in the future as the options are endless. The good thing with burgers is that you can make a larger batch once you get going and can then freeze some. What can be better on a lazy day than making a quick burger from the freezer.

I recently tried this new type of burger and found it to be tasty. I haven't been much of a friend of aubergine aka the eggplant but this time I decided to be brave and use it as the main veg for my burgers.

This is how I made them this time: First I started by chopping onions, garlic and slicing the aubergines. I then fried the aubergines in a pan until soft and mashed them with a hand mixer (I use a really cheap £5 hand mixer which does the work perfectly, there's no need for any fancy devices). You can also grate them even when raw but as a paste they stick better together which makes shaping and frying the Schnitzels much easier later.

Mix aubergine mash in a mixing bowl with onions, garlic and seasoning. If your dough is too fluid, add some flour until it is firm and easy to shape burgers with. Depending on your taste you can add other vegetables, cheese or potatoes to the mix.

This time I tired out a new approach to the breading, I avoided eggs which made this variation vegan. After shaping the Schnitzel into burgers I mixed potato flour with water and rolled the burgers there. This made a lovely smooth cover for the burgers and they stuck together without eggs! Then I rolled them in bread crumbs and they were ready to be fried.

Variation tip: Shape dough as balls or small nuggets.

Now, I don't own a deep frier, so I just heat oil in a pan and when hot add the burgers to it. Turn them around when they are fried brown from the one side. If you make a lot of dough, you might be frying for a while but it really is worth it.

A serving suggestion: With olive baguette, cheese and peppers.

As promised there will be more Schnitzel related content later, so this is all for this time.

Stay Schnitzel hungry!

Barley porridge piping hot from the oven

Good morning to you!

The VegHog decided to start its day healthily and make a porridge. You might guess that my favourite porridges are milky and salty and include mainly oatmeal porridge and barley porridge.

Oatmeal porridge is extremely quick to make: Just boil up some oat flakes with milk in a pot, add salt, stir thoroughly as this porridge burns easily at the bottom. After couple of minutes it's ready and such a filling breakfast. Of course you can eat it sweet or with fruits as well but please try the salty one as it's amazing. Accompanied with orange juice it will keep you going for hours!

This morning I feel like having barley porridge like the Hog mother used to make it. I always make this from whole pearl barley grains, and as they are bigger than flakes it takes much longer to boil them soft. There are different ways to pre-prepare the barley: Soak overnight or pre-boil in water in a pot. Boiling in water makes the process quicker but barley might lose on taste. This time I soaked the barley grains overnight and put them straight into the oven after that.

Barley makes a great addition to many vegetarian dishes and it's very nutritious. I haven't used it much elsewhere than in this porridge but would imagine that it's great with soups and stews. Do you have any great barley recipes to share? 

Preparing this porridge is so simple, it may take quite a long time to get ready but you don't have to do much yourself, just wait! Take an oven dish, put barley in there, add salt and fill up with milk but not too full that it doesn't boil over in the oven. The porridge might need couple of hours in the oven at about 150 C but you can check occasionally how soft the barley is. Mine took about an hour today but the soaking speeded the process up.

The baking will build up a brown surface out of milk which you can remove or just eat it. The porridge is very hot when it comes out of the oven and it's nice to pour cold milk on it before eating.

I have the feeling that this way making a barley porridge is Finnish. Have you ever eaten or made oven porridge before? Fancy trying this variation?

This porridge is just right! Have a great day!

Halloumi Lasagne with grilled peppers and The VegHog's special tomato sauce

I'm going to kick off this blog with my all-time favourite which is easy to cook: vegetarian lasagne. I want to make something more exciting than those unimaginative or dry veggie lasagnes that often get served in pubs and restaurants and I tend to slightly alter my recipe each time I make it. At the moment halloumi is my favourite addition to many dishes, so I've decided to use it also here.

Here are the main ingredients I used. Light halloumi is very good for this as there will be a lot of cheese in there. 

Lasagne verdi sheets bring some variety.

My tomato sauce that I use as my lasagne sauce, as an addition to bakes or just as a pasta sauce is really very simple to make. Nevertheless it shall be referred to as The VegHog's special tomato sauce now and in the future. Make it spicy with some chili if you fancy.

I start by finely chopping some onions and garlic and then preparing the tomatoes. The amounts depend on how much sauce you want to make, for a pasta sauce I would take about 4 medium sized tomatoes, one onion and couple of gloves of garlic. The VegHog understands if you want to use canned tomatoes but please consider using fresh ones as they make your lasagne taste very fresh and light.

How to prepare the tomatoes before peeling and the sauce at a later stage.

This is my method for preparing tomatoes for the sauce: Make a X-cut on the top of each tomato and then drop them into boiling water. Very quickly the skin starts peeling off and that's when you can remove the tomatoes from the water. The cut makes peeling the skin off much easier. Scare the tomatoes in some cold water and then just remove the skin.

Glaze the onions and garlic in some olive oil, then add the tomatoes that you can crush into a saucy texture while heating the sauce further. Add salt, pepper and basil. I prefer fresh herbs as they make the taste virtually explode in your mouth. At the very end you might want to use a hand blender to make the sauce smooth.

You can let the sauce simmer and start preparing the veg. For a vegetable lasagne you can use any vegetable you can think of, also tofu and different soya products work very well with it. This time I have decided to stick with grilled peppers. First I cut the peppers into quarters and after glazing them with some olive oil I chuck them under the grill. They can be left there until a little soft and brown in places. Chop them into smaller pieces when they come out. Grilling gives peppers a really nice and intense taste. While peppers are in the oven you can slice the halloumi into thin slices and fry in olive oil until crispy and brown.

Once you have cut and prepared everything you want to put into your lasagne, pre-heat the oven to about 180C and you can throw all your ingredients into an oven dish. Stack the lasagne as usual, you know the principle! I start with putting some sauce into the bottom, then lasagne sheets, peppers, halloumi and sauce on the top and so on. This time I put some grated Double Gloucester cheese on the top of the whole lasagne but I like to vary the cheeses I use for baking. You can take whichever cheese is your favourite at the moment.

Place the lasagne in the oven and bake until the pasta is tender and cheese topping is golden brown. Don't be afraid to change the temperature if you need to.

And here we have the final product from the oven. Feel free serving it for example with some salad and nice wine.

So there we have the humble start to my blog. I hope you enjoyed reading it.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog

Veg hogger's introduction

Hello and welcome to The VegHog's vegetarian realm

This blog is all about having fun with vegetarian cooking and trying out new things. I'm The VegHog and will be sharing here my vegetarian creations, cooking ideas and drink/ready meal/restaurant recommendations with you. Basically anything relating to vegetarian diet could be discussed here. I'm just a self-learned hobby cook who likes making tasty vegetarian food. My cooking is creative, inexpensive and unpretentious. I try to use exciting, fresh and ideally local produce whenever possible.

All food cooked here will be meat-free, however dairy products and eggs will be used. Some of the items might also be vegan. In that case I will be adding a note, but normally cheese is used in almost all my dishes. I try to add dishes where soya products and ingredients high on protein are used but this is by no means a health blog and might sometimes appear one-sided. The VegHog is more of a savoury beast but it might occasionally prepare something sweet.

I'm not planning to share my exact recipes with you since the whole idea in my cooking is to experiment around to find out what works and what doesn't but in general recipes are a great inspiration and guide for techniques that you don't know yet. Normally I don't know an exact recipe to my dishes either. But I will tell you roughly how I have cooked a certain dish and hope that you'll try to make it your own way. The idea is to learn about techniques and then making a creative dish of your own. I would love to hear about your variations to my dishes and other vegetarian cooking experiences. You might want to use your favourite veg instead of my choices which is fair enough as I admittedly am fond of some ingredients too much and tend to use them a lot.

The VegHog is currently based in the UK but its backround is Finnish and therefore there are many Finnish influences in its cooking. It mainly concentrates on European cooking and experiments with different ideas.

I would appreciate your input very much and would be thrilled if I can inspire anyone to vegetarian cooking. Remember, it's really easy and fun!

Herra Hedgehog on this picture has been made from the brilliant Forest Friends paper templates by Mibo. Have a look on their website and get crafty.