Clever usage of
left-overs is key in an economical kitchen. Today's dish is made from
the left-over leek and potato filling of yesterday's Twice-baked potatoes with leek and cheese. I just added kalettes to the
potato and leek mix, made cakes from them and fried in butter. I
served the cakes with lambs lettuce and they were absolutely tasty.
I wrote a recipe
here, if you want to make these from scratch, in case you don't have
the same left-overs like I did from the twice-baked potatoes.
Leek and kalette cakes
Ingredients
1 leek
1 onion
1 garlic clove
100 ml dry apple
cider
Salt to taste
Ground black
pepper to taste
2-3 cups potato
mash
50 g grated
Cheddar
100 g kalettes
50 g butter
Method
Cook the sliced
leek, and chopped onion and garlic in the cider until soft. Season
the mix with salt and pepper.
Mix them with the
potato mash and cheese.
Cut the thick
stems off the kalettes and also mix the leaves in.
Shape small cakes
from the mix and fry them on both sides in butter until golden brown.
Enjoy!
This
will be my this month's Eat Your Greenspost.
I'm hosting the challenge myself this month, taking turns with
Shaheen from Allotment 2 Kitchen
blog.
It's
time to start The VegHog's Cheap Eats Week 2017!
I'm going to be all stingy this week and cook with cheaper
ingredients. However it doesn't mean that the food needs to be bland
or boring, I'm just trying to be more clever with my shopping and
cooking.
My first recipe of
the week is actually a big favourite of mine, twice-baked potatoes
with leek and cheese. This dish is so comforting and not many
ingredients are needed. Potatoes and leeks are such basics that they
aren't expensive. With this recipe you can make eight generously
sized filled potato skins that both children and adults like.
I have posted this
recipe before, but I always keep coming back to it, as these twice
baked potatoes are so great especially in the winter. I can't think
of a cosier way to spend a winter's evening than curling up in a warm
flat and eating these potatoes.
Twice-baked potatoes with leek and
cheese
Ingredients
4 large baking
potatoes
1 tbsp vegetable
oil
2 tsp sea salt
4 leeks
2 onions
4 garlic cloves
20 g butter
1 cup dry apple
cider
1 tsp salt
½ tsp ground
black pepper
200 g grated
Cheddar
Method
Wash the potatoes
and stab each of them several times with a fork so that some holes
appear. Roll the potatoes in a bowl containing the vegetable oil and
sea salt, place on a baking sheet and bake for about 1,5 hours until
fully baked.
In the meanwhile
prepare the leek mix. Slice the leeks and chop the onions and garlic
finely. First cook the onion in the butter until soft, then add the
leeks and garlic and cook for a while. Add the cider and let simmer
under the lid. Season with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat once
the leeks are fully soft and the cider has reduced. Mix in about 150
g of the cheese.
When the potatoes
are baked, let them cool down slightly so that they are easier to
handle. Cut them in halves and scoop out most of the insides leaving
the potato skins with a little bit of potato attached.
Fill the potato
skins with the leek mix and sprinkle the rest of the cheese on the
top. Return to the oven and bake for further 30 minutes.
Good to see Lizzy
back hosting In My Kitchen
after a festive season break! So I'm also going to share a few things
from my kitchen in February.
First
of all here's a little example of my typical weekly
shopping containing vegetables,
fruit, snacks, juice, veggie sausages, cheese and other things. I'm
really glad to see that the blush and blood orange season has started
and try to hoard as many of them as I can.
Recently
I purchased these cute Bento moulds to
make wonderful animal onigiri etc. I already posted one Bento boxpost in January and can't
wait to make more.
Cactus water
is incredibly refreshing, only a bit pricey, but sometimes I have to
pamper myself with it. Drinking some early on a Monday morning can
work wonders.
I
wonder if I should be writing down recipes in my new Periodic
Table of the Elements notebook?
I
have mentioned pickling vegetables here
and there on the blog and now I pickled some carrot strings. These
are really nice additions to large roast meals, salads, lunchboxes
etc.
Porridge oats are
definitely an important staple in my dry cupboard. I often make a
savoury Nordic style oatmeal porridge and also use the oats in my
homemade spelt rolls.
These
fruit crisps are
great in breakfast bowls, or just as snacks in between. I especially
like the pineapple ones.
Tofu is
a very important ingredient in my vegetarian kitchen and I quite like
Clearspot's Cpt Beancurd character.
BrewDog's Chili Hammer is
an excellent beer with some kick of chilli. Chilli is very
interesting in beers, it's quite smooth and more than okay even for
me who can't take too much heat.
After a long while
I made a little cooking video. I only filmed it on my phone and just
a couple of times asked my partner to assist with the filming.
Otherwise I held the phone in one hand and did whatever cooking steps
with the other. It means the quality isn't the greatest by any means, but
it's just a bit of fun. I hope you enjoy watching, and you may not have to
read the method below, if you follow the video. Sometimes it's also
much easier to show the steps rather than writing them down in a nice
and concise way.
The dish itself is
a lasagne with roasted vegetables and halloumi, where traditional
lasagne sheets have been replaced by polenta sheets. I had planned
this dish in my head for a long time, and finally I managed to
execute it. It was a nice task for a Sunday afternoon with the
different steps and very rewarding in the end. It was a really tasty
dish, and I would make it again, if only I have the necessary time.
Any vegetables really that you fancy can be used here, halloumi and
extra mozzarella are optional and you can season your polenta in
different ways.
Have a look at the
video and the detailed recipe can be found below. The video is also onYoutube.
Polenta lasagne with roasted
vegetables and halloumi
Ingredients for about 4 medium
ramekins
Polenta lasagne sheets
650 ml vegetable
stock
1 tsp sea salt
125 g polenta
50 g vegetarian
pasta cheese (veggie parmesan)
Fresh oregano
Fresh basil
Dried marjoram
Filling
3 large romano
peppers
400 g vine cherry
tomatoes
2 shallots
4 garlic cloves
Olive oil for
roasting
Fresh oregano
Fresh basil
Salt to taste
Ground black
pepper to taste
250 g halloumi
Vegetable oil for
frying
100 g grated
mozzarella
Method
Make the polenta
lasagne sheets first, as they need some resting time in the fridge.
Cook the polenta and add the cheese and seasoning. Roll out into
fairly thin sheets once cooled down, which is easy to do between two
baking parchments. Let rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
Chop the peppers
into generous chunks and start roasting them in the oven. Add the
cherry tomatoes, sliced garlic and shallot rings later and roast them
also. Season the vegetables.
Slice the halloumi
and fry it in vegetable oil on a hot pan until golden brown.
Cut the polenta
sheets into suitable sized pieces for your oven dish. I even made a
couple of stencils from baking paper for mine, which made it a lot
easier.
Layer the polenta
sheets, roasted vegetables and fried halloumi into an oven dish or
smaller ramekins, cover with grated mozzarella and bake at 200 for
about 30 minutes.
It's my first turn
this year hosting Eat Your Greens, and I'm as excited as ever
to receive your beautiful seasonal green recipes. Should you need any
inspiration, do check Shaheen's January round up here. There
were just amazing recipes shared with us in January, such variety of
creativity. I was really impressed.
In order to take
part in February, just post a vegan or vegetarian recipe containing
green vegetables on your blog and copy the link to the comment field
below. Please do so before midnight on 27th
February, as this is a short month. Your recipe will then be
featured in the round up at the end of the month. More instructions
on how to take part can be found here.
I want to have
another Cheap Eats Week again this year, as I quite enjoyed it last
year. Another reason is that I'm currently trying to save money, and
what could be better than to enjoy a balanced and versatile
vegetarian diet without spending a lot of money.
The VegHog's
Cheap Eats Week 2017 will take place 6.-12.02. So in the
second week of February I will be posting all kinds of economical
vegetarian dishes myself, and I also would very much like you to
participate and share your economical cooking ideas.
Simply post an
economical vegetarian or vegan recipe, or a general post about low
cost vegetarian eating, from now on until the midnight 11th
February on your blog, share the recipe with me and it will be
featured in a round up on the last day. You can use The VegHog's
Cheap Eats Week picture in your post and link back to this post.
Please paste the
link to your entry to the comment box below. If you are
also tweeting or instagramming your entry, please also add @TheVegHog and
#veghogscheapeats.
I look forward to
seeing great moneysaving tips from you!
If you want to see
what I got up to in last year's Cheap Eats, you'll find the links to
the recipes below:
This was our last
Sunday's dinner and I think I might fancy something similar tomorrow,
as I still almost taste it in my mouth by looking at these pictures.
I made braised cauliflower with white wine and cheese, proper crispy
roast potatoes and beurre blanc with pink and green peppercorns. It
was all heavenly good and comforting. The original plan was to braise
a fennel, but as the shop didn't have any, I opted for cauliflower.
This was such a good combination, it just needs a little bit effort
and time with the different cooking times and phases.
Here's how I made this dish.
Braised cauliflower
1 small
cauliflower
1 shallot
5 cloves of garlic
2 tsp vegetable
stock powder
1 tsp sea salt
½ tsp ground
black pepper
25 g butter
200 ml white wine
50 g vegetarian
pasta cheese
Cut the
cauliflower into thin slices. Chop the shallot into rings and the
garlic into slices.
Place them all
into an oven dish with the seasoning and wine. Cover with foil and
slow-cook in the oven at about 150 C for about 1,5 hours.
Mix the grated
vegetarian pasta cheese into the liquid in the dish and sprinkle some
on the top. Return to the oven for further 10 minutes.
Roast potatoes
400 g potatoes
½ cup olive oil
Sprinkle of salt
Peel the potatoes
and cut them into pieces. Cook them for about 15 minutes in water
until soft. Drain the water and dry cook the potatoes for a while to
remove excess liquid.
Heat the olive oil
in the oven on a baking tray and put the potatoes on there. Roast at
200 C for about 40 minutes. Turn the potatoes around and roast for
further 30 minutes.
Beurre blanc
1 small shallot
150 ml white wine
2 tbsp white wine
vinegar
125 g butter
Pink peppercorns
Green peppercorns
Chop the shallot
finely and heat them with the wine and vinegar in a pot. Reduce until
about the half or 2/3 of the liquid have cooked off.
Remove the shallot
with a sieve leaving just a clear liquid. Add the cold butter into the
liquid, a small piece at a time and keep whisking. Then add the
peppercorns.
