Market log: roasted pumpkin bowl and green soup

(Nederlandstalige versie)

Here’s what I bought at the market last month (I’m such a slow blogger): red onions for €1, round courgettes for €1, leeks for €1, four pomegranates for €1, two bunches of fresh coriander and one bunch of fresh parsley for €1, and a butternut squash for €1.50 (as well as bags of spinach and a garlic, €1 each, that I forgot when I took the picture).

Unfortunately two of the pomegranates were brown on the inside (maybe I should’ve peeled them all straight away) and we ate most of the other two as a snack, but I managed to save a few seeds to sprinkle into this bowl:

It’s roasted chickpeas, pumpkin and pumpkin seeds over short-grain brown rice with a coriander, parsley and tahini sauce. I crammed everything into my little oven at the same time so it was tricky to get the chickpeas and seeds crispy while the pumpkin had to soften, but the flavours were great together. Next time I think I’ll try stacking an oven dish and a baking sheet on top of each other and see how that goes.

On the left: I posted about this curry soup here. I had the leftovers (which get very thick and creamy) while sitting in the couch under a blanked because it’s been COLD. The only thing I got from the market in this soup was the fresh coriander (and chilli peppers I bought and dried months ago), but I think it counts because this post needed an extra picture.

On the right: I had no idea what to make for dinner until I saw this green soup recipe on the Dutch blog Ikbenirisniet. I had no cucumber, peas, or celery so I just used the green vegetables I did have (leeks, courgettes, spinach, parsley and coriander ) and it was still super good. This is a great way to get a variety of greens into your day with minimal effort. (My blender doesn’t like green smoothies and it’s way too cold for them anyway.)

Other things I made but didn’t photograph included a pumpkin and spinach curry, a polenta pie with red onions, and just a whole lot of mixed vegetable soups. (Did I mention it’s cold? OK I’ll shut up now.)

I’ve posted my most recent market haul here. It included a ridiculous amount of dill so if you happen to have any dill-heavy recipes you recommend, please send them my way. :)

Pumpkin risotto and a savoury galette

(Nederlandstalige versie)

This was another good market day! I took a while to post these photos, so I hope I remember the prices correctly: I bought two containers of mushrooms for €1.50, a bag of spinach for €1, onions for €1, two heads of broccoli for €1, tomatoes for €1, orange peppers for €1, apples for €1, four baskets of physalis for €1, and two pineapples for €1.

I went back again the next week and bought nine apples for €1, mini bok choy for €1, four fennel bulbs for €1, two more pineapples for €1, and the cutest little pumpkin for €0.50.

Some of the things we made with this were mushroom pizzas, other pizzas (we really like pizza), broccoli soup, mixed vegetable soups, a bok choy and orange pepper stir-fry with tofu and pineapple, pumpkin risotto, physalis muffins, tomato sauce, oatmeal porridge with apples, apple crumble, fennel salad, and an apple and onion galette.

I was especially pleased with the pumpkin, which the kind market people let me have for 50 cents because that was all the cash I had left. Don’t you love the colour? I don’t know whether it’s because it was so small or because I’m used to buying butternuts, but I just felt like it was exceptionally orange.

After admiring its colour, I roasted the pumpkin in the oven, blended part of it into a purée and added everything to a risotto along with some mushrooms. I used dried Chinese mushrooms because of their texture and because the soaking water could also go into the risotto along with the vegetable stock. It was a tiny pumpkin but enough for two (we had pan-fried seitan slices on the side).

The photo on the right is a savoury galette filled with apples, onions, and seitan pieces. The apples I bought during my second visit to the market weren’t very good and I really didn’t want to eat them raw. Instead, I cooked them into a thick paste with caramelised onions, herbs, and fennel seeds and baked it inside a whole wheat pie crust. I also added smoky spicy seitan bits so that the sweet flavours weren’t overpowering. Like the risotto, this is real autumn food to me, and I’d definitely make a pie like this again if I ended up with more mealy apples.

It looks like I only got pictures of two things this time! Unfortunately these days most daylight has already disappeared by the time we have dinner, so my photos are mainly of leftovers (hence the tiny plate of risotto). I wonder how other bloggers do this — do you photograph your leftovers during the day as well or do you have your own little photo studio with artificial light? I usually just end up taking much fewer food photos during winter, but I’m curious to know how other people do this.

Thanks for reading, and have a good weekend! <3

Mushroom and pumpkin pot pie (Kiki’s Delivery Service)

(Nederlandstalige versie)

I was inspired to make this dish after reading Anna the Red’s blog, which features a series of posts in which she recreates dishes from films by Studio Ghibli. Most of it isn’t vegetarian but I still really enjoy seeing what she’s come up with. Kiki’s Delivery Service is one of my favourite Ghibli films (a witch, a little black cat, a boy who turns his bike into a flying machine — so much adorableness) and I had a pumpkin lying around so I decided to make a version of this pumpkin pot pie.

The meals Kiki eats in this film aren’t particularly exciting. She’s just started her own business and she stretches her budget by living on pancakes (milk for Jiji the cat) while she’s building up a customer base. Running her delivery service out of a bakery, though, she does find herself surrounded by food. This particular dish, which is described in the film as a “pumpkin and herring pot pie” is one of the first things that Kiki carries across town after starting her new job.

If you search blogs and Youtube you’ll find quite a lot of people who have already replicated this pie. Many of them follow a similar recipe to Anna the Red’s: a layer of pumpkin puree, a layer of fish, and a layer of white sauce topped with pie dough. We never actually see the inside of the pie in the film, though, and since I was going to make changes to veganise the pie anyway I ended up just making a completely different dish. I used mushrooms instead of fish, added beans for extra protein, and cooked the pumpkin into a stew with onions, leeks, and herbs. The main similarities with the pie from the film are the decorations on top and the fact that it contains pumpkin.

My pie dough is based on the one from Vegan Brunch. I didn’t have the right ingredients and completely messed it up at first, but in the end I could roll it out reasonably well and even cut out something resembling a fish. :) The end-result was quite good, but I didn’t write down an exact recipe. It went something like this:

Sauté sliced mushrooms (250 g) and minced garlic in a frying pan until browned. Transfer them to a bowl and use the frying pan to sauté an onion (halved and sliced), a leek (also halved and sliced), and more garlic. Add cubes of pumpkin (I used a 700 g butternut squash) and dried herbs (mine were thyme, sage, and rosemary). Stir to combine, add half a litre of vegetable stock, cover the pan to bring it to the boil, and let simmer for about 10 minutes or until the pumpkin has softened. Then add chickpeas or white beans (about 250 g) and add the mushrooms back to the pan, too. In a small bowl, mix together a few tablespoons of flour or cornflour with a little water to form a slurry. Add this mixture to the stew, add some black pepper and minced fresh parsley, stir well and continue to simmer until the stew has thickened a bit. Transfer the contents of the pan to an oven dish and cover with a sheet of pie dough. Decorate with additional pieces of dough and olives if you like. Bake — I’ve forgotten to write down how long and at what temp, but I’d say about 30 minutes at 180 °C (375 °F)? — until the crust is nicely browned.

Pumpkin, lentil, and date soup from Vegalicious

We’ve been having more and more cold autumn days, so when I came home with a small round pumpkin a few days ago we immediately decided to turn it into a pot of thick, comforting soup. I wanted to make something slightly different from the soups I usually make, so I chose this recipe for pumpkin soup with red lentils and dates from Vegalicious. There were at least ten other amazing-looking pumpkin soup recipes on there, as well (that website is such a great resource!) but I happened to have the ingredients on hand for this one. I added fewer dates than the recipe called for because I was worried the sweetness might be too much (I have a weird aversion to sweetness in some savoury foods) but it was not overpowering at all so I would have no problem making the recipe as written next time. I also like that while it isn’t overly spicy, the small amount of pepper really adds to the warming quality of the dish. Mmm, pumpkin soup is the best.

The post on Vegalicious also refers to a recipe for bread bowls, which I though was a really cool idea, so I decided to make those while the soup was simmering. These turned out even better than I’d expected – the dough was pretty easy to shape (I used four small ramekins and made bread sticks with the leftover pieces) and the bowls were very sturdy so we didn’t have to worry about soup seeping out as we kept going back for second and third helpings. It’s probably a good thing I made them relatively small, though – when we ate the bowls at the end of the meal they were surprisingly filling. I added some wholemeal flour and dried herbs to the dough so they tasted great and were pretty healthy, too. And I just love the idea of edible bowls!

VWAV Pumpkin Muffins

I still had some pumpkin puree in the freezer that I needed to use, so I turned to a recipe that had been on my to-bake list for quite a while: The Best Pumpkin Muffins from Vegan with a Vengeance. I ended up making a few changes to the recipe (changed the quantities to fit the amount of pumpkin puree I had, added some whole wheat flour, used maple syrup instead of molasses), but they’re still amazing! I thought the batter seemed very thick so I figured I’d bake for a few minutes less than I normally would, but next time I’ll just stick to the regular baking time. They’re great! Go make them too!

Pumpkin Tofu Scramble

I’m spending this weekend at a hotel, so I’d planned on writing this post earlier today. I ran out of time, though, so here I am blogging from my hotel room! I’m glad to have an internet connection, but I have to share it with my boyfriend so I’ll try and keep this short :)

I came home last night feeling very hungry, but unfortunately I didn’t have a whole lot of food around. After a quick search through the fridge I decided to use my leftover tofu and pumpkin purée to make the Pumpkin Tofu Scramble from 500 Vegan Recipes. Combined with a few other leftovers, it made for a delicious quick meal! I made sure to reserve some so I could have it again for breakfast this morning (and so I could take a picture in actual daylight!)

Here’s the scramble, combined with sautéed potatoes, bell peppers, and some avocado slices:

Mmm! I wasn’t sure what to expect, since the flavours seemed so different from scramble recipes I usually make, but I absolutely love this. I don’t have pumpkin purée around very often, but otherwise this is a perfectly simple, quick, and above all delicious brunch dish!

As I said, I’m at a hotel right now and since that means I don’t have access to a kitchen, I probably won’t make any VeganMoFo posts this weekend. But maybe I can post some pictures of the hotel food, if I remember to bring my camera for our next meal :) Until then, happy MoFo’ing everyone!

VeganMoFo 2010!!!

As many of you probably know, today is the first day of VeganMoFo! To celebrate, I made these wonderful Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls from Don’t Eat Off the Sidewalk.

They don’t taste as pumpkin-y as I’d expected, but they’re very delicious anyway. In fact, I’m pretty sure I could live off these… I think I’ll try to freeze a couple for later before we eat them all!

Anyway, about this month: I did MoFo last year as well and managed to post almost every day, but I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to do that this year as well. I’ll be away from home for a couple of days throughout the month, possibly without internet, but I’ll try to post as much as I can on the other days! I did make a little list of goals that will hopefully give me ideas to post about:

• Use my cookbooks more often. I have a collection of excellent vegan cookbooks full of recipes I’m sure I’d love, but I don’t cook from them as often as I’d like to. I just need to do the planning and make sure I have the ingredients I need. Maybe I can do a thing where I only cook things from a single cookbook on a specific day? I did that last year with the Student’s Go Vegan Cookbook and that was fun! Oh, and if I can’t find anything to make from my cookbook, there are also loads of recipes from foodblogs I’ve bookmarked but never tried out…
• Make more interesting to-go lunches! As I mentioned in my last post, I have to pack a meal several times a week, and when I’m in a hurry those meals tend to get boring and not very healthy. I have been looking at various bento blogs lately, though, and they’ve made me realise that my lunch box could be so much more interesting! I think this could be great if I just take a little more time to prepare those meals.
• Make brunch. Sure, we eat pancakes or waffles or tofu scramble for breakfast every now and then, but it’s been a while since I made an elaborate brunch with multiple dishes. During MoFo last year I cooked for my family every Sunday morning, and that gave me the opportunity to try out a bunch of awesome recipes from Vegan Brunch, which is one of my favourite cookbooks. I’d like to do something like that again!
• Make more shopping trips just for the food and post about them. I know there are vegetarian shops not that far away from me that I’d love to visit someday, but I never go out of my way to actually shop there. Or maybe I could visit a Chinese supermarket, for instance, and post about what I find there. We’ll see, but I’d like to do something like this!

That’s I have right now, but maybe I’ll add more ideas when I think of them. In any case, I hope I’ll be able to do at least 20 posts! I should be fine, but even if I fail miserably, I am definitely looking forward to reading what everyone else comes up with. Whooooo, MoFo!

Oh, and happy World Vegan Day!

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