Believe it or not, Vegan Vegan! will soon be a real book!

After several months I'm back, sorry for leaving you all for so long. I must say that I have a valid reason this time though, because crazy things are happening. In March we found a publisher here in Sweden that wanted to take on our book, and now in a few weeks we'll have it in our hands: a real hard-cover and updated version of our beloved book Vegan Vegan! I can't describe how unreal it feels, that people we have never met will be able to buy our books in a bookstore and with our help have their own vegan month. It sure is a dream come true, and that is the reason for our absence. 

Now at first the book will only be sold in Sweden, although we would love to take it beyond the borders of our small but wonderful country. But for all of you Swedish-speakers out there, soon you'll be able to get your own copy! 

Here is a sneak peak of the cover! Keep your eyes peeled for the real deal!

Umbricelli with simple tomato sauce

Bad blogging week this week, but I’m blaming life. It has this annoying tendency of getting in the way of things. Anyhow, to compensate, the recipe I have for you is a real treat! Umbricelli with simple tomato sauce! Not bad, huh? You might be asking yourself what umbricelli is, so let me tell you. It is the easiest way to make homemade pasta that I’ve ever tried! It’s so easy I even had time to make it on a work night, after getting home late. The reason it’s so simple is both because the dough is so easy to make and only has to rest for ten minutes but also because you don’t have to roll it into thin sheets. You simply take a walnut-sized piece of dough and roll it into a thick spaghetti shape. Easy!

I learned how to make this revolutionary pasta both from the food show “I’ll have what Phil’s having”, which is kind of silly, but also from the most wonderful website I’ve found! Pastagrannies.com! Isn’t it great? They have videos of Italian grandmamas making all kinds of pasta. To good to be true!

Enough for two lucky souls

The pasta dough

70 g whole-wheat flour

80 g all-purpose flour

80 g water

½ tsp. salt

The simple tomato sauce

½ onion

1 clove of garlic

1-2 tbsp. olive oil

1 spring of rosemary

400 g whole canned tomatoes

2 tsp. sugar

1 tsp. salt

1 tbsp. fresh parsley

Black pepper

Start by making the dough for the umbricelli. Simply mix all the ingredients in a bowl, then roll up your sleeves and knead the dough for 5 minutes until smooth. This is a bit of work, but it’s worth it. Once the dough is nice and smooth, leave it to rest for 10 minutes, covered.

Meanwhile, start the tomato sauce. Finely chop the onion and mince the garlic. Heat a pan to medium heat and add a lug of olive oil. Add the onion, garlic and the leaves from the rosemary. Sauté until soft, for about 5 minutes, and then add the remaining ingredients. Cover with a lid and let simmer until the pasta is done.

The pasta dough should be done resting by now. Start heating a big pot of salted water on the stove. Pinch of a walnut-sized piece of dough, keeping the rest covered. Roll it out to a thick spaghetti-like noodle, moving your hands from the middle of the strand and out when rolling. Make the surface you’re rolling on is free from flour to get the necessary friction. Repeat until you’ve used all the dough.

Cook the noodles in the water for about 2-3 minutes. You want them tender but not soggy when they’re done.

Serve either mixed with the sauce or with the sauce on top. Enjoy!

Birchermuesli with raisin & date compote

As an ode to the greatness of breakfast and to mixing things up here comes the weeks second breakfast recipe. Bircher muesli is one of those great breakfasts that can be made the night before, making it easy to incorporate into your already crammed morning schedule. Here I’ve made it a bit extra luxurious by serving it with an equally easy raisin and date compote. You can make the compote the night before as well, or simply leave all the ingredients in a small saucepan over night and cook it in the morning. Otherwise, you can of course skip it entirely and just serve the muesli with apple and nuts, but I promise you the compote is worth the effort of making it.

One lucky breakfast eater

Bircher muesli

1 dl rolled oats

1 ½ dl vegan milk

1 tsp. flax seeds

½ apple, grated

½ tsp. cinnamon

A pinch of salt

2-3 tbsp. vegan yoghurt (or more milk)

For serving

The second half of the apple

Your favorite nuts and seeds

Raisin and date compote

Mix all the ingredients for the muesli, except for the yoghurt. Leave in the fridge over night.

In the morning, stir in the yoghurt and serve with compote, the second half of the apple chopped in pieces and some nuts or seeds.

Raisin & date compote

2 tbsp. raisins

1 large date, pitted and chopped

1 ¼ dl water

1 tsp. minced fresh ginger

A good pinch of ground cloves

Place all the ingredients in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and let simmer until the compote is syrupy.

Gloriously Green Smoothie Bowl

I've realized there are few things I am more afraid of than time passing. I afraid of waking up one day only to know that life has passed me by. This may sound depressing, and it kind of is. But I've also found an easy way to amend that feeling. And that is to make sure that each day is a bit special, memorable in its own way. By doing something different every day you don't get stuck in habits that make you go through life with every day being just like the one before. Of course I'm now going to give you a food-related way to do this (because thoughts of food take up probably 80% of my mind): have something fun for breakfast! Mixing up your breakfast is one way to break habits and it also make starting your day so much more fun! Therefore I'm now officially naming this week breakfast week, and I'll try to share as many good breakfast recipes as possible.

The first recipe I have in store for you is a great green smoothie bowl. I've not really understood smoothie bowls until now, but this mix is a bit to thick to drink and is therefore perfect to enjoy in a bowl with some good toppings. It's super easy to make and contains oats to fill you up and loads of gloriously green stuffs to make it beautiful and stock you up on nutrients! Give it a go! Long live fun breakfasts!

For 1 lucky breakfast-eater

½ dl rolled oats
1 date
2 dl water
½ tbsp. chia seeds
½ apple, and the other half for serving
1 kiwi
¼ avocado (you can increase to ½ if you want to!)
1 tbsp. limejuice
4 mint leaves

For serving:
The second apple half
Goji berries
Coconut

Soak the oats, date and chia seeds in the water overnight. If you're smart, do it in the container of your smoothie mixer!

In the morning, add core the apple and cut it into smaller pieces. Peel the kiwi. Add all the remaining ingredients to your smoothie mixer and blitz until nice and smooth.

Pour the smoothie into a bowl and serve with the topping suggested or others that you prefer.

(You can also make a regular smoothie by adding more water!)

Just as promised: Jalapeño Cornbread

Didn't I say I was going to share a recipe for the cornbread I had with my chili the other night? Well, I at least try to keep my promises, so here it is. I have always loved cornbread. I remember my mom making it when I was a kid. Those chili dinners were pure you, and we ate it with butter and honey. Getting older I remember serving cornbread with chili when friends were over for dinner, and they simply didn't get it. In Sweden rice is the given thing to serve with chili. To me cornbread makes perfect sense, the perfect excuse to have something that is closer to cake than to bread but for dinner. Couldn't be better.

This time I actually decided to make my cornbread a bit savorier by adding jalapeños and scallions. This contrasts nicely with the sweet bread. You can omit this if prefer simple sweet cornbread, or take it one step further and add nutritional yeast to the batter. Another alternative would be adding pumpkin seeds in the place of jalapeños. I chose to bake my cornbread as muffins, but you can bake it in a cake pan too. The recipe makes enough for 4 muffins, and a double recipe would probably fill a 20 cm*20 cm/8*8" pan.

Makes 4 muffins

1 dl corn meal (polenta)
1 dl all-purpose flour
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
2 tbsp. sugar
1 ¼ dl vegan milk
1 tsp. vinegar
2 tbsp. canola oil
1 dl sweet corn
½ jalapeño, finely chopped
1 scallion, finely minced
Optional: 1 tbsp. nutritional yeast

Pumpkin seeds to sprinkle on top
Coconut oil or other oil for greasing pan
Additional corn meal for breading pan

Turn the oven on to 175°C/350°F.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Make a whole in the middle and add the wet ingredients. Mix from the center and out to incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ones. Add the sweet corn, jalapeños and scallions.

Grease 4 cups in a muffin pan with coconut oil. Sprinkle with corn meal. You can also use muffin cups, but I think this method gives the muffins such a nice crust all the way around. Divide the batter between the muffin cups and sprinkle the tops with pumpkin seeds.

Bake in the oven for 16-20 minutes, until a knife inserted at the center of a muffin comes out dry. Enjoy them with chili while they're still warm.

Put on 'em cowboy boots, it's chili time!

There is this one thing I am confused about. Is chili Mexican or Southern cooking? I guess the two are intertwined and inspired by each other so that there is no need to give one or the other the credit for this wonderful dish. Wherever it's from, chili is a wonderfully comforting dish! I have a handful of chefs and cookbook authors that shine a little extra bright in my food sky, and one of them is Jamie Oliver. A few years back he published his book Jamie's America, recalling his trips through this diverse and colorful country. In one chapter he had a recipe for a "Cowboy chili", full with the deep and heavy flavors of smoked paprika and coffee. Of course he'd cooked it in a cast-iron pot over a wood fire and served it to some hungry ranchers. I bet he wore a flannel shirt and cowboy boots while making it too, in order to make a bit of a show (it became a TV-series too). I do own a flannel shirt, but unfortunately I don't think a wood fire in my apartment would go well with the tenant and the only hungry person I had to feed was myself, but yesterday I cooked up a chili worthy of having Cowboy in it's name anyway. Wonderfully deep flavors and easy to make, this dish will hopefully speak to the cowboy I know you have living deep down inside you!

You may be skeptical about having coffee in food, but trust me that in the case of chili it lends a great roasted, robust and earthy flavor. I used a fairly weakly brewed coffee (I live in the US after all...) so if your coffee is very strong you might want to substitute some of it for water. Simply add a bit a time and taste as you go. When you're satisfied, add water if needed. When it comes to the smoked paprika, this can vary greatly in smokiness. I've realized that the bran I use has quite a mild smoke flavor and I therefore used the larger amount. So depending on your paprika and how smoky you like things, add a bit at a time of this too.

2 big servings (I may not be a rancher, but I eat as one)

1 small onion
2 cloves of garlic
2 tsp. cumin
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. coriander
1 cinnamon stick
1-2 tsp. smoked paprika
2 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. chili flakes (more or less to taste)
400 g crushed tomatoes
2 dl coffee (quite weak)
1 tbsp. dark syrup or molasses
1 dl sweet corn
2 dl cooked beans of your choice
1 bell pepper
Salt & pepper

Chop the onion and mince the garlic. Heat a skilled to medium heat and add a lug of oil. Add all the spices and fry for a minute or two until fragrant. Add the onion and garlic, lower the heat and sauté until the onion is soft, for about 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile cut the bell pepper in pieces, whichever shape and size you prefer. Add the remaining ingredients to the pan and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and let simmer for at least 20 minutes under a lid, so that the flavors can mingle. Taste for salt and pepper.

Serve the chili with some cornbread (recipe is on its way!) or rice or grains. Eat with your cowboy hat on.

A fragrant trip abroad – Coconut milk noodle soup

Back home in Sweden I have a close friend lives quite close to me. He participated in this last vegan challenge and shares my passion for cooking. Back when I still lived at home we used to meet about once a month in his little apartment and have dinner together. Every time we chose a different cuisine, and in his little kitchen that is barely big enough to turn around in we traveled from Asia, to Mexico and Morocco. This is a recipe inspired by one of those dinners. A wonderfully fragrant coconut milk soup that tickles your nose buds with smells of ginger, lime and garlic. Just as a happy bonus the soup is also simple stupid to make!

This is one of those dishes that you really can make your own, depending on the season and what you prefer. Firstly, choose the kind of noodles you prefer. I used soba this time, my good friend made it for me using thick, fresh Udon, which was delicious! Secondly, you can use any of your favorite veggies. I used carrots and cabbage simply because that was what was in season. Also, the cabbage is fun because you can slice it in thin long strips making it resemble noodles. You could go for sugar snaps, broccoli or even a frozen wok mix to make it even simpler (fresh veggies are tastier though). 

There is one critical aspect of serving this soup that I won't allow you to compromise. You have to serve it with fresh lime wedges. This is how you do it: squeeze the juice into your bowl and then pop the wedge in the bowl. This will infuse certain parts of the soup with more lime than others, making it oh so much more interesting to eat!

A fragrant meal for two

2 scallions

1 clove o garlic

½ jalapeno

10 g ginger

5 g fresh turmeric or 1 tsp. dried turmeric

2 tsp. finely minced lemongrass

1 carrot

150 g savoy or white cabbage

1 tbsp. light soy sauce

1 Poblano pepper or small green pepper

3 dl coconut milk

5 dl water

100 g dry noodles (or an equivalent amount of fresh noodles)

300 g extra-firm tofu

This is a really simple soup to make, and once you get cooking it goes fast. So start by getting all the ingredients prepared. Heat a pot of water for cooking the noodles. Slice the scallions, finely chop the garlic and jalapeno. Grate the ginger and turmeric if you're using fresh. Remove the zest from the lime. Finely mince the lemongrass. 

Cut the carrot into matchsticks and slice the cabbage into thin strips. Slice the pepper. Slice the tofu or cut it in cubes. 

When the water is boiling, add the noodles and cook until al dente. Drain in a colander and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking and remove the starch to keep the noodles from sticking to each other. 

Heat a wok pan (or regular frying pan) to high heat. Add a splash of oil and the tofu. Season with salt and drizzle som chili sauce over it. Toss the pan often or flip the tofu over so that it doesn't stick to the pan. Fry until the tofu has a nice browned surface. Remove from the pan.

Scrape out any leftover tofu scraps from the pan and return it to the heat. Add another splash of oil. Add the ginger, garlic, scallions, jalapeno, turmeric and lime zest. Fry stirring often until very fragrant. Add the carrot and cabbage and fry for 2-3 minutes. Add the pepper, soy sauce, coconut milk and water. Bring to a boil and let simmer for about 2 minutes. Add the noodles and heat only until the noodles are warm again. 

Serve in pretty bowls with the tofu. Top the soup with cilantro leaves. Squeeze a few lime wedges into the soup and then leave the wedges in the bowl. 

Roasted carrot gnocchi with rosemary & white wine

This past week has been both very good and very bad. Good since spring finally seems to be arriving and bad since I’ve been busy in the evenings, leaving way too little time to cook. Thank god for leftovers is all I can say! I’ve realized I’m a leftover hoarder. The little freezer compartment we have is stuffed with containers and I’m guilty of putting every single one of them there. But back to the good news, spring is springing! Unfortunately it hasn’t sprung far enough yet to provide some new vegetable to choose from at the farmer’s market yet. I am so lucky to live close to several great markets that sell fresh produce every week. All through winter, every weekend I’ve been faced with the same hard decision: carrots, potatoes, sweet potato or winter squash? I love all these winter vegetables, I really do, and shopping at a farmer’s market makes buying seasonal produce so much easier because you simply can’t buy the unseasonal stuff. I must admit I’m looking forward to some new choices later on in the spring, but for this week I went for carrots. This is what they ended up becoming: roasted carrot gnocchi with rosemary and white wine sauce.

Making gnocchi is actually a lot simpler than most people think. All you have to do is to cook and roast a root vegetable of your choice, in this case carrots, and puree and mix them with some flour. Roll the dough you get into a roll the thickness of your index finger, cut it into pieces and cook in salted water. What you do from there is up to you. You can mix gnocchi with pesto or tomato sauce, fry them or bake them or have them as they are. Here I cook them in a sauce of white wine and rosemary, simple and delicious.

Serves 2

A good handful of almonds

400 g carrots (about 4 average sized ones)

1 ½ clove of garlic

2 springs of rosemary

1 dl semolina flour

2 tbsp. water

A dash of grated nutmeg

½ yellow onion or 1-2 shallots

2 dl white wine

2 dl cannellini beans (or cranberry beans or small white beans)

Salt

Pepper

Olive oil

Roughly chop the onions. Roast in a dry pan until they start to brown. Remove from the pan.

Heat the oven to 200°C/400°F. Chop the carrot in rough pieces and finely chop ½ clove of garlic. Place them in an ovenproof dish with a splash of olive oil, some salt and a spring of rosemary, torn into smaller pieces. Roast for about 30 minutes until the carrots are soft and have started to brown slightly.

Once the carrots are done, puree them using a mixer or blender. Transfer to a bowl and add the semolina flour and some grated nutmeg. Using a fork or your hands, start mixing the carrots with the flour. Add the water gradually until you have a cohesive dough. Place the dough on a floured surface and roll it into a roll with a diameter of about 1 cm. Cut the roll into 1 ½ cm pieces.

Start heating a big pot of lightly salted water. Chop the onion and the remaining garlic and the leaves from the second spring of rosemary. Heat a pan big enough to later fit the gnocchi and add a splash of oil. Gently sauté the onion and garlic with the rosemary until the onion is soft. Add the white wine, some salt and pepper and bring to a simmer. Add the beans and cover with a lid.

Your water should be boiling now. Add the gnocchi to the water, but only so many that they have room to move around. You might have to cook them in two batches. You know that the gnocchi are done when they’re floating on the surface. As they start popping up to the surface, add them to the pan with sauce. Once you’ve cooked them all, add about 1 dl of cooking water to the pan and let the gnocchi cook in the sauce for just around 3 minutes, until the sauce has started to thicken from the starch in the gnocchi.

Serve the gnocchi with the roasted almonds and a nice green salad.

Painting with allspice and caraway

I have for a long time been interested in Middle Eastern and North African cooking. I love how these cuisines are densely packed with flavors. Learning how to combine all the necessary spices is like learning to paint. Like making different shades by mixing different color, you can bring out all the nuances of flavor by combining spices in the right way. In cooking this kind of food, I still feel like a novice though. Like the art students sitting at museums making sketches of the big masterpieces. But the more you practice the better you get. This time I used chickpeas and pearl couscous as my canvas in a stew spiced with allspice and caraway. The couscous is cooked in the stew making is almost risotto-like. Make sure to use pearl couscous (moghrabiah) and not the fine kind. You can also substitute the couscous for grains, although this will increase the cooking time. Serve the stew with flatbreads and garnish with mint leaves, pomegranate seeds and roasted nuts.

(Turns out that I need a bit more practice with drawing Middle Eastern patterns and designs too. Sorry about the not so beautiful picture for this recipe. Trust me in that it's worth trying despite that though!)

You can use canned chickpeas. In that case, use about 2 dl and add them to the couscous and onions together with the other ingredients that make up the broth.

Two big servings (or small ones with leftovers)

1 dl dried chickpeas

8 dl water

1 bay leaf

1 cinnamon stick

½ + ¼ tsp. allspice

2 tsp. salt

½ yellow onion

1 clove of garlic

1 tsp. caraway seeds

1 dl pearl couscous

1 tbsp. all-purpose flour

1 tbsp. lime juice

Salt and pepper

Soak the chickpeas over night.

The next day, drain the chickpeas and add them to a pot together with the water, ½ tsp. allspice, the bay leaf, cinnamon stick and salt. Bring to a boil and allow the chickpeas to simmer until they’re tender, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, thinly slice the onion and chop the garlic. Heat a pan to medium head and add a good lug of oil. Add the onion, garlic, remaining allspice and caraway seeds to the pan and sauté for 5 minutes union the onion has started to brown. At this point, add the couscous and flour and fry for another 2 minutes. Pour the broth and chickpeas in the pan and let simmer under a lid for about 15 minutes until the sauce has thickened and the pearl couscous is cooked through.

Serve with pomegranate seeds, mint leaves and roasted nuts.