Rice and vegetable wok

This comes nowhere near Finnish or Italian cuisine, but however enjoyes the reputation of my favourite food since some months already :) So I'm writing the recipe here both for you and me!

Ingredients (x4):
1 tablespoon olive oil
2-3 carrots
1 red onion
1 bell pepper
4 tomatoes
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon of dried oregano
2 teaspoons of dried basil
some curry
100-150 grams basmati rice
half a package (or more) of feta cheese

Preparation:
Peel the carrot and cut it into rather thin sticks. Cut the red onion into small cubes. Throw some olive oil on the pan and fry the carrot and red onion for a couple of minutes. Then put the heat rather low while you are cutting other vegetables. Cut the bell pepper into sticks and the tomatoes into (big) cubes. Grind the garlic clove. Add these vegetables onto the pan. Add the oregano and basil too, and mix carefully. Make the heat hotter for some four minutes while mixing the vegetables. Then make the heat low and let the vegetables lie there for the time that you are cooking the rice (but remember to mix every now and then).


Cook the rice in a pan. When you will have poured the water off the tice, dust some curry on the rice and mix. Add more curry until the rice is yellow (but it doesn't need to be deep yellow - it depends on your taste).


Pour the rice on the pan and mix it with the vegetables. Add salt. Let the rice and the veggies accomodate each others' tastes by letting them lie there together on low heat for 10 minutes. Mix every now and then. If you think the wok is getting too dry, add a tiny bit of water.

Cut the feta cheese into cubes and add it into the dish right before serving. You can mix it into the wok or alternatively use it as a topping.

Finnish-syle hamburgers with vegetarian steaks

This hamburger is inspired by Hesburger, which is Finland's biggest native fast food chain. They have got hamburgers with rye bread, and I remember them, but they don't yet have a rye bread vegetarian hamburger. I created one myself! They turned out so yummy, especially yummy for my Finnish taste. The vegetarian steaks I used I made with this recipe, but you can just as well buy ready made veggie steaks.

Ingredients (x2):
Two loaves of rye bread cut in two halves (in Finland for example Puikulat and Ruispalat work well)
butter
2 veggie steaks
2 slices of cheese
1 tomato
a small part of a bell pepper
salad leaves
ketchup
mayo
black pepper
salt
oregano

Preparation:
spread butter on the breads. Add a slice of cheese on two of the bread halves. Put the breads into the oven along with the vegetarian steaks (since they need to be heated too). Remove the breads from the oven when the cheese will have melted. You may need to keep the steaks in the oven somewhat longer.

Place the breads that have a layer of cheese on separate plates. Stuff first some salad on these breads. Then add mayonnaise evenly on the whole bread. Take the heated steaks and cut them into halves. Place the two halves next to each other on the bread, looking like two consecutive full moons. Now it's time to add a bit of ketchup. Then, cut the tomatoes into slices and lay 2-3 slices of tomato on each bread. At the end add some bell pepper that you have cut into thin sticks. Dust a bit of pepper, salt and oregano over the creations before topping them with the top half of bread. You may desire to serve these hamburgers wrapped into paper in order to make eating easier and more enjoyable!

Bell peppers with mushroom-leek and soy fillings

I have been completely absent in this blog for several weeks, and I am really sorry about that! I was working a lot of hours each week, and even if I did make yummy food worth posting here and I even took pics of them, I never got down to updating. Now I want to update more regularly again.

So, here goes. This is the recipe of what I made for lunch today, and it was praised by my bf and he smiled for a long time after the lunch. I think that is enough to describe how delicious it turned out!

Bell peppers with mushroom-leek and soy fillings

Ingredients (for 2-3 people):

3 bell peppers (any colour you like)

filling #1:

2,25 dl cooked rice
3,5 dl table mushrooms
1,5 tablespoons butter or margarine
½ a small leek
1,5 dl grated cheese
paprika spice
pepper

filling #2:

1,5 dl cooked rice
150 g grinded soy
1 small onion
pepper
aromatic salt OR salt + half a grinded vegetarian bouillon cube
1,5 dl grated cheese

Preparation:

Cut the bell peppers in halves horizontally. Remove their insides and wash them. Cook the bell peppers in salted water for 8 minutes. When cooked, remove the water from the pan and let the bell peppers vapour.

Prepare the filling #1: Cut the mushrooms into small pieces. Heat the butter in the pan and add the mushrooms into the pan. Fry the mushrooms for 5 minutes. Chop the leek finely and add it into the pan.

When they both look good and and the leek has become more yellow, add this mushroom-leek-mix into the rice. Spice it up and add one dl of grated cheese. Mix.

Prepare the filling #2: Fry the grinded soy on a pan and add the finely chopped onion into it. Add spices. The spicing can be rather abundant. Mix the grinded soy + onion with the rice. Add 1/4 dl of grated cheese into the mix.


Place the bell pepper halves into an oven mould and fill them with the fillings. Add what remains of the grated cheese on the filled bell peppers.

Bake them in an oven heated to 200'c for half an hour.

Soy, tomato and bell pepper filling for crepes and cannelloni

As a vegetarian person I like the use of soy - vegetarians need their proteines too. This filling goes as well for crêpes as cannelloni. If you want to make the tomato flavour stronger, add more passata (=tomato puree).

Ingredients (x 4-5 crêpes):
140 g grinded tofu (soy)
1 onion
1 clove garlic
2 small tomatoes
½ bell pepper
1 egg
100 g ricotta
80 g tomato puree
70 g cheese
a few tablespoons Béchamel sauce
salt
pepper
olive oil

Preparation:
Fry the minced onion and garlic in olive oil. Add the grinded soy. Add a cup of water. Keep the heat pretty high. Cut the bell pepper into small pieces and add it into the pan. Pour in the tomato puree. Cut the tomatoes into slices and add them on the pan too. Add salt and pepper and let it cook until it becomes pretty condensed. Knead the filling with an egg, cheese cu into small pieces, ricotta and some tablespoons of Béchamel. Fill your crêpes or cannelloni with this filling.

Here are the crêpes I made this time. After I had filled them I still let them heat up in the microwave. I like to serve them with some plain salad.