Savoury Vegan Filo Rolls with Beetroots and Carrots

Didn’t I tell you my next posts would be about filo pastry? Well, this is going to be the last one for now – I used my last sheets to make these savoury rolls filled with beetroots and carrots. Again, a 100% vegan recipe.

Why vegan, you might ask. Well, I'm not taking part in Veganuary (to be honest, I only read about it yesterday - a great idea!). But I've got a vegan challenge of my own: my husband who after three years of vegetarianism told me he'd like to eat only vegan from now on - and gave me an inspiring cookbook, the Vegan Love Story.  And I am inspired :)

The filling combines carrots and beetroots with lots of garlic and herbs, plus nutmeg, cinnamon and ras el hanout, a mixture of spices used in Northern Africa. A total winner!

This is what you need to make 6 rolls, or just enough for 3 eaters served with an accompaniment or for 2 served just with a salad:

•  6 A4-sized sheets of filo pastry

For the filling:

• 1 large beetroot, finely chopped (or grated)


• 2 small carrots or 1 large, finely chopped


• 1 small onion, chopped


• 2-3 garlic cloves


• 3 Tbsp


• 1tsp ras el hanout


• 1 pinch of grated nutmeg


• 1 pinch of cinnamon


• salt and pepper to taste


• a handful of chopped parsley and mint (or other herbs of your liking)

For the brush:

• 20g vegan margarine


• 4 Tbsp olive oil


• 2 Tbsp almond cream


• 1 garlic clove, crushed


• salt and pepper to taste

Start with the filling: heat 3 Tbsp olive oil in a large pan. Add onion, garlic, carrots, and beetroots, and stir and fry for about 5 minutes. Then add the spices and the cream and a bit of water if needed. Cover and let simmer about 5 more minutes. If the vegetables are really finely chopped, they get tender very quickly. Remove from heat.

In the meantime, make the brush: just combine all ingredients in a saucepan and warm up until the margarine has melted.

To make these rolls, I cut each A4-sized filo pastry sheet in two. I brushed the half of the small sheets with the brushing mixture and placed about 2 Tbsp of filling in the middle of each brushed sheet. Then I folded carefully into a 7cm long, 4cm wide roll. Then I wrapped each roll into a non-brushed filo sheet. This way, the rolls held together perfectly!

Bake in a preheated oven (200C) for about 20-30 minutes, or until golden brown.

To go with, I served some quinoa with grated lemon zest and a lot of chopped herbs. Yum!

Day Two: Borsch Soup

Today was the second day of my No-Cost Food Challenge and I realized I’m going to have to buy onions tomorrow. I’ve got only two left, and I don’t see any sense in trying to cook without onions. So I thought of an additional rule: in order to save another ingredient from ending up in the garbage, I'm allowed to buy just a bit of something. But today, I still managed with no grocery shopping at all.

For lunch I had some rests from yesterday - falafel, hummus, and a bit of rice. For dinner I decided to cook borsch soup, one of my all-time favourite dishes. I had an opened can of sour cream that had to be used, and the beetroots that had been lying in my fridge for three weeks were not getting any fresher either.

I used to cook borsch with my parents’ old recipe, but now I needed to change two things. First of all, I wanted it all-vegetarian. Second, I wanted it a bit more filling, so I added potatoes; in my parents’ recipe there was just cabbage, carrot, beetroot, and onion - no potatoes. And especially no canned beetroots nor sausages - the barbaric habit of some people to add any of those two ingredients was our conversation topic number one at many an occasion :)

For 2-3 portions you need:

• 1 medium-sized onion


• 2 carrots


• 2 beetroots


• about 300g cabbage


• 2 potatoes


• 1-2 garlic cloves


• vegetable broth


• 3 Tbsp tomato paste


• 3 Tbsp olive oil


• salt and black pepper to taste


• sour cream to serve

Chop the onion and crush the garlic. Heat the oil in a large pan and sauté the onions and garlic. Then add carrots, potatoes, and beetroot, cut in thin sticks, and chopped cabbage. (I used Savoy cabbage, and it worked just fine, although the colour didn’t turn out perfect.) Add broth to cover the vegetables, then add tomato paste, salt, and pepper. Let simmer over a low heat until all vegetables are tender, or about 30 minutes.

Serve as a starter or a light main dish with a generous dollop of sour cream and a slice of rye bread. Borsch tastes even better the next day - too bad we ate our way through all of it in one go!

Chocolate Muffins with Beetroot

Now this is what I’d call a perfect scam. Delicious chocolate muffins - that hide a considerable amount of beetroot in them! So far, I've been unable to motivate my kids to eat beetroot in any form. "It tastes good, just give it a try!" "It's healthy!" "See, it's pink, you love pink, don't you?" None of this would work. But today, they were begging for more!

Thanks to the beetroot, the muffins are very moist. Yet you don’t taste the presence of anything unusual. You have to try it out yourself to believe.. For a vegan version, change butter to vegan margarine, cream to a vegan cream, and leave the egg out.

For six muffins, you need:

• 90g butter


• 90g dark chocolate


• 150g cooked beetroot, pureed


• 80g sugar


• 20g cocoa powder


• 100g whole-grain spelt flour


• 1 egg


• 1,5 tsp baking powder


• 1 tsp vanilla sugar

Plus for the topping:

• 50ml heavy cream


• 50g sugar


• 10g dark chocolate

Set your oven to 200C. Melt butter with chocolate in a pan and set aside. Sift together cocoa powder, flour, and baking powder in a bowl. Add sugar and vanilla sugar, then chocolate-butter mixture, egg, and beetroot. Mix until smooth. Bake in a muffin pan for 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let the muffins cool on a rack.

In the meantime, prepare the topping:

Measure all ingredients in a pan. Heat until sugar and chocolate have melted in the cream, then let cook for 2 to 3 minutes, or until the mixture slightly thickens. Set aside, let cool a minute or two (so that you won't burn your fingers when spreading the topping) and using a spoon, spread over the muffins.

Serve with your favourite warm drink!