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!

Stir-Fry with Fennel, Kohlrabi, Carrot, Cucumber, and Leek

On Friday, I checked my “compost” box in my fridge. It had the green parts of one leek and stalks and greens of one fennel. In addition, I peeled two carrots, one kohlrabi and one cucumber for the kids’ salad for lunch. That left me with 300g still perfectly usable vegetable parts that I was determined to eat for lunch.

As I was in a hurry, I opted for this quick stir-fry. It really only takes less than 10 minutes to have this dish ready! If you want, you can serve some cooked rice with it. Then this portion would be enough for two.

For one portion you need:

• 300g stalks, stems, leaves, greens, or peels of organic, well-washed vegetables


• 1 Tbsp sunflower or olive oil


• 1-2 garlic cloves, crushed


• 2 Tbsp soy sauce


• 1 Tbsp sesame oil


• chili to taste


• a handful of nuts – I had pistachios, but would have used cashews if I’d had some :)


• fresh coriander

Chop the vegetables very small – especially the fennel. If left too big, they will be too hard to eat. Heat oil in a heavy pan and add vegetables. Fry some 3-4 minutes over a medium heat, then add chili and garlic, stir and fry 1-2 minutes more. Then add nuts, soy sauce, sesame oil and a bit of water (3-4 Tbsp), and let simmer 2 more minutes. Check salt – add if needed.

Sprinkle with fresh coriander and serve!

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!

Rösti - the Foolproof Recipe

As the title suggests, this originally Swiss dish consisting of potatoes, salt, and butter or goose fat, is not so easy to prepare as one would  think. There is a huge amount of recipes available, and my first attempt to making rösti at home was such a catastrophe that I decided never to try it again.

My mistake that time was to use raw potatoes as that particular recipe suggested. This resulted in a grayish mass that I just wouldn’t get cooked thoroughly. Yuck.

But in my quest for low-budget dishes I thought I’d have to give rösti another try. I did some research on the subject, and tried out a new method, in which unpeeled potatoes are cooked for a few minutes, the let stand for a couple of hours, then peeled and grated - and voilà! This time, my röstis turned out perfect. So here’s a foolproof recipe for the tastiest dish that ever was made out of potatoes:

For 5 portions you need:

• 500g potatoes


• one medium-sized carrot


• salt to taste


• some olive oil or butter for frying


• 5 organic eggs (optional)

Choose potatoes of more or less the same size. Wash them well, place in a pan and cover with water. Add 1 tsp salt and bring to a boil. For medium-sized potatoes, cook for 8 minutes. If your potatoes are small, 6 minutes is enough, if very large, you might want to cook them a bit more. Place the potatoes in cold water and let stand at least until they’ve cooled. If possible, cook the potatoes in the morning and let stand until dinner-time.

Now, peel the potatoes and grate them coarsely. Peel the carrot and grate as well. Combine the grated potato, carrot, and some salt (I used 1/2 tsp). Heat oil or butter in a large pan (I was using 2 pans to be able to fry all 5 röstis at the same time). With wet hands, form 5 flat “cakes” out of the potato mass. Fry over medium to low heat from both sides, until golden brown and cooked form the inside as well. This will take about 10 minutes per side.

Once thoroughly cooked, place röstis on a serving plate. If you want, you can fry 5 eggs and place one fried egg on top of each rösti. This results in a decadently delicious dish…! I had made one rösti per person, but if you’re very hungry (or your guests are), I’d recommend two per person. Serve with a green salad and a beer - natürlich!

Pancakes with Carrot and Spinach

Pancakes are an excellent place to hide any veggies that the kids don’t want to eat. As a kid, I used to eat pancakes with carrot, spinach, and even blood in them (yes, you read right - just Google to find out that it’s a traditional Finnish dish and that I’m not kidding). A friend told me her kids sure would protest because of the green colour in spinach pancakes - mine don’t, but you still could consider eating in candle light to avoid this..!

Here’s the basic recipe, feel free to use any other veggies of your liking (and/or of your kids’ disliking):

• 400ml milk


• 130g flour


• 2 eggs


• 1 medium-sized carrot, peeled and grated


• 100g frozen spinach


• ½ tsp salt


• oil or butter for baking

Unfreeze the spinach. Measure flour and salt in a baking bowl, add milk and mix. Then add the eggs and vegetables and  mix again until smooth. Let the batter rest about 15-30 minutes. Then bake the pancakes on both sides in a frying pan (or two, to make the process quicker) with either oil or butter and set aside on an oven-proof plate - this is handy if you’re making a lot of them and need to warm them up before serving. Serve with sliced cucumber and tomatoes. Or with strawberry jam :)