Aubergine/melanzana parmagiana

A vegetarian sort-of-lasagne Italian dish which worked out quite nicely. Very happy with the results. It did not take as long as I thought it would, either, so there's that, although it does take a bit of time. Make sure you have plenty of crusty bread, like a baguette or something similar, with you, so that you can mop up the sauce.

I adapted this from the Guardian's version of this recipe, with some changes. NB: I used quite a large baking tray which explains the quantities. I also layered the aubergine quite thinly, so if you increase the density of the aubergine, you can cut down on the tomato sauce. Still, tomato is nice, so it's up to you.

1.5 kg aubergine/brinjal/"egg"plant, cut lengthwise into 1 cm-thick slices
8 cloves garlic, minced
2 red onions, thinly diced
4 x 400 g tins tomatoes
1-2 glasses of red wine, or 4 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp oregano or Provencal spice
250 g grated parmesan cheese (or grana padano - meaning that the name is somewhat badly chosen. Oh well...)
250-500 g mozzarella (depending on your cheesy preferences)
50 g breadcrumbs
handful of basil leaves

Cut up the aubergine, salt it (I laid it in layers in a colander, sprinkled some salt over it, and then repeated until I'd done the whole batch), and leave for about half an hour. While you're waiting, fry the onions and garlic for a couple of minutes, add in the wine/wine vinegar, and then tip in the tomatoes and simmer for about 45 minutes, stirring frequently. Crush any big bits that might cause trouble later on.

Rinse the aubergines very well and then fry at least half, but preferably all, of the aubergine slices on a griddle pan for a couple of minutes on either side. I cooked half the slices and left the other half raw when assembling the dish, which seemed to work quite well, but I'd recommend cooking all the aubergine before assembling the dish.

When you've cooked everything, heat your oven to 180 degrees, and then start putting together the dish. Spread a thin layer of tomato sauce in your oven dish, then a layer of aubergine (packed tightly), then mozzarella, parmesan, and seasoning. Repeat in this order until you have used up all the aubergine. Top with a final layer of tomato sauce, then sprinkle breadcrumbs and a little bit of parmesan on the top.

Shove in the oven and cook for about 30 minutes or so, then take out when ready and leave for a couple of minutes before serving. Top with some of the basil, and serve bread on the side. 

Spinach and ricotta cannelloni

This one was introduced to us by a friend of mine who has given me several fantastic recipes over the years (including this one). He used lasagne instead of cannelloni originally, but we were told, in no uncertain terms, that this should be made using tubes.

Cannelloni, for those who are as ignorant as I was, is a long tubular type of pasta that you can stuff. Whatever you put into it gives it a lovely taste. This one was particularly good, and surprisingly easy once you've got the stuffing sorted. It also keeps very well in the freezer, although I've never left it for long enough to need to freeze it. Very recommend.

Ingredients:

olive oil
salt and pepper for seasoning
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 red onion, diced
chilli, to taste (optional)
1.5 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tins (400g) chopped/diced tomatoes
1 or 2 red peppers, diced (optional)
handful of basil leaves
500 g mascarpone
3 tbsp milk
500 g spinach, hard stalks removed (baby spinach is better, but regular spinach works well too)
500 g ricotta
about 200 g parmesan cheese or equivalent
pinch of ground nutmeg
200-250 g cannelloni tubes (uncooked)
250 g (2 balls) mozzarella

Heat some olive oil in a frying pan and cook the garlic and onion (and chilli) for a minute or 2. Add the sugar, wine vinegar, tomatoes and peppers, season, and simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally until thickened. When ready, add the basil leaves, mix in, and pour the mixture into a shallow, medium-sized oven dish, which should be big enough to fit your cannelloni in one layer, maybe two if you have to.

Take the mascarpone, season with salt and pepper, and beat it together with the milk until smooth. This will be your sauce.

Place the spinach in a large colander and pour boiling water over to wilt (you may have to do this in batches). When it is cool enough to handle, squeeze the excess water out of the spinach, and roughly chop it quite small. Mix together with the ricotta and about half of the parmesan, and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Now comes the stuffing part. In order to do this, take a fairly strong plastic sandwich bag or a piping bag and put a couple of tablespoons' worth of the spinach mixture in. If you're using a sandwich bag, cut a corner off the bag, leaving a hole about 1-1.5 cm wide. Don't make it too big, otherwise you won't be able to do the next stage. With your bag and spinach mixture, take an uncooked cannellono (one cannelloni? Grammatically incorrect, I know, but so be it), fit the bag in one end and cover the other with a finger or two. I have found this (kind of) stops the mixture spurting out either end. Gently squeeze the bag to force the mixture into the cannelloni. If your spinach is too big, it'll get caught in the whole and it'll make the whole exercise quite difficult, so be careful with this. Lay the stuffed pasta side by side on the tomato sauce in the oven dish, trying to keep it all in one layer.

Once you have stuffed your pasta and laid them in the dish, spoon over the mascarpone layer and then sprinkle over the remaining parmesan and layer the mozzarella over the top. Put in the oven and cook at 180 degrees for 30-35 minutes. When ready, take out of the oven and leave for about 5 minutes. Serve with crusty bread and wine.

Very nice. Very recommend.

Chicken cacciatore

A simple Italian chicken stew. Can also be made with game meat. Lovely. Cobbled together from the BBC recipe and food.com's own version, with a couple of edits.

Ingredients:

Butter for frying
4 chicken drumsticks
4 chicken thighs
Plain flour mixed with salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper (to taste) to coat chicken
Olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 stalks celery, diced
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 or 2 chillies, diced
1 or 2 large red peppers
Rosemary or Provencal herb mix
3/4 cup white wine
2 400g tins of diced tomato
250-300ml chicken stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a large pot. Dust the chicken in the flour mixture, and then brown in the pot over a medium-high temperature. Remove from the pot using a slotted spoon. Add the oil and heat, then add the garlic, celery, onion, carrot, red peppers and chilli, as well as the rosemary/Provencal mix. Fry for a few minutes and then add the wine, scrape the bottom to remove chunky bits, and then add the tomatoes and stock. Return the chicken to the pot. Bring to a simmer, put the lid on, turn the temperature down low, then cook for around 45 minutes. At this stage, the chicken should be quite tender, as should the carrots.

Serve with rice and/or salad.

Homemade tomato pasta sauce

An adaptation of a couple of recipes I found online. A work in progress, but the initial result is promising:

Ingredients:

about 1.5 kg ripe tomatoes (the riper the better)
1 onion, diced
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
1 pepper, diced
2 carrots, peeled and diced
About 200-300ml tomato juice (optional)
Fresh basil to taste, shredded/torn up
1 tbsp or so Provencal herb mix
Pepper
Some salt to taste
1/3 cup red wine
2-3 bay leaves
1-2 full stalks celery - don't cut them up!
2 small cans tomato paste (or maybe only 1, depending on taste. Should be around 2 tbsp or so of tomato paste)

For the tomatoes, score them at the stalk end and then drop them into boiling water for 2 to 3 minutes to loosen the skin. Peel and core them, then dice them roughly. If you want, leave one or two intact.

Add onion, garlic, peppers and carrots to a biggish pot and cook for around 5 minutes until the onion is soft. Then add your tomatoes, as well as the tomato juice, basil, herbs and spices and red wine, mix in, then add the celery and bay leaves.

Cook for 1-2 hours on a very low heat, add the small tins of tomato paste and cook for another 1-2 hours (I cooked mine for 1 and 1, but varying recipes say 30 mins all the way up to 2 hours. Take your choice).

When it's all ready, remove the bay leaves and celery and leave to cool, then freeze or serve with pasta. Your choice.

Artichoke and Sundried Tomato Pasta

New pasta sauce. Similar to sex chicken, except without the pesto, it's quite light and rather full of flavour.

You need:

butter for sautéing
an onion
4 or 5 cloves garlic
250g mushrooms, sliced
about 300g artichoke hearts
150g sundried tomatoes
100g sliced olives
200g chicken breast
2tbsp lemon juice
250ml dry white wine
pepper to taste
1 tomato, diced
parmesan or white cheese (like feta)
pasta of choice, preferably fettuccine

 Prepare the pasta as per instructions. Pour some oil over the chicken breast, rub in some salt and pepper, and grill for about 20-30 minutes, flipping halfway through. In the meantime, sauté the onions, garlic, and mushrooms until soft in a pot, then add in the artichokes, sundried tomatoes, olives, lemon juice and wine, and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 10 minutes or so. About halfway through, add in the chicken, sliced up. When the liquid has been reduced a bit, take off the heat, add in the tomato (raw), then serve over the pasta with cheese. I also recommend having a baguette. And some wine.

Enjoy.

Sex Chicken Pesto Pasta

This one was something a friend made for us one very cold winter's evening. Lovely stuff, very easy. It is magical stuff, and if you are using it for a date, it will work wonders (hence the name). I can't remember the exact details, but I've adapted it and changed it (probably) and it still tastes pretty good. And it's dead easy.

Ingredients: (this should feed 4)

500g chicken breast, in smallish chunks
3 cloves garlic
2 onions
150g sun-dried tomatoes diced
2 1/2 tbsp green pesto
(Optional) mushrooms, peppers, Worcester sauce, 400g tin of tomatoes
Pasta of choice (macaroni or fettuccine should be best)
White cheese (feta or otherwise)
Salt and pepper to season

Mix the chicken, one onion, garlic, tomatoes, and 1 1/2 tbsp pesto and put to one side, the longer the better, but for at least an hour. Chop up the other onion, mushrooms, peppers, etc, fry them up. Prepare the pasta as directed. When everything is ready, shove it in a bowl with cheese on top. Enjoy.

Quick and easy dough for pizza

This is off Fired Up Cooking SA, a website with a whole bunch of quick meal options. Lots of the options are South African specialties, such as pap and wors, but most of the recipes use ingredients commonly available everywhere. This is a quick dough recipe for pizza bases - not quite authentic pizza dough, but does the trick and is rather tasty.

Dough for a pizza base

2 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup oil
2/3 cup milk

Shove it all in a bowl, mix it up, put it on a baking sheet.

Put your topping of choice on, then shove in the oven at 180 Celsius for an hour to cook through.