Vegetarian lasagne

We needed to use up some stuff in the fridge, so I made this. It was nice.

150-200g lasagne sheets (I needed 6 large-ish fresh sheets)
2 400g tins whole tomatoes (you could also use diced)
2 onions
2 cloves garlic
2 courgettes
250g mushrooms
1/2 cup red wine (can also use red wine vinegar)
200-300g grated cheese (I guess you should use mozzarella or Parmesan, but we had some regular grated Edam which worked quite well too)
250ml bechamel sauce
Mixed herbs
Salt and pepper to taste

Start with the tomato sauce. Fry the onions and garlic for a few minutes, then add the tomatoes, wine, herbs and seasoning and cook for around 30-45 minutes. If you want more sauce in your lasagne, double the quantities here.

While the sauce is cooking, thinly slice the courgettes lengthwise if possible (you can use a mandolin for this!) or otherwise just use discs. Slice up the mushrooms into thin slices too. Also preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

When the tomato sauce is ready, start assembling your dish. Grease the bottom of your oven dish, then layer as so (not too important, this is how I did it): pasta sheets, courgettes, mushrooms, tomato sauce, bechamel sauce, cheese, pasta, courgettes, mushrooms, tomato sauce, bechamel, cheese, pasta, bechamel, cheese. Season as you go.

Pop it in the oven and cook for 45 minutes to an hour, depending on your oven. It'll come out lovely. 

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.

Ragne's courgette, bacon and cream pasta

This one comes from a popular Estonian cooking blog, Kokkama Ragnega. If you do read Estonian, check out her blog. It's very good, very simple, with a bunch of stuff that justifies her publishing deal. Of course, the problem for some is that it's in Estonian, which can be slightly problematic.

Here's where I come in.

My wife found this, and since we had a few extraneous semi-packs of pasta left lying around the (new) flat that needed eating, we gave it a go, with some minor changes to the recipe. It's all based on what we had. It was lovely. Very recommend.

Should serve about 4.

Ingredients:

200 g wild garlic Spätzle
100 g regular egg Spätzle
(or 300 g penne, per original recipe)
Around 600g courgette
200 g smoked bacon, diced
1 onion, diced
Thyme, to taste
Provencal herb mix, to taste
250ml cream (rõõsk koor)
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 tbsp olive oil
Grated Comté cheese, to taste

Cook the pasta as per indications on the packaging. Top, tail, core and  roughly grate the courgette. Fry the bacon for about a minute, then add the onion, cook for another minute or 3, then add the courgette and herbs and season. Cook until the courgette is starting to get crisp (and the bacon is cooked), then add the cream, heat again, season to taste and cook for a few more minutes. Drain the pasta, reserving about half a cup of the water. Add the sauce to the pasta, plus a bit of water, and the olive oil, and mix it all up together. Once ready, serve in bowls, with bread if so desired, plus cheese on top.

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.