Courgette lasagne

I've been having some very strange dreams lately. I have been dreaming about people who have not been part of my life for a long time. A former colleague, who wanted me to give a talk about physics which I didn't understand anything about. Another night I dreamed about some old friends who were visiting me in my home. But my home wasn't my home, it was some other place. And then some other people showed up who were supposed to be my friends but I didn't know their names, so I couldn't introduce them to the friends who were already there. 

I think my vivid and restless dreams are because we have been watching Breaking Bad right before going to bed. I can't wait to finish the last few episodes, to get it over and done with. I don't want to watch anything so depressing and scary anymore. From now on, I will only watch period dramas and baking shows. Seriously, the older I get, the less violence and psychological drama I can take. I don't watch much TV anyways as I think it's mostly a waste of time. So if I decide to waste my time doing nothing at all but staring at yet another screen, I want it to make me all warm, fuzzy and happy. I keep re-watching my old Gilmore Girls, because they just don't make TV like that anymore.

The other day I was going to make a regular veggie lasagne as I have blogged about here. I popped out to the greenhouse to pick some tomatoes for the tomato sauce I spotted a few giant courgettes. So I thought, why on earth would I use pasta when I have these lovely courgettes instead. 

For me lasagne is all about the sauces. If you are going through the trouble to make lasagne, you want to do it right. And although making the sauces from scratch yourself takes some time, it's not that much work really. It's mostly about the sauces just bubbling away on their own while you can prepare the rest of the veg so you don't even waste any time. This makes a big batch, but the lasagne freezes well. I like to freeze it in serving sized portions and take with me to work for lunch.

Veggie lasagna (serves 8-10):

For the tomato sauce:

Tomatoes

6  cloves of garlic

1 onion

ground black pepper

2 bay leaves

For the bechamel sauce:

1 litre whole milk

1/2 onion

10 peppercorns

2 bay leaves

80 g butter

80 g flour

black pepper (and salt) to taste

olive oil spray

4 sweet peppers

1 onion

250 g kale

1 courgette

200 g feta cheese

6 lasagne sheets

(grated cheese or torn mozzarella for topping)

The howto:

Start by preparing the tomato and bechamel sauce. For the tomato sauce, chop tomatoes into quarters and remove the hard stems. Put the tomatoes in a large saucepan along with the bay leaves, black pepper and finely chopped garlic and onion. Bring slowly to a boil, and you will see the tomatoes start to give off liquid when heating up. Let cook for about an hour and remove from the heat. You can prepare the tomato sauce on the day before, or even freeze it for use later. For the bechamel, place the milk, roughly chopped onion, pepper and bay leaves in a large saucepan and slowly bring to a boil. When the milk has boiled, sieve it and put to the side. In a large saucepan melt the butter, and add the flour to form a thick paste. Let the paste cook for a minute or two and start adding the milk. Add milk 1/2 cup at a time, making sure you stir constantly with a balloon whisk to avoid any lumps from forming. Just be patient and keep adding milk a little at a time, stirring vigorously between additions and you will be rewarded with a beautiful, smooth, silky sauce. Season with salt and black pepper.

While preparing the sauces, roast the peppers. Preheat oven to 225 degrees and roughly chop peppers (I usually chop peppers into 6 big chunks). Place on an oven tray and lightly spray with olive oil. Roast for about 30 minutes, or until small dark patches start to appear on the pepper skins. Remove from oven and let cool. Finely slice the onion and roughly chop kale. Slice the courgette thinly. Lower the oven temperature to 200 degrees C. To assemble, start by placing sliced courgettes in a large oven proof dish. Top with half of the peppers, kale and feta cheese as well as tomato sauce and about a third of the bechamel. Add another layer of courgettes, peppers, kale, feta and sauces, and add a sprinkle of ground black pepper (and salt if you want to although the feta has a lot of salt, so I didn't find it necessary to add any salt). For the last layer, add the lasagne sheets and top with the remaining bechamel sauce (and grated cheese if using). Cook for about an hour, or until golden brown and bubbling. 

The verdict:

This was simply delicious. It does make such a difference to make everything from scratch yourself, and I do appreciate how lucky I am to be able to walk out to the greenhouse to pick the most amazingly sweet tomatoes (although that happiness doesn't last much longer as tomato season is drawing to a close soon). If you want to make it even healthier, you could leave out the cheese and lasagne noodles and replace with more courgette slices. I have to admit the carboholic in me likes to have at least that one layer of pasta on top, with a thick layer of bechamel sauce and some cheese. It just makes the whole thing so much more delicious. Also, the roasted peppers are absolutely brilliant. I cooked this along with a meat lasagne for the Culinary Consultant, and when tasting them both side by side I can honestly say I preferred the veggie one. 

Mushroom and kale canneloni

A quick blog post with a rather delicious vegetarian recipe I came up with the other weekend when the InvisiblePinkKitchen was without its main carnivore.

As I'm writing this I. Enjoying the breakfast buffet at the hotel. I just can't resist breakfast buffets, and to be honest we are enjoying the breakfast buffetso thoroughly that we haven't made it to lunch at all. It's just all about breakfast and dinner, with a few caipirinhas in between. The hotel food is rather mediocre, but there is always fresh grilled fish which is great. Today we are off to try wind surfing!

Mushroom and kale cannelloni (serves 4):
For the Béchamel sauce:
750 ml milk
a few parsley stalks
2 bay leaves
10 black peppercorns
1/4 onion, sliced
60 g butter
30 g flour

For the cannelloni:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
150 g mushrooms
200 g kale
250 g ricotta
salt and pepper
cannelloni (I had just enough filling for 15 cannelloni)
grated cheese to sprinkle on top (I used Grana Padano)

The howto:
Start by preparing the Béchamel. Put the milk, parsley, bay leaves, peppercorns and onion in a large saucepan and slowly bring to a boil. This will take a while, and make sure you keep stirring from time to time so that it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan. When milk has boiled, strain to remove the flavouring ingredients. In a large saucepan, melt the butter. Add the flour and keep stirring to make a paste stirring vigorously to avoid any lumps. Start adding the milk while stirring with a whisk constantly. Add the milk in small amounts to start, whisking all the time to incorporate the milk in the butter-flour paste. Keep adding and whisking until all the milk has been added and you have a smooth white sauce. Bring to a simmer and take off the heat.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C (400 F). To prepare the filling for the cannelloni, very finely chop the onion, garlic, mushrooms and kale. You will later be filling the cannelloni with a piping bag, so chop finely enough that it will be easy to do the filling. I used my small food processor and did the chopping in batches.

In a large frying pan, heat the oil to medium. Cook the onion and garlic until starting to soften. Add the mushrooms and cook another few minutes. Last add the finely chopped kale and increase the heat a bit if there is a lot of liquid in the pan. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Transfer the filling from the frying pan to a big bowl and let cool for a while. Mix in the ricotta and taste, adjust pepper and salt if needed. Transfer to a piping bag with a large opening and pipe into the cannelloni. Place the filled cannelloni in an oven proof dish and cover with the Béchamel. Sprinkle with grated cheese. Cook for 40-45 minutes, until golden and bubbling.

The verdict:
This was just something I made up in my head while walking around the grocery store and being inspired by the cannelloni pasta. As the designated meat-eater was out of the house I thought I would take the chance and prepare a vegetarian meal. I was thinking spinach and mushroom, but then I thought the kale might be a good option instead. This results in a very affordable meal large enough to serve at least four and it turned out really delicious. I didn't use any strong spices so the flavours from the mushrooms and kale would come through which they did. The creamy Béchamel and cheese topping worked really well, and he cannelloni were perfectly cooked al dente in the sauce. I will definitely be making this again.

 

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Steak and warm kale salad

I am less than a week away from my summer holiday in the sun. A multitude of maxi dresses have been eBayed and I'm hoping my huge sun hat will arrive in time. I need to nip by Boots for some sunscreen and some other summer necessities tomorrow, other than that I should be more or less good to go. Although I'm hoping all I will be needing is a toothbrush, a bathing suit and a few dresses.

I should start packing soon, as we leave on Monday. Incidentally we are having some of the Culinary Consultant's family over on Sunday for a BBQ (this was agreed on before the summer holiday had been booked, have to admit the timing is not optimal). And I need to make the whole BBQ menu dairy free... oh deary (or dairy, hehe) me, I have no idea how to make a dairy free pudding. Anything I can think of has milk or butter. Maybe Eton mess with coconut cream instead of whipped cream? Or a nice dark chocolate sponge cake with oil instead of butter? I shall have to turn to my dear friend Pinterest to figure this out. At least doing dairy free BBQ should be quite easy. No cheeseburgers though... And I am thinking of having a salad station where everyone can make their own salad, bowls of ingredients like lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, feta, onions, sweetcorn, chorizo and whatnot. I just want to make it as easy as possible. And I'm happy the Culinary Consultant will be left to clean up the mess while I jet away to sunny Cape Verde. So expect an update on Cape Verdian food coming up!

Today's recipe is perfect for a quick and easy weeknight dinner. It takes less than 15 minutes to prepare if you multitask preparing the warm salad and cooking the steaks, and it will help you get rid of those last few leftover handfuls of spinach and kale. I always have a bit of kale left and never a good idea what to do with it.

Steak and warm kale salad (serves 2):
2 steaks of desired size
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
150 g mushrooms
2 big handfuls of kale
2 big handfuls of spinach
1 clove of garlic
salt, pepper

The howto:
Slice the onion and mushrooms. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan, and cook the onions over medium heat until starting to soften. Increase the heat a bit and add the mushrooms. Let cook for a few minutes. Add the kale, and cook until starting to wilt. Add the spinach and finely choppped garlic. Toss well, season to taste and cook for another minute or so. 

Cook steaks to desired doneness. Let rest in foil wrap for a few minutes before serving with the warm salad.

The verdict:
This was something I just tossed together from the left overs in my fridge. I had a few traditional, "cold" salads over the weekend, and with the weather all overcast and chilly today I thought I rather have a warm salad instead. And it turned out rather nice even if I do say so myself. The kale was still a bit crunchy and the flavour of garlic came through really well. The Culinary Consultant, who is back from his weekend of debauchery also enjoyed it, although I served him some boiled potatoes with butter and mint to make it a bit more substantial. And I might just have had one or two of those potatoes when I tidied up after dinner. Leftover calories don't count! 

Kale frittata

I'm very fickle in my affections. I know me and the slow cooker only just fell in love. And I'm not saying I don't still love it (made a delish pineapple and onion pulled pork just the other night. And when I say night, I literally mean night. I even woke up a few times to the wonderful smell in my apartment. Ok, to be honest, I woke up to leg cramps, but the pork still smelled amazing). But me and the slow cooker are past the initial infatuation, you know when you want to spend every moment together and tell each other everything. I also have to admit, I'm in love. Don't tell my slow cooker, but I found something else. And that something is my brand new shiny, black beauty. My cast iron skillet.

I have wanted to get a cast iron skillet for ages, but I'm still trying not to overcrowd my super tiny kitchen. Apparently I'm very unsuccessful at that... After watching the bakers on Great British Bakeoff make Tarte Tatins I finally cracked. Off to Amazon I went, and ordered a cute little 20 cm skillet of a brand that had quite good consumer reviews. It was also important to me to get a skillet which was ready to use and did not require seasoning as all reviews of pans that were not pre-seasoned said that it makes your apartment smell horrible, and having only just got rid of the smell of smoke from my apartment, I was not too keen on inducing any new smells.

A Tarte Tatin was going to be the first thing I made in my brand new skillet. However, I can't justify that kind of decadence in the middle of the week. But I still wanted to give my new pan a trial run. And I happened across this recipe for Kale Frittata on My Kitchen in the Rockies which was perfect as I had ordered some curly kale and had no idea what to use it for. I modified the amounts of ingredients slightly, and omitted the cheese from the original recipe.

Kale frittata (serves 4):
2 tbsp oil
1 onion
100 g curly kale
1 clove of garlic
65 g pepperoni
6 eggs

One serving contains 285 kcal (22g fat, 8.5g carbs, 14g protein).

The howto:
Preheat the grill. Chop the onion, garlic, pepperoni and kale. Whisk eggs, season with salt and pepper if you want, although I thought the pepperoni was plenty of flavour and no extra seasoning was needed. Heat oil in an oven proof skillet, and cook the onion for a few minutes until translucent. Add kale in two or three batches and cook until kale begins to wilt. After adding all kale, add garlic and pepperoni and cook for a few minutes more. Turn down the heat to medium/low and add the eggs. Stir so that the eggs distribute evenly, and cook until set on the sides of the skillet but not in the middle. Add cheese if you want to, and finish cooking under the grill for a few minutes. Let set for a few minutes in the skillet before serving.

The verdict:
During the last year or so, I have eaten eggs in pretty much any form. Hard boiled, runny yolk, poached, fried, scrambled, in the form of omelettes, mini muffins, oven cooked in tomato sauce, with banana... You name it, if it's got egg, I've done it. So this was a really nice change. I think I have pinned a few different frittata recipes and am excited to be able to finally cook them.

This isn't the healthiest start to the morning, as the pepperoni has quite a lot of fat and salt. But just for a change, this was nice. It can't be helped, but the salty and spicy pepperoni complements the kale and eggs perfectly. Next time I think I might add a bit more onion, as I really liked the combination of kale, pepperoni and onion. Also, I think I might have slight overcooked my frittata, so next time I will leave it a bit more runny in the middle before putting it in the oven. If you don't have kale, I think spinach would also work perfectly, although the kale adds a nice crunch. And replacing the pepperoni with bacon would probably also work perfectly. So as a summary, I now have one more way to cook eggs. And the good thing with the frittata is that leftovers can be re-heated the next day, either for brekkie or as a light lunch together with a green salad. I think my new love will see a lot of use in my kitchen.










 

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Almost healthy Friday quickie

Well it's been a while since my last Friday quickie. Mostly it's because I haven't eaten in on a Friday for ages. Fridays used to be mine and Best Friend's grocery shopping day, we would head off for our half hour trek to the big Tesco, use at least another half hour, often even more, to browse our way through every isle, and then trek back with a weeks worth of groceries. Carrying it all back home was never an enjoyable task, but gossiping about everything that had happened that week or planning the weekend used to make the trip go quickly. Then when I got home, I cooked something simple but delicious and spent the rest of the night on the sofa.

These days, we spend Friday afternoon crawling around in the mud and grass, do our burpees, press-ups, running and all sorts of other crazy exercises at bootcamp. If we are lucky it isn't raining, but last week we got soaked both during the morning and evening bootcamp. Yes, we are hard core that way, we enjoy bootcamp twice every Friday. And Mike, our trainer, has a very special treat for us to finish off Friday's bootcamp. Two minutes of burpees. When you have pushed your body to the limit for a full hour, those two minutes feel like they are never going to end. Point of all of this, after getting drenched in sweat and sometimes rain as well, then chilled until freezing while walking home through a pitch dark field (we have to carry bike lights to find our way, it's really that dark), the last thing on my mind is to cook something. I jump straight into a hot shower, stand there for ages until the feeling has returned to my frozen toes and then wrap myself in layers of fleece. Boiling the kettle and filling my fluffy pink hot water bottle. And grabbing whatever I can find in the freezer to eat. Gastronomy be damned, after that sort of workout you just need calories in any form or shape they happen to be most quickly available. 

And I have to admit, this week's Friday quickie is a bit of a cheat. Because I prepared the figs earlier, and only quickly heated them up today. But it's the thought that counts, in theory it's still a Friday quickie, as I'm eating it on a Friday and it was very quick to prepare, even if I technically speaking didn't prepare it all on a Friday. And it follows the rules of Friday quickies, it only has a few ingredients. Simple but oh so delicious! The figs were inspired by a pin I ran into on Pinterest which led me to this blog post about figs. Figs and goat's cheese are quite a classic combination, I decided to roast my figs instead of having them fresh, although they were so lovely soft and ripe that I'm sure they would have been absolutely delicious fresh as well. I'm just on a bit of a roasting fad, and I wanted proper food, which to me means it has to be served hot. It only seemed appropriate to serve the figs with a side dish which has been prepared by oven roasting as well. I haven't used kale much, but I fell in love with the idea of kale chips when I saw the beautiful photos on White On Rice Couple. Well, obviously I first saw the photo on Pinterest, but I probably didn't need to mention that, now did I?

Roasted figs and chèvre (serves 1):
4 figs
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp whole grain mustard
black pepper
100 g chevre
handful of pecans

The howto:
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Cut figs in half, and drizzle with olive oil. Spread mustard on the figs and sprinkle with a touch of black pepper. Cut the chevre in eight pieces, and top each fig half. Pop into the oven until the goat's cheese has turned golden on top, about 10 minutes. Sprinkle with finely chopped pecans.

Salt and pepper kale chips (serves 1):
100 g kale
1 tbsp oil (I used my smoke infused virgin rapeseed oil)
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground black pepper

The howto:
Preheat oven to 200 degrees C. Spread the kale onto a roasting tin. Drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss. Roast for 6-8 minutes, until kale is crisp. The kale will burn very quickly, so keep an eye on it for the last few minutes. I know my baking time is shorter than that indicated in the original recipe, I guess it depends on your oven and kale. And after the fire in our building the other day (the flat underneath mine burned to a crisp...) I didn't want to over-roast the kale and risk setting off our super sensitive smoke detector as that would probably cause one or two heart attacks with the neighbours.

The verdict:
First of all, if you want to have enough kale to actually make it all the way onto your plate, you need to cook more than one serving. I hardly had any left over for a picture as I ate it right off the roasting tin. It's just that good. No, actually it's even better. I had no idea I liked kale so much. I might have slightly over salted the chips, but that just made them a bit more chip-like. Maybe next time I should drizzle some malt vinegar on them as well. 

Figs and goats cheese are a classic combo. And there is of course a reason why they are a classic, because they go together like... well like figs and goats cheese. The sweetness of the figs and the savoury cheese. I'm just crazy for figs right now, so stay tuned for more fig goodiness soon.