Tomato, ham and tortelloni soup

This whole Christmas business is seriously cutting into my blogging time. I should have posted this yesterday, but it's been a bit crazy. There's so much to to do, get arranged, last minute online shopping and then that wait to see whether things will make it in time or not. But there's still plenty of time until Christmas, you say. Not quite, as I'm flying back home in just six short days, woop woop!! So anything I need to get arranged while still at home needs to happen very soon. And I won't be able to craft while away, so I am trying very hard to build up a bit of a buffer on the card blog. And I have tried to get all the Christmas presents sorted. What did people do before online shopping?? And I've been trying to find a dress I can fit into as I'm going to my friend's PhD party. I have to admit squeezing into any of my clothes is a bit of a problem at the moment, and I promise I will start living a healthy life soon. After I've eaten all the Christmas goodies... See why I'm having a problem over here? It's called denial!!

I can't wait to get home. Five more days in the office, and then I am looking forward to three weeks of Christmas holiday! I can't remember when I would have had three weeks off work. I look forward to spending time with my family, although my sister won't be able to join us so there will certainly be something important missing. But I am looking forward to see family and friends. I'm especially looking forward to my friend's PhD party, I will get to see so many old colleagues and friends I haven't seen in ages.

From time to time I do eat something resembling healthy food. This tortelloni soup I recently made was really delicious. I wanted to try making a non-vegetarian version of this great tortelloni soup I made a while ago. The other day The Culinary Consultant bought a pack of ham and sausage tortelloni, so I thought why not make a version with some ham.

Tomato, lenti and ham tortelloni soup (serves 4-6): 1 tbsp olive oil
2 onions
2 stalks of celery
2 carrots
1 kg tomatoes (or two cans of tinned tomatoes)
1 l  chicken stock
1 cup lentils
200 g spinch
200 g ham
400 g ham and sausage tortelloni
salt and pepper to taste

The howto:
Finely chop the onions, celery and carrots. Heat oil in a large saucepan, and add onions, celery and carrots. Cook for 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes and chicken stock and lentils. Cook for another 10 minutes until the lentils are done. Add the spinach and ham. Add the tortelloni and cook as per instructions on the pack. Taste and add salt or pepper as required. Serve with grated cheese sprinkled on top.

The verdict:
I really liked the vegetarian version of the soup. And I think I liked this version even more. You can replace the lentils with beans if you wish, but I happened to have lentils so I used them. The soup has a great flavour from the tomatoes and the ham. Actually, thinking of it, this would be a perfect recipe for leftover Christmas ham. 

White bean and tortelloni soup

I hosted a dinner party for a bunch of very good friends last week. For once, I decided not to make a mountain out of a molehill and to keep the food very simple. I guess my "clean and simple" mindset from my card crafting is making it's way into the kitchen as well. Instead of planning an intricate three course meal I decided I would stick to something easy and delicious and spend all my time with my guests instead of in the kitchen. 

One of my guests is vegetarian, and I knew my other guests wouldn't mind eating veggie so I decided to just make the whole meal vegetarian instead of having separate options. I was browsing the food blogs I follow in case I would stumble upon inspiration, and there it was right in front of me. How Sweet It Is was featuring a white bean and tortellini soup and I thought that would be perfect. Easy ingredients, and I could partly prep it in advance and then it would only take me a short while to cook it when my guests had arrived. I also served sundried tomato and goats cheese muffins and garlic breads. I didn't have any starters, I just had some olives and grapes out on the table that we nibbled on while enjoying some bubbly before the meal. I had planned to make a crumble for dessert, but it turned out the Culinary Consultant wanted to bake so he made an apple cake and some banana bread for dessert. Although I have to admit we never made it to the banana bread, as we could hardly move after finishing the soup, bread, muffins and apple cake with custard.

I made a double serving of the soup in a huge saucepan as there was five of us for dinner, and I also hoped there would be some left over for me to take to work for lunch the following week, which there was. The original recipe uses tortellini, but as I wanted a vegetarian soup, I went for tortelloni instead. You can easily choose whatever pasta you prefer. 

White bean and tortelloni soup (from How Sweet It Is, serves 4-5):
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 yellow onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 tsp smoked paprika
salt and black pepper to taste
2 tbsp tomato puree
300 g spinach
2 tins (400 g each) crushed tomatoes
2 cans cannellini beans (I used cannellini and butter beans)
2 1/2 cups vegetable stock
400 g fresh tortelloni (I used a mix of spinach and ricotta as well as basil pesto)
(1/3 cup grated parmigiano reggiano cheese)

The howto: 
Chop the onion and garlic. Drain and rinse the beans. Heat oil and butter in a large saucepan. Add onions and garlic and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the spices and tomato puree and give it all a good stir. Add spinach and let cook until wilted. Add the crushed tomatoes, beans and vegetable stock and let cook for about 5 minutes. Add the pasta, and cook according to instructions (my fresh tortelloni required 5 minutes of cooking). Make sure not to over-cook the pasta. If you want to, stir in some grated cheese right before serving. I didn't as I was serving this with cheesy garlic bread and cheesy muffins. 

The verdict:
The food was certainly a success, all the guests enjoyed it, and even the Culinary Consultant went back for seconds. I will certainly be making it again, although I think switching to a meat filled pasta would make him like it even more. 

The soup is really tasty, I don't often cook pasta but this was a great way of having some. I used a mix of store bought crushed tomatoes and some of our home-made tomato and garlic sauce from our fantastic sun ripened fresh tomatoes. I usually use very little salt in my food, but to bring out all the flavour from the tomatoes and beans, you want to make sure you season the soup properly. I had some leftovers for a few more days, and it was as tasty when re-heated as it was when first served. I certainly consider this a great success. 

The wonderful thing about the soup is that it hardly required any effort to put together. I chopped the onions and garlic before my guests arrived. When it was time to prepare dinner, I just chucked in the chopped onions and garlic and joined my guests while they were cooking, went back after five minutes and added the spinach, joined my guests, went back to the kitchen to add the tomatoes and beans, joined my guests, and then finally added the pasta. I felt like I hardly missed any of the conversation, and the soup just cooked all by itself. I had also pre-prepared sundried tomato and goat's cheese muffins which I put in the oven when I started the soup, and I also pre-prepared some roasted garlic and mozzarella bread which I popped in the oven 10 minutes before the soup was done. It all worked perfectly together.

Unfortunately I only managed to take very bad photos of the soup on the day I served it. The photo at the top of this post was taken the next day, but at that point most of the liquid had been absorbed into the pasta, so it didn't look much like a soup. It was still tasty, but I included the very bad photo below from when it was still an actual soup.

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.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Chicken in sun dried tomato sauce

You know how Pinterest is full of chicken recipes? When you browse your feed, all you get is chicken recipes. Or is it just me? But why is it that when you go looking for chicken recipes you can't find a single one of them? It's like shopping. If you go for a browse, you find the most amazing things. But just try to go out there looking for a pair of black trousers and you are guaranteed to find nothing. I actually had to look up "chicken recipes" on the find function in Pinterest to find something worth making. And boy am I glad I did. I stumbled upon this recipe from Spicy Southern Kitchen, and it is amazing. Without trying to brag, I'm usually a decent cook and most of what I cook goes down without a problem. But this was just out of this world good!! I was actually going to post another recipe today, but that one got re-scheduled because I just had to share this. That is how good it is!

This recipe is dedicated to by Bestie. I think she would love this. She is a pastaholic. And she really doesn't like onions. I usually never cook anything without onions, so I really notice if they aren't there. It's like a cooking ritual, starting by chopping up that onion and sauteeing it. But this time it was garlic and the wonderful flavour of sun-dried tomatoes that were the stars of this show. As usual, the picture doesn't do the food justice.

Chicken in sun-dried tomato sauce (serves 4):
1 tbsp butter
1 clove of garlic
1 tbsp flour
3/4 cups chicken stock
4-5 chopped sun-dried tomatoes
1/2 cup double cream
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/4 to 1/2 tsp crushed red peppers
black pepper
2-3 tbsp of oil from the sun-dried tomatoes
4 chicken breasts
cooked pasta
1 cup peas or sweetcorn

The howto:
Finely chop the garlic clove. Melt the butter in a frying pan, cook the garlic until it starts to soften. Add the flour and mix, cook for a minute or so. Add 1/2 cup of the broth, a little bit at a time and mixing thoroughly to avoid any lumps. Add the finely chopped tomatoes, double cream, thyme and peppers and cook for a few minutes. Set aside in a bowl or small saucepan. Clean the pan, add the sun-dried tomato oil and cook the chicken breasts until cooked through (but make sure not to over-cook to avoid them becoming rubbery). Remove the chicken from the pan, add the remaining 1/4 cup of chicken stock, and scrape all the browned goodies from the pan to dissolve in the stock. Add the sauce and mix. Return the chicken to the pan, mix everything and cook until everything is heated thoroughly. Serve with pasta and peas or sweetcorn.

The verdict:
This is without a doubt one of the best chicken recipes ever! I just wanted to eat the sauce with a spoon straight from the pan. Double cream tends to do that... But it's worth every single calorie, I promise you. By a fluke I managed to cook the chicken to perfection, it was cooked through but very moist and juicy. And did I mention the sauce? Garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and just a pinch of heat from the red peppers. Trust me, you have to try this! The sooner the better. I may just make another batch this weekend again. Unless Pinterest pops up with another chicken recipe I want to try. But I find it hard to believe anything can be better than this!

Super quick salad for busy DIY evenings

I'm not a DYI person. I just decided that. The last three nights have been spent washing walls. Yes, me and a sponge and walls. Two bedrooms and a living room in three nights. I am counting my blessings that New Home didn't need any improvement at all. We just moved our stuff in and got on with business. But the bachelor pad is another story. Once we got most of the stuff out of there, it was clear it needed a bit of sprucing. Well, more like major sprucing. So we have spent every evening this week after work cleaning and preparing for painting. I know it's only going to be for a few days, probably this and next week. But it's a lot of work. When I get back home I pretty much fall into bed. But hopefully the apartment will be finished soon enough and normal life can resume.

As a result of spending all my nights in DIY hell, I have learned some surprising things. Such as the fact that you can actually freeze tomatoes whole. Our wonderful little greenhouse is pumping out tomatoes at light speed, and I had great plans of cooking my own tomato purée, crushed tomatoes and basil and tomato passata, but after getting home all dirty and sweaty after a night of DIY cooking is the last thing on my mind. So I perused the Interwebs and learned that in fact you can freeze tomatoes whole. Obviously you don't want to eat them raw afterwards but they still retain their lovely summery flavour when you use them for cooking. So I have harvested each day's crop of tomatoes and shoved them in the freezer. Along with some gooseberries I picked today as we got home a tad earlier than usual. Apparently they too can be frozen whole and then used for a crumble.  Perfect, as I love a good crumble.

Today's recipe is a result of what we happened to have hanging around. It doesn't look like much, but it turned out so incredibly good that I had to share it here. Sometimes the combination of pretty ordinary ingredients just work out perfectly. I didn't particularly measure any ingredients, just went with it, and you can adjust everything to taste.

Weekday dinner pasta salad (serves 4-5):
4 cups cooked pasta
2/3 cucumber
300 g cherry tomatoes
1 yellow sweet pepper
1/2 red sweet pepper
2/3 cups olives
2 tins of tuna (in oil of course...)
3-4 heaped teaspoons of chilli pesto (or more if you like a bit of kick in your salad)

The howto:
This isn't all too complicated. Chop up your cucumber and peppers, mix everything together. Dinner is served!

The verdict:
My photos just keep getting worse and worse. In my defence, I'm not entirely sure where my camera is right now, and I only snapped a pic of this salad after having a few mouthfuls (right out of the bowl I'm embarrassed to admit) and it was just too good to not include here. However, I was also ravenously hungry and there was no way I was going in search of my camera, not to mention trying to take a good picture. After all, it's pasta salad. How photogenic can that be? So the long and short of it is... it's quick and easy to make, you can whip it up in minutes (if you have pre-boiled pasta, if not, in a few minutes plus however long it takes to cook the pasta) and it's so delicious you will be looking forward to lunch the next day just so that you can have some more. I'm sure it's the fiery pesto that is the secret ingredient, it goes perfectly with the tuna. Go figure, but I swear it's the truth! 

Tuna and sweet corn pasta

Two more days of my holiday week to go. And the weather is miserable. But I haven't let that bother me, and I might just be imagining but there could be just a tiny sliver of blue sky showing right now. On Monday we finished the move, all my stuff hauled to my new temporary home. And I spent the evening cleaning every nook and cranny of my tiny little apartment. It was quite emotional, thinking of everything that has happened there, and then locking that door for the last time. On Tuesday I returned the keys to the letting agency and felt a bit homeless. But yesterday I had a wonderful day in my new home town. Well, it's not like I wouldn't have known it already, having spent most weekends of the last year here, but it was weird being out on the town without the Culinary Consultant. I ran some long overdue errands, and got my oh-so-long-overdue haircut. Now I feel like a new person. I didn't cut my hair in over a year, and it was disgusting. Now it's back to the bob I have been wearing for a few years. It's so much lighter than the full head of long hair I have suffered from lately. It's quicker to dry after the gym, and it reduces the amount of shed hair in the apartment significantly. Well, probably it doesn't affect the number of hair, but they are shorter and hence make less of a mess. I found a really nice (and reasonably priced!) hairdresser. I also managed to get an appointment to have my eyesight tested, and turns out I need new glasses. Which I was expecting. So I get to do the fun part of trying on new glasses!

On Tuesday I also had my last driving lesson. I decided to take a few driving lessons over here in topsy turvy land, just to be safe out there on the roads. I think I did quite good, and I managed to find a great teacher. So now I can't wait to buy myself a little car and get out there on the roads. It has been many years since I have had a car, and I love the idea of liberty it will give. Right now, if I want to get somewhere, I have to walk or bike. And because my bike is in several pieces right now for storage purposes, I am limited to walking. Or taking the bus. So I think when I get the car, I will drive places just because I can!

Here is another recipe from the kitchen of "use up everything you have stockpiled in your pantry". This time I got another opportunity to work on the several kilograms (yes, really) of pasta that *someone* has stockpiled in their kitchen (and no, it wasn't me!!). 

I absolutely love sweet corn, I could just eat sweet corn on the cob every day. It's just so sweet and... well.. corny. Oh, I'm so funny today, aren't I. Ok, I promise, no more attempts at un-funny jokes. So sweet corn. It goes with so many things, and one of them is definitely tuna. I just love the piles of yellow in the grocery store, I can't walk past them without picking up a cob or two. And after cooking, it turns ever brighter. You can't be depressed after having eaten sweet corn. I decided to make a really quick and easy pasta sauce with bright red tomatoes and happy yellow corn. 

Tuna and sweet corn pasta (serves 4):
2 sweet corns on the cob
1 tbsp olive oil
1 large red onion
2 tins tuna
1 tin tomatoes (plum or chopped)
150 g garlic and herb cream cheese (I used Boursin)
Black pepper
Pasta

The howto:
Cook the sweet corn in boiling water for about 15 minutes, until it turns bright yellow. Let cool, and cut the corn of the cob. Finely chop onion. Get the water boiling for your pasta. Heat olive oil in a large pan and cook onion on medium heat until soft, about 10 minutes. At this point your water should be boiling, so you can throw in your pasta, whatever amount you think is fit for the number of people who will be eating. Add the tomatoes to the onion, and let cook for another 10 minutes or so, letting some of the juices evaporate. Add the tuna, corn and cream cheese, season with black pepper to taste, and let cook until your pasta is done. Drain pasta and mix with the sauce. Serve with some greens (I had steamed mange tout and green beans) or a green salad.

The verdict:
I love making pasta sauces with cream cheese. It's enough to flavour the sauce really beautifully and you don't need to worry about any other seasoning. The flavours are not too strong to overpower the tuna and the sweet corn, but the sauce is really thick and creamy. Obviously it's not directly health food, but then again, it's pasta so what can you do. We ate this after coming home from the gym, and easily destroyed about two thirds of it right then and there between the two of us. And the Culinary Consultant wants me to make it again this weekend, so I think we have a winner on our hands here. 

Card of the day:
These cards are from the archives, as obviously I don't have the space to craft right now. There is one table in the whole house, and it has a bike on it. The Culinary Consultant doesn't have a dining table at all! Talk about bachelor pad... The cards are another attempt at a male card after having some positive feedback on my previous attempt. I used the Hero Arts Sweet Threads Spirals stamp with Tim Holtz distress inks Walnut stain, Vintage photo and possibly one more colour, but I can't remember anymore... sorry! I then stamped the lion from the Tim Holtz Regal Flourish set with Walnut Stain and Vintage Photo and cut it out using a template and scissors. I stamped the sentiment using Distress inks, stamping twice with two different colours. I then used ink blending foam and distress ink around the edges of each of the pieces before matting onto orange and gold paper and attaching to craft card. The photo doesn't quite dot he colours justice, I think they turned out quite fun. I really miss crafting, I can't read any crafting blogs because it just makes me want to get my hands dirty again. I am clearly dulling my pain with shopping, as I have bought a ridiculous amount of crafting supplies on Ebay ever since I had to pack everything into boxes. I should just delete my Ebay account for my own safety. And I got some birthday presents to further fuel my crafting madness. As soon as I finally have my craft room, I won't leave it for days!!

Bean and bacon lasagna

Greetings again from my little shoebox of an apartment, which is made even smaller by the piles of moving boxes waiting for the end of May. I'm lucky we will have a bank holiday Monday coming up in a few weeks, which will be a perfect moving day. Sadly it will mean I won't have time for any birthday celebrations this year, but hopefully I can make up for that later in the summer. For now, I'm still busy trying to use up all the food I have stockpiled in my kitchen. Oh how I wish I would learn from this and not hoard food in the future. It's crazy, I will probably be able to go all of May without grocery shopping (apart from the occasional fresh fruit/veg and milk) and just use up stuff I have hoarded. I keep thinking I will have to be incredibly firm with the whole no-hoarding rule in the new kitchen though, as the Culinary Consultant is even worse at hoarding than I am. Maybe we should join hoarders anonymous or something. I will have to give up the luxury of being within walking distance of a handful of grocery stores though. Well, I will be giving up on the luxury of being within walking distance of anything but sheep, it seems. Maybe a cow or two also, but that's it. And I worry, that if I have managed to stockpile all this food into a kitchen the size of a stamp, what will happen when I have a proper kitchen with loads of cupboards? I can already see it in my head. Piles and piles of tins, beans and rice which are months if not years out of date. Does anyone have a good system to prevent this? Maybe hook everything up to a database with expiry dates, which would send emails when things are about to expire. "Warning, you have three kilograms of pasta which will expire in three days."

I have been wracking my brain to come up with ways to use up all the beans in my pantry. And to add insult to injury, I found another four packs of chickpeas hiding at the bottom of a bag stuffed into a corner. I have been throwing various things into the slow cooker over the last few weeks, mainly tinned tomatoes and beans. This time I just had to come up with something different. So after rooting through my pantry a bit more, I also found some lasagna that needed using up. Perfect, bean and bacon lasagna it is. This actually helped me get rid of not only the lasagna but also a pack of chickpeas, two tins of beans, two packs of tomato passata and some bacon and parsley that have been hiding in the back of my freezer. Now I think I'm down to only two tins of beans and three packs of chickpeas. And a freezer bursting at the seams of the various more-or-less disgusting slow cooker bean stews. Pork, beans, tomato and barley or how about chicken, pineapple, coconut milk, beans and quinoa. I still have loads of tinned tomatoes, so I see another few weird bean-and-tomato-and-whatever-else-I-can-find-in-the-house combinations.

Making lasagna from scratch has quite a few steps, but it's worth it in the end. Making your own Bechamel is really rewarding. I used this recipe from Delia on BBC Food. I guess this is as close I will ever come to supporting the Culinary Consultant's football team. Apparently after the last game, they are safe from being relegated, so crisis is averted for this season. I just can't wait for the same craziness to start again next season...

Bean and bacon lasagna (serves 6-8):
Bechamel sauce
1 l semi-skimmed milk
parsley
2 bay leaves
20 whole black peppercorns
2 slices onion (1/4 inch or 5mm thick)
80 g butter
40 g flour
salt and black pepper

In a saucepan slowly bring milk, parsley, bay leaves, peppers and onion to a boil to infuse the flavours. Strain the boiled milk into a jug and discard the flavourings. In a saucepan, melt butter and add flour. Using a wooden spoon, whisk the mixture until smooth. On medium heat, add milk a little at a time (a few tablespoons) and mix until completely smooth before adding more milk. After adding about half of the milk, you can start adding more milk at a time. Keep whisking so that no lumps form. Turn down the heat to low, and let cook for 5 minutes and season to taste (I added a bit of black pepper but no salt, the bacon in the lasagna will be salty enough for my taste).

Lasagna
1/2 tbsp olive oil
8 strips of bacon
2 cloves of garlic (I used smoked garlic because I just loooove it)
2 tins (400 g each) beans (I used butter beans and borlotti beans)
1 pack (380 g) chickpeas
2 packs (390 g) tomato passata (mine had basil in it)
500 g lasagna
1/2 cup of grated cheese (I used mature cheddar)
Bechamel sauce as described above

Finely chop garlic, and cook for a minute or two in a pan with the oil. Add bacon and cook until cooked through. Finely chop the bacon and mix with with the cooked garlic. Preheat oven to 200 degres C. Assemble lasagna in an oven proof dish. Start with about a third of the bechamel sauce, then lasagna, top with one tin of beans and half of chickpeas. Add half of the bacon/garlic mixture. Add one pack of tomato passata and about a third of the cheese. Add another layer of lasagna, the other tin of beans and the rest of the chickpeas. Add the remaining bacon/garlic mix and the other pack of tomato passata. Top with one more layer of lasagna, and add the rest of the bechamel on top, along with the rest of the cheese. Bake for about an hour until golden and bubbly.

The verdict:
As so many times before, I apologize for the utterly terrible photos. The tiny apartment makes any kind of food photography challenging under the best of circumstances. As the apartment is currently full of moving boxes, I would say that's a far shot from the best of circumstances. Also, as usual I was cooking way too late in the evening to have any resemblance of daylight left when the food was done, and the alternatives were taking crappy pictures or taking no pictures at all. I will leave it up to you to decide which one you would prefer, but this is what I went with. However, to my utter joy the flavour of the food was nothing like the pictures. Unlike most of my recent bean concoctions which have ranged from almost acceptable to purely disgusting, this actually turned out really delicious. If you want to make it vegetarian, you can exclude the bacon, but I think it really brings a lovely flavour to the rather mild beans, along with the soft and full flavour of the smoked garlic. I fed this to the Culinary Consultant, and he also ate it without any complaints. Although to be fair, he eats pretty much anything without complaints. But still, I consider this creation quite a success, and after I have gotten over my trauma of eating nothing but beans for the better part of two months, I might even make this again. I think this goes to show that as long as you have tomato passata and bechamel, anything you put between sheets of lasagna will taste like proper lasagna. Oh and if you are looking for other somewhat non-traditional takes on lasagna, take a look at my accidental sea-food lasagna.

Card of the day:
I made this for a chocoholic friend, with a sentiment inside saying "if all else fails, there's always chocolate". I cut out two different sized squares from brown cardstock, and used vintage photo and walnut stain distress inks around the edges. I attached them using dimensionals to look like pieces of a chocolate bar. For the bottom of the card, I used a part of a real chocolate wrapper and some aluminium foil. I stamped the sentiment using Hobbycraft black pigment ink, cut it out with scissors and used ink blending foam and spun sugar distress ink around the edges. Matted with some white cardstock, again with vintage photo and walnut stain blended around the edges, and to finish, everything was adhered onto pink cardstock.

The cheese obsession, part 2

My cheese obsession is showing no signs of wearing off. I was totally blown away with my first ever attempt at making cheese and I immediately decided I want to try to use goat's milk as well. So I did. I was also curious to see how the cheese would behave when cooked, so I decided to make meat balls stuffed with cheese. The original plan was to add chives and garlic to the cheese for seasoning. However, I couldn't get chives when I went to do my grocery shopping, and was too lazy to walk to the next grocery store, so I decided to use spring onions and garlic instead. 


I have been trying to find something sensible I could use to replace bread crumbs which seem to be ubiquitous in all recipes for anything-balls or anything-patties and so many other places. Well, I finally found it. And, like in this recipe where I used it to replace rice in the brown rice pie crust, it's quinoa to the rescue. I think it's the perfect replacement for bread crumbs. Higher in protein, lower in carb. And it tastes much better!


I'm so proud of this recipe, it's one that I'm going to claim I created pretty much from scratch. I did get some inspiration for the seasoning of the mince meat from the Salisbury steaks from One Perfect Bite, the original recipe for the cheese is from Homesick Texan and I got some inspiration for the marinara sauce here. And I bet you will say there surely are recipes for goat's cheese stuffed meatballs somewhere out there in the wide world of the web. I'm sure there is. But after a bit of googling, I still could not find one with home made, fresh, lovely and creamy goat's milk cheese. So I will claim this as the InvisiblePinkMeatball recipe. I'm sure even the Flying Spaghetti Monster would approve!

InvisiblePinkMeatBalls, aka Meatballs stuffed with home made garlic and spring onion goat's milk cheese (makes 6 big meatballs):


For the goat milk cheese (you only need half of this recipe for the meatballs, enjoy the rest with some good fresh bread and a splash of olive oil):
2 l whole goat's milk
1/4 cup white wine vinegar (I used malt vinegar) or 1/2 cup lemon juice
1 large clove of garlic
3 spring onions
2 tsp salt


For the mince:
300g lean beef mince
50 g (dry weight) quinoa, cooked according to instructions with 1/6 veggie stock cube
1/2 egg
2 cloves of garlic
2 spring onions
3 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp Rendang chilli paste
1 tsp ground black pepper


For the marinara sauce:
400g tin of chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp rapeseed, olive or coconut oil
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
5 tbsp parsley
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp dried oregano
2 tsp black pepper
pinch of sugar


The howto:
The instructions on how to prepare the cheese are in my previous post here. To recap very shortly: Gently heat the milk to 85 degrees C (right before it begins to boil for those of you who don't have a thermometer). Add the vinegar or lemon juice, and gently let the milk cook for another few minutes. It will curdle (start to look lumpy and disgusting). Strain the curds in a colander lined with muslin or cheese cloth. After letting the curds drain for a few minutes, mix in finely chopped garlic, onions and salt (if doing this by hand, I suggest you wear rubber gloves as the mixture is hot). Make a ball out of the cheese, and tie the muslin tightly, hang somewhere to drain for at least a few hours, possibly over night. 

When cheese is done, preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Mix together all of the ingredients for the mince in a bowl. Take half of the cheese and make six balls out of it. The rest can be stored in the fridge for up to a few days (for as long as the milk you used would be good).  Divide the mince batter into six parts. Wrap the cheese balls in mince, making sure to get an even coverage with no parts of the cheese visible through gaps in the minced meat dough. Bake the meatballs in the oven for 25 minutes. 

While the meatballs are cooking in the oven, prepare the tomato sauce. Chop the garlic and onions. Sauté the onions in the olive oil for a few minutes, add the garlic and sauté for another few minutes. Add the tomatoes and the rest of the ingredients, and bring to a boil and let simmer for 20 minutes or so. At this point you can use a handheld mixer to puree the tomato sauce if you want to.Transfer the meatballs into the tomato sauce, and let cook for 10 minutes. Serve with pasta or mock pasta made from courgette.


The verdict:
This is definitely one of those moments when I wish there was a way to transmit scents over the Interwebs. The mince mixed with all that seasoning just smelled heavenly. And it really is my best mince meat dough ever. It comes with a small warning though, it does not stay together quite as well as ordinary mince with bread crumbs. But I still think substituting bread with quinoa is brilliant, if you just remember to be very gentle when moving the meatballs around. And cooking them in the oven until almost ready is quite essential for this recipe, as they are rather big, so I think cooking them in the marinara sauce from the start could take quite a while. Although, if you happen to have a Crockpot, I think cooking them in there should work very well.


And then the goat's milk cheese. It ended up being a bit different from the cow's milk cheese I prepared with exactly the same method. I don't know if this is due to differences in the proteins of goat's milk versus cow's milk, or if it's because I used cider vinegar the first time and malt vinegar the second. The goat's cheese resulted in softer, more velvety curds, and the cheese stayed creamier through the whole process (despite being drained for a longer time). I think this might be because the goat's milk is a tad higher in fat (it says "under 4% fat" whereas the cow's milk is 3.6%). Also, the goat's milk was only lightly homogenised, not sure if that makes a difference as well.


All in all, this turned out to be a very successful combination which I'm very proud of. Next time I might spice up the goat's cheese even more, with a tad more garlic and possibly a bit chilli as well to give it a bit of a kick. 

Lucky coincidence seafood lasagna

Putting together a three course menu always requires a bit of thought. I usually start with an idea for a main course and then build around that. It's a bit of a puzzle to put together a nice balanced menu trying to somehow tie together the dishes while still keeping a balance. If there is cheese in the starter and main, it might not be a good idea to bake a cheese cake for pudding, that sort of thing. I finally managed to settle on a nice combination of dishes, and headed off to the grocery store. Only to realise there is no way I would be able to cook what I planned as I couldn't get the main ingredient. Sob. Happened to me last Saturday. There I was in the grocery store, trying to come up with an alternative. I had settled on a bit of an Italian theme, melon with parma ham and Burrata with tomatoes and basil for a starter, mussels in white wine and freshly baked cheese bread for the main and then lemon and meringue pie for pudding. Turns out there were no fresh mussels. Panic!!! And you know how your brain always shuts down when you need it the most. There I was, the person who could list a dozen of dishes I want to cook in a minute, not coming up with anything. Ok, so Italian theme. Pasta. No mussels, but maybe sticking with sea food. Salmon! Salmon pasta. Then I remembered Best Friend talking about a smoked salmon lasagna she had made and it turned out great. Breakthrough! Smoked salmon and king prawn lasagna with sundried tomatoes and a lovely Bechamel sauce made from scratch. Lots of parmesan and mozzarella. Problem solved!

I have to admit this was the first time I have ever made proper Bechamel sauce, and I'm happy to announce that it was a success. The secret is to boil everything slowly enough so that you won't burn the milk or the flour so that the sauce stays nice and white. And to use a lot of onion and pepper. I managed to get a wonderful, creamy and delicious sauce using this recipe.


Seafood lasagna (serves 6-8):
For the Bechamel sauce:
1 l milk
a couple stalks of parsley
1 shallot
2 bay leaves
20 black peppers
80 g butter
40 g white flour
salt and black pepper


300 g fresh lasagne
200 g smoked salmon
200 g king prawns
300 g mozzarella
100 g grated parmesan
1 jar sundried tomato paste (finely chopped sundried tomatoes in olive oil)
white wine


The howto:
Start by preparing the Bechamel. Finely chop the onion, and add the onion, parsley, bay leaves and black peppers to the milk and bring it slowly to a simmer (yes the secret is to do it very slowly, and stir every once in a while to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan). Then strain the milk. Melt butter in a pan, and when melted, add the flour. Make sure to keep a low or medium heat so that the butter doesn't brown. Stir rapidly to make a gooey paste. Add milk in very small amounts while stirring rapidly to the butter and flour to make sure no lumps form. After adding half of the milk, you can start adding the milk in slightly more at a time, and keep whisking with a ballon whisk. Bring everything slowly to a simmer and let simmer for about five minutes, or until the sauce is thick and shiny. Season with salt and pepper. Go light with the salt, as the smoked salmon will bring quite a bit of salt to the dish.


Line an oven proof dish with lasagna, spread tomato paste on the pasta and add smoked salmon, grated Parmesan and a quarter of the Bechamel sauce. For the next layer, use prawns and mozzarella instead of salmon and Parmesan, and make the third layer identical to the first. Top with a layer of pasta, and pour Bechamel sauce and white wine over the top, and finish off with the rest of the mozzarella. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until the lasagna is bubbling and mozzarella is golden brown. 

Ready to go into the oven, with mozzarella
and creamy dreamy Bechamel on top.

The verdict:
Sundried tomatoes and salmon. And lots of cheese, and a creamy dreamy Bechamel. A splash of white wine, and more of the same in a glass to accompany the food. Admittedly not health food in any way, but amazingly good. And it was as terrific re-heated the next day. And the day after. I ate way too much of it. And will be making another batch very soon, as this was one of the best things I have eaten in a long time, even if I say so myself. I'm actually happy I didn't end up getting any mussels as it resulted in this amazing dish. Talk about lucky coincidences.