Vegetarian Lasagna

When I find I have some free time, usually during the holidays, I always make a batch of vegetarian lasagna. I freeze most of it and take it to university for lunches during semester or have it for dinner on busy nights when I don't have the time or energy to cook.

The layers are roasted pumpkin, sauteed eggplant, and spinach and ricotta, all with a tomato and herb sauce. The lasagna is topped with a cheese sauce. 

For the full recipe follow this link vegetarian lasagna 

So messy and delicious! I find this style of cooking the most rewarding, when I can freeze 6 or 8 serves of this meal for another day. My freezer is full of home made meals ready to be thrown into the oven (or microwave) for a quick, healthy and stress-free meal.

Dont Wait for a Child's Birthday Party or the Next Super Bowl to Make These

These vegetarian sausage rolls are so easy to make, and I didn't believe they were vegetarian when I first ate them. There is a worrying point half way through making these, while spooning the filling onto the puff pastry, where it looks disturbingly like sloppy porridge (oatmeal), but stick with it - it will all be fabulous in the end!
I got this recipe from a friend who said she got it from the sanitarium website, but it doesn't seem to be there anymore.

Ingredients

3 eggs
½ cup pecans
1 large onion, chopped
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 cup low-fat cottage cheese
½ cup dry breadcrumbs
1 cup minute oats
3 sheets reduced fat puff pastry
1 tablespoon soy milk or dairy milk for glazing
2 tablespoons sesame seeds

1. In a food processor blend eggs, pecans, onion, soy sauce and cottage cheese until fine. Transfer to a bowl and mix in bread crumbs and oats.

2. Cut pastry sheet in half and spoon mixture down one edge. Brush other edge with milk. Roll to enclose filling with pastry and repeat with remaining pastry sheets.

3. Cut each log into 4 even lengths. Brush with milk and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

4. Bake in a hot oven, 200°C, for 15-20 minutes or until crisp and golden. Serve with tomato sauce (ketchup).
Makes 24 sausage rolls.

Delightfully Turkish

Going through my freezer I found a batch of falafel from a little while ago, and that was all the excuse I needed to put together this Turkish extravaganza. I do love being on holidays with time for excessive cooking - there is no way this will happen once classes start up again!

Falafel freeze reasonably well, but I haven't yet found a recipe I'm really happy with. I would like to try using dry chickpeas and soaking them myself as I find the falafel I make from tinned chickpeas is too soft and lacking in texture. I would quite like to try this recipe Falafel Recipe from the Closet Cooking blog I follow.

The didn't make the bread myself, I buy it (fresh on the day I intend to serve it) at the local Turkish take away shop, but all the rest I do myself. The yogurt is really easy but makes all the difference, just combine 1/2 cup of low fat natural yogurt, the juice of half a lemon and a tablespoon of tahini, I also garnish mine with sumak but that is completely optional. The tabbouleh is very traditional, very similar to this recipe but I use about 1/2 cup of Bulgar and 3 tomatoes.
I often omit the lamb to have a healthy vegetarian meal, but when I make the effort and include it it's the most popular part of the meal. The natural high fat content of lamb makes this a little less healthy, but also makes it taste like a classic greasy late night kebab. I fry up a diced onion and 2 or 3 crushed cloves of garlic for a few minutes before adding 400g of lamb mince, 1 tsp each of ground Cinnamon, coriander, cumin, and a little Cayenne pepper and salt. The lamb recipe is based on one in The Student Cookbook which I love, it is absolutely full of quick, easy, tasty and mostly healthy recipes.
 

I went even further than usual with this meal and put together a Turkish desert as well. I bought some Turkish delight and made some Turkish themed pastries. The pastries are pistachios, slivered almonds a little sugar, water and rose essence whizzed up in a food processor, wrapped in circles of short crust pastry and baked in the oven. I made a honey and rose essence syrup to drizzle over them.

The Gift of Infinite Chocolate Cake

I love teacups, tea shops, frilly floral or polka dot aprons, gingham tablecloths and anything else related to tea. Cake in a Teacup makes a wonderful, elegant, tasty gift. Include the recipe and you have wrapped up, in cellophane and ribbons, INFINITE chocolate cake!

Mug cake recipes are all over the Internet at the moment, either use a search engine to find one you like, or try this link for ideas:

10 mug cakes that you can make in minutes

I bought a few different cups to give to different people and unfortunately some had metallic paint and could not go in the microwave. I had to get creative cooking the cake in one cup, then transferring it to the metallic cup before dusting with icing sugar. Avoiding cups with metallic paint would be a better solution.
I had to experiment a little to get the right quantity of cake in the cup, there were a few overflow "cake in, on and around a teacup" disasters, a rare incident of too much cake actually being a problem.

I typed up the recipe I used on printable canvas from a stationary supply store, the extra weight and texture just makes it feel more special, and makes it more durable. I also included the box that the teacup came in, it was too pretty to leave out, might be useful for future teacup storage and made gift wrapping easy and pretty. I love playing with ribbons!

Future possibilities for using a stencil when dusting with icing sugar have got me all excited. I'll add some photos as soon as I give it a go!

Tremendous Enthusiasm on Hamburger Night

I made hamburgers for dinner last night.

Actually, I made really EPIC hamburgers for dinner last night.

I like to cook vegetarian most of the time, so when I cook with meat I might go a little crazy, and crazy can be so much fun!

I'm on holidays at the moment, and while I've got the time to enjoy cooking, I wont do anything half way.

To make the burger patties I used a Kilo of lean minced beef, 1 diced brown onion, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup of instant oats, a teaspoon each of soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce and mustard powder, a little cracked pepper and 1/2 teaspoon of chili powder. I shaped the patties and rolled them in flour. Then grill or BBQ or something.
Then the fun really started, I piled bacon, fried egg and grilled pineapple on top of the salad and burger, all in the one hamburger bun. Probably the most indulgent meal I'll eat for a while and it was worth every bit!

Dull Pictures and Disproportionate Excitement about an Organisational Tool

I love cooking and I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. I love organising my kitchen so that I can find things easily, save time and reduce waste. I know the pictures are not very pretty. But this is important!

The average Australian household throws out around $600 of food each year (more info on this study). This is bad for your bank account and bad for the environment.Planning meals and shopping in advance is a great way to reduce food waste. Dinner leftovers for lunch also make an easy way to save money and reduce waste.

I was in a stationary supply shop (staying calm in the presence of so many colourful pens and filing systems...) when I came across A4 sheets of white magnet that can be put through your printer like regular paper.
I made a table in Microsoft word with thick lines and filled in the table with a Monday to Sunday strip, the names of everyone in my family, who, what, and the meals we cook regularly. I printed this onto the magnet and then cut out along the lines of the table.

 
Now I have the magnets on my fridge, I plan the meals every weekend then do the shopping accordingly. If anyone wants to know what's for dinner - the answer is right there. No more getting to the fridge on Thursday to find half a carrot, Parmesan cheese and milk.

 
If I can't think of a meal for a particular night, there is no need to go rifling through recipe books, all our tried and true favourites are right there on the fridge to inspire me. I also added a few blank magnets to fill in with pen later and a series of mix and match magnets such as "wrap" "pasta" "curry" "vegetarian" "Lamb" "Vietnamese" "Mexican" from which I can make things up if I want to cook something for which I don't have a magnet. I could put them together to make "vegetarian curry" "Vietnamese lamb pasta" "lamb wrap" "lamb curry" etc.
To make planning easier I organise the meals on the fridge under the name of the person who usually cooks that meal.

I've been using this system for months now and its still wonderful.

Napoli Sauce to Make your Nonna Proud

I love making my own pasta and have recently been experimenting with sauces and pesto. I had made some ravioli and as I'm quite health conscious, I don't much like burned butter sauces. I wanted a sauce I could use that would be light enough to really emphasise the flavors in the ravioli (spiced butternut pumpkin*, basil and ricotta). A friend had given me a recipe for a basic Napoli sauce, which I tweaked a little and its really good. What I love about Italian food is making the most of simple flavors, it's not fancy or very complex, you just never knew tomatoes could taste so good!

Recipe:

• 4 tablespoons of olive oil
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 red capsicum* roasted, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon of tomato paste
• 4 tins of whole tomatoes (crushed with juice)
• 2 vegetable stock cubes
• 1 tbsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp dried parsley
• 2 tsp dried basil
• pepper to taste

 

Char the skin of the capsicum* over a gas jet or under a grill. When the skin looks black, allow to cool a bit and then peel off the skin. Chop capsicum finely.

Sauté onion in oil on moderate heat until the onion becomes soft and golden, add capsicum and cook for a few minutes more. Add garlic and turn heat up to high for 1-2 minutes.

Return to moderate heat and add tomato paste and cook for one minute

Add crushed tomatoes, herbs, stock cubes and pepper, simmer for approximately 45 minuts, stirring occasionally.

Cool sauce and store for 4-5 days or freeze for long term storage

Serves 8

 

* Butternut Pumpkin is also known as Butternut Squash 

*Red Capsicum is also known as Red Pepper

 

Surprising Sushi Success

I made sushi for the first time last night and was really surprised at how easy it was, and quicker than I expected. It took a little under an hour to make enough for 6 people.

I didn't have a recipe or instructions, so I watched a few youtube tutorials to get an idea of method. The most useful ones were: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K729GqTf2pk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-uFYSB0tR4

I wasn't confident enough to try raw fish, so I made vegetarian sushi. I made some with avocado and sesame seeds, some with carrot, cucumber and avocado (which would have been better with a little pickled daikon) and my favourite, I made tamago (Japanese omelette).  

I watched a few tutorials on how to make tamago and found these to be the most useful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHxGPAajucc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z52CNYOWZRU&feature=related

I managed ok with a circular non-stick fry pan. My tamago was not quite as neat and flawless as in these tutorials, but once you cut it up and roll it into sushi, you'd never know the difference. 

I found different recipes for tamago, some really salty others really sweet, and after one terribly salty failure, succeeded with the following recipe: 3 eggs, 1 tbsp Mirin, 1/2 tsp soy and 150ml water. 

I will definately be making this again, and keeping the leftovers for lunch at university.