Resurrection and almost-but-not-quite-lasagna

Let's dust this thing off and see what happens. Been an uninspiring winter, but since we're a week from Midsummer that's not a very adequate excuse anymore. Pictures have been taken throughout spring but never edited nor uploaded. Some of them are very, very lazy and very, very silly. Darkness does that to you.

On to the good stuff, though: I've been seeing this idea of substituting lasagna sheets for courgettes floating around on the internet. I was dismayed. Why would anyone substitute delicious pasta for soggy, tasteless, suspicious courgettes? As it turns out, they do it because it's fucking delicious.

Of course, you can make this lasagna with pasta sheets too. If you do, remember to drizzle on some milk before you put it in the oven, to make sure the pasta cooks properly, even the top sheet.

This recipe contains two things I previously despised, courgettes and mushrooms. Then I took a long look at myself and asked if I A) am an adult; and B) really want to complicate my vegetarian life by ruling out two pretty big, common ingredients. So here we go.


Not-quite-lasagna
Serves 2-3

2 large courgettes, halved and sliced lengthways into strips
Handful button mushrooms, sliced (more if you have no fear of mushrooms)
3 cloves garlic, crushed (my cloves on the picture were tiny, fear not)
Fresh parsley, chopped
Butter/oil for frying
Salt & pepper

1 onion, chopped
1 can crushed tomatoes
1-2 cloves garlic
Tomato paste
(Soy crumbles)
Oregano
Marjoram
Salt

Half a tub unseasoned cream cheese
Half a tub cream cheese with herbs
Half a bag frozen, chopped spinach (or fresh, sautéed for a minute until slightly wilted)
Grated cheese
Pinch of nutmeg

Fry your strips of courgette in butter, parsley and garlic until browned on both sides and slightly softened (slightly is the operative word here). Put aside. Fry the mushrooms in the same stuff until they're browned and considerably smaller. They shrink a lot as the moisture evaporates. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

Make your tomato sauce by frying the onion in some oil until softened and translucent. Add garlic, fry a minute or two, then add crushed tomatoes, tomato paste and spices and let simmer while you deal with the cheese mixture. If you want to use soy crumbles, use the small, dark kind and be aware that they absorb quite a bit of moisture so if it looks like the sauce is getting too thick, just add a bit of water.

Mix the cream cheeses with the spinach, nutmeg and grated cheese. Done. This is my idea of white sauce, because I really dislike traditional white sauce and it's not on my list of things that are worth learning to enjoy.

Now cover the bottom of a pan (I used a breadpan because there were only two of us and making a massive experimental courgette-lasagna seemed unnecessarily bold) with your courgette slices. Layer on tomato sauce. More courgettes. Layer on cheese mixture. Sprinkle on mushrooms. Keep going until you've run out of filling.

Sprinkle the end result with grated cheese and put it in the oven on 225 C for about 10 minutes. The short cooking time is an upside of not using pasta. It's done when the cheese is browned on top. The weird blobs on my lasagna are blobs of cream cheese mixture, which I made too much of even though I didn't have all the spinach specified in this recipe. The store didn't have spinach, fresh or frozen. Don't go to Siwa.

The above images are misleading. This is what it looks like after a night in the fridge. Straight out of the pan it looks more like this.

Bean & lentil soup with roast pepper cream, aw yeah!

Also first real post, complete with cruddy pictures. My dear ma has decided to bequeath her camera to me since she doesn't use it, so stay tuned for better quality photos. Don't count on my photography skills to magically improve, but you'll get more pixels for your buck.

Chewed carrot courtesy of a ravenous nerd who took some time out of his Skyrim binge to raid the pantry.

On to the vitals! Food was made tonight, and turned out quite brilliant despite some initial setbacks. The recipe originally calls for black beans but the store didn't have those so I used brown beans and green lentils (which weren't green at all, to my surprise) and it turned out just as good. I know, because I've made this before. With black beans. Uh huh. I'll admit it looks more striking with black beans, but whatevs.

This is a two-part thing which makes it look like a lot of work. However it's not too bad since the soup really doesn't need much attention and you can do the cream while it's simmering away. Recipe is calculated for about 6 people. Half will feed two really hungry ones.

The Soup Bit:

1 onion, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
1 stick celery, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped. I like garlic, I put three. Two will probably suffice.
2 tsp cumin. Ground or whole, whichever you've got.
8 decilitres vegetable broth. If you want to toil in the kitchen forever, you'll make this from scratch. I used cubes.
2 cans (à 400g) brown beans
1 can green lentils.
Some vegetable oil and some butter, for frying. If you leave out the butter, this stuff is vegan (not counting the cream. More on that later.)

You want a big-ish saucepan. Heat oil and butter over medium heat and throw in your chopped onion, carrot, celery and garlic. Let them fry for 3 minutes or so, then add a decilitre or two of water and put the lid on the saucepan.

All hail the ugly saucepan!

Let the vegetables sweat in there for about 10-15 minutes, checking every once in a while and adding more water if it looks like they're sticking to the bottom. Then add the cumin and let it fry for a moment to let it do its thing and release flavour. Drain the beans and the lentils and throw them in the pot, then add the broth. Let simmer on medium-low heat for about 10 minutes more.

Doesn't it look delicious...

Meanwhile!

The Cream Bit:

2 red peppers.
½ a chili, depending on how hot you like it.
Juice of half a lime
½ decilitre (50 ml) cream of some sort. Substitute dairy-free alternative for a completely vegan meal.

This is the bit that takes a bit of work, and you can certainly make it easier for yourself by buying canned, roasted peppers. I roasted the damn things myself, which isn't really very difficult. Cut them up into bits and oil them with some olive oil (or whatever oil, really), inside and out.

Put them in the oven on 200 C for about 15 minutes, or until the skin starts looking a bit burned. Take them out and peel off the burned skin, which should come off easily by now. Slippery skinless pepper is slippery.

Put your slippery peppers, along with Mr. Chopped-up Chili Juice-of-Half-a-Lime here, in the blender along with a generous splash of olive oil. Blend the buggers until they start looking uniform. Add the cream only once you're happy with the rest of the texture or you'll end up with roast pepper-chili-lime butter. I know, because I did the first time. It was still delicious, but looked very suspect.

I can haz Photoshop.

Now, return your attention to your patiently waiting soup. Grab a mixer, any mixer. Unless you have an industrial-size blender, all of the soup is probably not going to fit. I discovered this, too, through trial and error. Wise from experience, I'd urge you to use an immersion blender AKA stick blender since it's faster and easier and less likely to end in expressionist bean art on your kitchen wall. 

Blend until more or less smooth and pour into bowls. Artfully drizzle some of your roast pepper cream on top (or do like I did and awkwardly spoon it on, whichever). If you have a green twig of some sort, you can do some further decorating. I only had parsley and I don't think parsley would do this soup any favours so I opted for the minimalist approach.