Veggie Lasagne

I'm not a vegetarian but I love vegetarian food! I'm a bit of a lasagne lover (mostly because of the cheese!) and after becoming bored with the usual meat sauce, I thought, why not give it a veggie spin?! I decided to have a try at making my very own veggie lasagne. :) Aside from the cheese/white sauce, this recipe is completely my own creation, so it might not be perfect - but I thought it was yummy :) Add, remove, and experiment with ingredients to your hearts content; I hope you enjoy making this as much as I did!


Ingredients
- 1 pack of no cook lasagne (depending on the size/shape of tray you use, this varies; I used about 15)
- a splash of olive oil
- 1 large onion
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 courgettes
- 2 large aubergines
- a generous handful of mushrooms (or about 100g)
- a pinch oregano
- 1 bay leaf
- a pinch of basil
- 400g chopped tomatoes
- t tbsp tomato puree
- 1/2 glass of red wine
- 150g - 200g of spinnach
- Salt & pepper

For the white sauce;

- 50g butter
- 50g flour
- 1 pint milk
- 150g cheese, grated
- sprinkle of parmesan


Serves 4-6


Prepare the veg; peel and chop the aubergine into slices, chop the courgette, mushrooms and onion. Crush the garlic or chop finely.

In a pan, heat the olive oil and gently cook the garlic and onion until soft. Add the tinned tomatoes, the tomato puree, the wine, the mushrooms, and the courgettes. Add the oregano, the bay leaf, and the basil. Simmer for 10-20 minutes until the veg begins to soften. In a separate bowl, soak the sliced aubergine in a bowl of warm water and salt.

In a new pot, make the white roux sauce. melt the butter, and add the flour, stirring all of the time until a 'dough' ball is formed. Add the milk a little at a time, until a think sauce is formed. You can add more or less milk if you want a thicker or thinner sauce. Add about 3/4 of the cheddar cheese.

heat the oven to 180 Celsius, and add the spinach to the tomato sauce. (NOTE: if you are using frozen spinach, add this at the beginning).

Layer the aubergine into the tray. Pour over some of the tomato sauce(remember to remove the bay leaf!). Layer on sheets of lasagne until it fully covers the sauce. Pour on some of the white sauce, and then repeat, adding aubergine, tomato sauce, lasagne sheets and white sauce. Repeat until all of the mix is used up; this usually takes 2 layers of tomato sauce for me. Finish the final layer with the cheese sauce, the remaining cheese and some parmesan.

Cover the tray with tinfoil and pop into the oven for 30-40 minutes. Once the sheets have softened (test with a knife!) remove the tinfoil and let the top go lovely and crispy, for about 10-20 mins.

And you're done! Hope you enjoy :)

Chilled Strawberry Cheesecake with Choclate sprinkles

Cheesecakes; so fun to make and so tasty to eat!

This recipe is based on THIS one. For some reason it didn't quite set; perhaps reducing the amount of whipping cream might help? be aware though that I haven't tried this, so it would be an experiment! In the future I will try my hand at gelatin cheesecakes and baked cheesecakes - these are much more likely to set!

Ingredients;
- 100g digestive biscuits or cookies
- 50g castor sugar
- 50g butter
- 500g full-fat cream cheese (I used marscapone)
- 100g icing sugar
- 150g Strawberries
- Choccie sprinkles!



First comes the best part! in a freezer bag, smash the cookies/biscuits to smithereens. Using a rolling pin helps, but make sure not to smack your hand! In a pan, gently melt the butter, and then pour this into a mixing bowl along with the castor sugar and the biscuit crumbs. It should looks something like wet sand (appetising!)

Smooth this into a 20cm cake tin. Lining it with baking parchment means that you can lift it out of the cake tin and neatly serve it, so I'd advise doing this too. Press down until the mixture is even and chill until set.

In a mixing bowl, mix together the cream cheese and icing sugar until well mixed. In a separate mixing bowl, whip the whipping cream until it is light and stuff. You can test this by holding it upside down; it shouldn't fall out of the bowl! It's much quicker to use an electric whisk to do this (trust me, I speak from previous experience!) but you can do it by hand if you want. Just be aware that you may be there for sometime!

Fold this into the cream cheese mix, and then blend about 100g of the strawberries. Add this to the mixture.

Once well mixed, spoon this mixture over the chilled biscuit base. Decorate the top with choccie sprinkles and the remaining strawberries. Leave in the fridge to set for a couple of hours!


Hopefully yours will set better than mine! *sob* Let me know :)

Creamy salmon pasta

I was actually inspired to make this by a recipe on the back of the salmon packet! I decided to alter it a little and make it my own, by adding a few ingredients and removing others. This serves two and is really simple to make :)




Ingredients
150-200g of penne pasta, depending on how much you want.
200g smoked salmon, chopped
150g double cream
4 generous tablespoons of cream cheese (plus more for serving)
salt and pepper for seasoning


First, cook the pasta according to usual packet instructions. You can add a few drops of lemon juice if you like!
When this is almost done, gently warm the cream and half of the salmon. Don't let it boil, boiled cream is not nice!
Add four tablespoons of cream cheese and let it all melt together. Continue heating for about five minutes, then toss season with salt and pepper.
Toss the sauce into the pasta, and top with the remaining salmon and another dollop of cream cheese.

Enjoy!

Garlic and Anchovy Pasta

Wow, it's been a very long while since I updated here! I should hopefully be updating more regularly; I'm trying to be more organised!

I'm going 'bring it back' with one of my favourite recipes at the moment. I discovered it in "Sam Sterns' Student Cookbook" and adapted it a little to make it my own. It's most definitely not to everyone's tastes but I LOVE IT, and so thought I'd share as it;s so simple to make.

It serves two, (but I like to use the specified amount of sauce for one person...what can I say, I like strong flavours!)

Ingredients;
-200g dried spaghetti
-1 x 50g tin of anchovies
-4 cloves garlic
-1 tablespoon of olive oil (I use the stuff that comes with the anchovies)
-Squeeze of lemon
-1 chilli (optional)




Finely chop the garlic, anchovies, and chilli if using.
Boil a pot of water, and cook the pasta as according to instructions on the packet.
When the pasta is almost done, heat up some oil in a pan, and chuck in the garlic. Cook the garlic gently, making sure it doesn't go brown (This ruins the garlicky flavour!) and add the chilli and anchovies. Turn down the heat and mix until it's all goey and smelling yummy!
Drain the pasta, and mix in the garlicky sauce.
Serve!

Cupcakes!

Everyone loves to remember their childhood and this is the perfect way! Cupcakes, Fairy cakes, or buns; call them whatever you want, but they are fun to make and taste great!




Ingredients;

-150g self raising flour
-1 teaspoon baking powder
-110g soft butter
-2 eggs
-2/3 tablespoons cocoa powder
-A little vanilla extract
For the icing;
-275g icing sugar
-20g cocoa powder
-110g butter
-3/4 tablespoons water
-Sweets e.t.c. for decorating

Bun cases!

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/gas mark 6, and set out the bun cases (preferably onto bun trays, but a baking tray will do. Just be sure to double up the bun cases if you're using a baking tray, for a bit of extra strength).
Mix all the cake ingredients together in a bowl, and mix quickly with a wooden spoon until soft and creamy. Split the mix into two bowls, and in one bowl add some cocoa powder. Put about 1 teaspoon of each mixture into each bun case. They should look something like this:





Cook the buns in the oven for about 15 minutes or until browned. Now, they are ready to decorate!

To make the icing, gently melt the butter (mixed with the water) in a pot. Don't boil. Mix into the icing sugar, and like with the cake mix, split into two bowls and add cocoa powder to one of them. Decorate, and eat!

Lemon Chicken

This is a really, really nice dish! It's pretty easy too. The recipe here serves 2 people.

Ingredients;

-2 chicken breasts (or 1 per person)
-110g basmati or long grain rice
-1/3 tablespoon vegetable oil
-4 drops sesame oil
-1 clove thinly sliced garlic
-1 tablespoon of lemon juice
-2-3 spring onions, chopped
Marinade;
-2 cloves thinly sliced garlic
-1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
-1 tablespoon cornflour
-6 drops of soy sauce
-A little egg white

First, mix together all of the marinade ingredients. Stir this into thinly sliced chicken. I usually leave the marinade to sit overnight, in a sealed container in the fridge but if you want to use it right away, that's fine too!

Put the rice into a pot, and add lots of water (just over double the amount of rice there is) bring to boil and salt.

Heat a wok or pan, and add the vegetable and sesame oil. If you can get groundnut oil instead of veg oil that's great, but substituting the sesame oil for another oil really changes the taste (I did this the first time I made it, and it was nowhere NEAR as nice as it was when I made it the second time, using sesame oil!) so I don't advise it. Stir fry the garlic quickly for 20 seconds; don't brown! Next, add the marinaded chicken. Stir fry quickly for 3 minutes until cooked white all the way through (this is why it's important to cut your chicken extra thin!). Reduce the heat, and add the lemon juice and spring onion.

dish up with your rice, and you're done!

Chickpea Burgers

These we seriously yummy! They did however break apart a little - this seems to happen every time I use chickpeas in cooking and I don't know what I'm doing wrong - if anyone could shed some light on this it would be great!



ingredients;
-3 tablespoons Oliver Oil
-1 onion, finely chopped (should weigh aprox 110g)
-2 cloves of crushed garlic
-1 small chili (optional)
-1 tablespoon ground coriander
-1/4 tablespoon turmeric
-1 teaspoon ground cumin
-200g finely chopped mushrooms
-juice of 1 lime (I used lemon, and they were still yummmy!)
-1 x 400g tin of chickpeas (drain before use)
-75g fresh breadcrumbs
-A few splashes of Tabasco sauce (optional)
-salt & pepper
-Some white flour for coating

First, heat the olive oil in a pan. Fry the onion and garlic very gently, for about five minutes until soft. Add the chilli, cumin, coriander, turmuric, and cook for about three minutes, stirring carefully.Add the mushrooms and lime (or lemon) juice. Cook for another five minutes and remove from heat.Crush the chickpeas with a fork or blender, and add to the fried vegetables along with the breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, and Tabasco if you are using it!

This is where it gets messy! Spread a flour coating on a plate, and shape the chickpea mix into about 6 burgers with your hands, being very gentle. Roll the burgers into the flour, and leave to chill for at least 15 minutes. Once chilled, fry in a little olive oil for about 5 minutes or until cooked.

Your burgers are now done! Eat them on their own, in a bun, in pitta, however you want! I added some mayo mixed with sweet chili sauce and some spring onions.