Vegetarian Lasagne

Please note that the not-bolognese sauce was adapted from a Rose Elliott recipe in Not just a load of old lentils.

6-8 lasagne sheets, as needed
Grated parmesan cheese (or vegan substitute), to taste

A little cooking oil
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1/2 punnet mushrooms 
1 small tub (I think 50g) walnuts
2 slices bread
1 packet passata
Salt, pepper, mixed herbs, mushroom ketchup

300 ml milk (or vegan substitute)
About 20g butter or cooking oil
1 heaped tsp plain flour
Salt, pepper, mustard powder
Grated Emmenthal, Cheddar, or vegan substitute to taste

Peel and chop the onion; peel and crush the garlic.  Put into a saucepan with the oil and allow to cook for a few minutes while you chop the mushrooms.  Add these, and continue cooking.  Meanwhile blitz the bread and walnuts in a food processor.  When the mushrooms are more-or-less cooked, turn off the heat, add the bread/walnut crumbs, the passata and seasonings to the mix and stir well.  Leave to soak for a bit while you make the bechamel sauce.  I added a spoonful of sunflower seeds to this, just because they were sitting there, looking at me!

For the Bechamel sauce, put the milk, flour and seasonings into a jug and whisk very thoroughly while the butter melts in another saucepan (or the oil heats up); pour this on to the melted fat, and continue to cook, stirring all the time, until it thickens and the mixture boils.  Turn off the heat and add the Emmenthal cheese.  Stir well.

To assemble: Make layers of not-Bolognese, lasagne sheets and Bechamel in a lasagne dish, finishing with Bechamel sauce, and top the lot with grated Parmesan or similar. 

Place on a baking tray in the centre of an oven which you have heated to 200° C (180° fan), Mark 6, and allow to cook for about 30 minutes. 

Bärlauchsuppe (Ramsons soup)

Mum and I went to a farm shop yesterday, and I bought a huge bag of ramsons.  About 250g, I think, but it's like spinach - huge leaves that weigh very little.

125 g (roughly) of ramsons (wild garlic), either bought or foraged
1 onion
1 clove smoked garlic (or ordinary, or omit)
4-5 potatoes
1 litre vegetable stock (a cube is fine!)
1 tbs creme fraiche (optional)

Peel and chop the onion and potato, crush the garlic, put it all in the soup maker with the stock.  Cook on "pureed soup".  When it bleeps, add the roughly-chopped ramsons, and blend until it is smooth.  Add the cream, if using, and check the seasoning. 

If you don't have a soup maker, sweat the veg in a little oil, then add the stock and cook until the potatoes are done, blend it, add the ramsons, and blend again.  Finish as above.

Asparagus risotto

This is the second of my favourite main-course ways of eating asparagus.

1 tbs olive oil
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup (125 ml by volume) risotto rice
250 ml cooking white wine
500 ml stock (chicken, if you're not vegetarian, or vegetable if you are; cube is fine, although fresh always nicer)
About 25g butter
A nice amount of Parmesan cheese, grated
1 tray asparagus + any tough stalk ends you saved from previous recipe

Cut the tough stalks of the asparagus, and put them into a saucepan with the stock; bring to the boil and simmer while the rest of this is happening. 

Put the olive oil, onion and garlic into a pan and cook gently until transparent.  Now add the rice and stir well, and then add the wine.  Bring back to the boil and simmer for 5-8 minutes until it is all absorbed, stirring frequently.  Now add half the stock and continue.  Meanwhile, cook the asparagus - steaming is easiest, but however you prefer.

When the stock has been absorbed, add the rest of it.  Put the now-cooked stems into a food processor and blitz with a little water (or retained stock) until you have a very smooth puree.

  Now continue cooking the rice until all the stock has been absorbed, and then add the asparagus puree, the butter and the cheese, and beat vigorously until all is smooth and gloopy and delicious.

Serve topped with the steamed asparagus.

Serves 2

Asparagus with pasta and pine nuts

The asparagus season is finally here!  Actually, strictly speaking it starts next week, on 23 April, but British asparagus is already beginning to be found in the supermarkets, and I treated us to two trays thereof (only 6-7 spears in each tray, and they were expensive, but worth it).   1Some people just want to eat it as a starter, steamed with Hollandaise sauce, and why not?  Very delicious.  But sometimes you want it as a main meal, and this post and the next are two of my favourite ways of having it.

1 tray British (or local to you) asparagus
40-50 g pine nuts (Lidl sells them in 40g sachets, which is what I used)
100-120 g pasta of your choice
About 50g butter
About - well- a nice amount of Parmesan cheese, grated.

Put the pasta on to cook, and while this is happening, fry the pine nuts in half the butter, stirring all the time, until everything is nicely browned.

Then you can add the rest of the butter and fry the asparagus in the same pan, turning it frequently.  Or, if you prefer, you can steam it - up to you.  I fried ours yesterday, and it was lush.  NB, if you cut off the tough ends of the asparagus, save them for the next recipe!

Mix the pine nuts, cheese and drained pasta together, and top with the cooked asparagus.  Yummy.

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Serves 2.

Stewed squid

The thing about squid is that either you need to just barely show it the stove, as in a stir-fry or battered squid rings, or else you need to stew it thoroughly.  Anything in between and you have india-rubber!

This was a concatenation of several recipes, but I used too much liquid and it came out more like soup than stew - none the worse for that, I may say.  I thought the beans would absorb more than they did.

About 250 g squid - whole, if possible, but rings is fine if that's what you have.
1 large onion
2 carrots
1 leek
1 chili pepper (optional)
1/2 courgette (this would have been a whole one, but I found a half in the fridge that wanted using)
Several small potatoes
1 sloosh tomato paste
1 tin tomatoes or passata
200 ml cooking wine (I used white, as there was some open)
1/2 cup dried pinto beans, soaked overnight
A little cooking oil
Stock cube and other seasoning, as liked.

Peel and chop the vegetables - I didn't peel the potatoes, but did slice them - and do feel free to substitute any or all of them.  Many recipes include celery, but we are not fans of cooked celery, so I tend to substitute leek.  I did think of using a "casserole mix" as Lidl sells pre-prepared vegetables you can use in a casserole, and which make very good soup, too, but had too many vegetables in the fridge to justify doing that.

Sweat the vegetables in the cooking oil,

then add the rest of the ingredients.

I then added 500 ml water, which turned out to be far too much as I was using my Instant Pot for this.  I think probably 200 ml would have been ample, maybe even less, but I hadn't pre-cooked the beans (if I had, I probably wouldn't have added any extra water).  Then cook on high pressure for 20 minutes, or, if you are not using a pressure cooker, simmer for about an hour. 

Braised lamb heart

This was really rather good! No photos, I'm afraid.
 1 packet lamb hearts (Tesco sells packs of 2)
1 tbs plain flour
1/2 cup flageolets
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
2 large tomatoes
1/2 punnet mushrooms
1 chili pepper
1/2 red sweet pepper
1/2 packet "soup mix" vegetables - a mixture of chopped leeks, swede and carrot sold by my local Lidl
1/2 cup pearl barley
1 tbs mint jelly
about 250 ml water
Salt and pepper

Cook the flageolet beans (use any beans you like, but I do like flageolets) - I just put them in the Instant Pot with a bit of bicarbonate of soda, and cooked for 20 minutes, letting them cool naturally. You could use a tin of beans that you have drained and rinsed instead.

Peel and chop all the vegetables, then fry in a little oil until beginning to be soft. Transfer to slow cooker.  Cut the hearts in half and slice them, removing any tuby bits. Fry these in the same pan you have just cooked the vegetables in, adding a little more oil if necessary, and sprinkling them with the flour. Stir vigorously. Then transfer this to the slow cooker, plus the barley.

Deglaze the pan with the mint jelly and water, and season with salt and pepper and any other seasoning you like. Pour this into the slow cooker, stir well, and then cook on auto for about 7-8 hours.

Microwave lemon curd

I find this quicker and easier than the way I used to make it, on the stovetop.  Citrus fruit is in season at this time of year - look out for the Sevilles for your marmalade - so it's a perfect time to make lemon curd and bring a bit of sunshine into dull January!

4 medium unwaxed lemons
450 g sugar
4 eggs
120 g butter

Sterilise a couple of jamjars by washing them in hot water, rinsing, and then putting them into the oven (on low) for at least 10 minutes - do this before you start the rest of the preparation.  This has the great advantage that you then have a large bowlful of clean washing-up water that you can use to wash up as you go along!

I find the easiest way of doing things is to put everything except the butter into a food processor - quite apart from anything else, you can put the lemon zest in in strips and don't have to use a microplane grater, which is boring!  So lemon zest, juice, sugar and eggs go in the food processor and you whizz this while melting the butter in a large microwave-proof bowl.

Then you mix the two together, stir really thoroughly and microwave for about a minute at a time until it begins to thicken, at which time reduce the time to 30 seconds at a time.  Stir vigorously between each bout of microwaving.  When it is thick and delicious, pot it up and enjoy!

It should be kept in the fridge, so I don't bother with cellophane and/or waxed paper, but you can if you prefer.

Rice, beans and mushrooms

Once again, I am inspired by Amuse Your Bouche.  I don't really like cilantro, though, and (at the time I planned this dish) had half a punnet of mushrooms that wanted eaten.  As it turned out, I didn't make this when I first thought of doing so (long story) so make the mushrooms into soup, and bought fresh for this dish.  It was very good, but I wish I'd cooked the beans a little longer!

1/2 cup uncooked black beans
1/2 cup uncooked rice
1/2 punnet mushrooms
3 cloves garlic
1/2 packet cream cheese (I used garlic-and-herb flavoured, but sweet chilli might also have been nice)
A little cooking oil and butter
1 tsp pilau seasoning (or as liked)
2 tsp mushroom ketchup
1 vegetable stock cube

Soak the beans overnight, and then cook in water to which you have added a stock cube in a pressure cooker or Instant Pot - I cooked mine for 10 minutes and they just weren't quite cooked, so maybe 12-15 minutes would be better.

Put a little cooking oil or butter in a saucepan, heat it, then add the pilau seasoning and the rice.  Stir, then add 1 cup salted boiling water.  Stir again, then reduce the heat as low as it will go and leave the rice, covered, to cook undisturbed for 15 minutes.

  Meanwhile, melt the butter in another saucepan and add the crushed garlic, the mushrooms that you have cut or broken into small pieces and the ketchup.  Allow to cook on a low heat. 

When the rice is cooked, stir the cream cheese into the mushrooms, and bring back to the boil; then add the cooked rice and the beans to the same pan.  Serve at once.  Serves 2.

Vegan Scramble

I don't quite know what to call this dish - it is more like an omelette than anything else, but as it is well known that you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.... I think I'll call it a "frittata", in quotes, and have done.  It wasn't very photogenic, so I didn't take a picture.
Thanks to Judy Pearson for suggesting "vegan scramble" as the ideal name  for this dish.

This is basically one of those clean-out-the-fridge dishes that are so very useful!  You fry up a shedload of vegetables, then when they are cooked, pour on a gram flour batter and let that cook, too.  So feel free to use whatever vegetables you have in your fridge that want used up!  I also had some felafel that wanted eating, so added them when I added the batter.

1 onion
1/2 punnet mushrooms
2 tomatoes
The end of a vegetable marrow
1/2 cup gram flour (besan, chickpea flour)
1 tbs olive oil
Enough water to mix to a smooth, pancake-like batter
A little oil for cooking
Seasoning, to taste.

Peel and chop the vegetables, and fry slowly in a little cooking oil in a covered pan until cooked.  Put the flour in a bowl and add the oil and water, mix until very smooth.  Pour over the vegetables (I added leftover falafel at this stage) and cook gently until the top is looking dry; now if you are sensible you'll put it under the grill until the top is cooked, but if you're stupid, you'll do what I did and try to turn it over.  This was not a success - hence the lack of photographs - but I left it to cook for a further couple of minutes, and then dished up.  It was lovely!

Courgette "hummus"

I hadn't made this for years, and had forgotten how good it was. 

1 medium courgette, peeled and cut into small pieces
1 clove garlic, crushed
1-2 tbs tahini
1-2 tbs lemon juice
1-2 tbs extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper, to taste.

Put everything in the food processor and blitz until smooth.  I made this with a hummus-like texture, but you could make it runnier by adding more lemon juice and olive oil.  It makes a fabulous salad dressing, or just a spoonful of deliciousness on the corner of the plate.

Barley Mac

I have been making a lot of lemon barley water during this very hot weather, and the difficulty is to know what to do with the barley!  There is a limit to the amount of barley salad I can eat, much though I love it, and although it is quite nice plain with, for instance, some cooked chicken (I cooked chicken thighs with garlic on the stove top and then soaked the cooked barley in the juices that had run off from them), I thought I would try it as the "pasta" in macaroni cheese.  It was very good indeed.  This is my almost-vegan version of mucky cheese - if you wanted it to be completely vegan you could substitute a vegan "cheese" recipe (they are ubiquitous, just Google) or just add a little nutritional yeast to the sauce, and top the dish with Becca's delicious crispy garlic breadcrumbs.  But for those who do eat cheese, this is delicious "as is".

1/2 cup raw pearl barley, boiled in 1 litre water until cooked (15 minutes in Instant Pot); drained.
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 small tin sweetcorn
1 400g tin chopped tomatoes
3 tsp plain flour (1 small tbs)
1 tsp mixed herbs
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tbs cooking oil (I used stir-fry oil to add a bit of oomph)
Grated cheese (Cheddar or Emmenthal works best) - I used a 200g packet of mature Cheddar.

Drain the tin of sweetcorn and mix it with the barley.  Meanwhile, fry the onions in the cooking oil until soft.  Place the tomatoes, flour and seasoning in a blender and work until smooth.  Pour the result on to the onions, and bring to the boil, stirring all the time.  Remove from heat and stir in half the grated cheese, until it has melted, at which point pour the sauce over the barley and sweetcorn and stir well.  Top with the rest of the cheese (or with crispy garlic breadcrumbs, if you prefer) and bake in a moderately slow oven for about 45 minutes.  Lush!

Vegan paella/risotto/whatever

This was adapted from this recipe.  Serves 4, or 2 people twice!

1 cup (250 ml by volume) risotto rice
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic, or more as desired, crushed
1 red pepper, roasted/microwaved/grilled and peeled and then sliced
2 large tomatoes, chopped (ideally peeled, too)
2-3 potatoes, diced (no need to peel!)
1/2 punnet mushrooms, sliced
1 small tin petits pois (or use frozen, but I do love French tinned peas!)
250 ml cooking white wine
500 ml stock (I cheated, and used a chicken stock cube, but obviously if you're vegetarian or vegan you will prefer to use a vegetable stock cube)
1 tbs cooking oil of some kind
Seasoning.  I dislike smoked paprika and had no saffron, so used allspice and sweet paprika instead, plus the usual salt and pepper.  But use what you like!

Cook the onion in the oil for a few minutes until soft, then add the rest of the vegetables, stir, and cook for a few more minutes.  Add the wine, then the rice, stir again, and finally add the stock.  Bring to the boil, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes.

I suppose that to be certain of complete protein you should probably add a tin of sweetcorn as well, but I didn't.  It was very delicious, and I'm looking forward to seeing whether it's nice cold, too.  If not, it will microwave!

Edited to add: I found it absolutely delicious cold, but it would reheat very quickly in the microwave if you decide you prefer it hot.  Just be sure it's absolutely piping hot all the way through, though, before you eat it.

Käsespätzle with chicken

I appear to have neglected this blog rather - my apologies!  I'm still cooking, of course. This was really rather a bodge-up, but it tasted good!

About 1/4 cooked chicken, cut into small pieces (optional)
2 onions, diced
1 packet spätzle for frying (or use home-made) - not sure if you can buy them in this country, but they are ubiquitous in Germany and easy enough to find in France
Large handful grated cheese (cheddar or Emmenthal)
A little milk
Butter and oil for frying


Cook the diced onions in a little butter and olive oil, stirring frequently, until they are brown and caramelised.  Add the cooked chicken, if using, and the spätzle, and allow to cook for a few minutes.  Melt the cheese in the milk, and stir this into the rest of it.  Season to taste, and serve with a green vegetable.

Salmon with white wine sauce

Once again, no photos!  But this was very good.  Serves 2, takes about 20 minutes.

2 salmon fillets
1 small onion
1 clove garlic
1 small leek
Small tin peas (or use frozen)
250 ml white wine (I buy cooking wine in France)
Salt, pepper, herbs (I used 1 tsp mixed herbs and 1 tsp sumac)
Butter
1 tbs creme fraiche
100 g pasta of your choice (I used spaetzle)

Put half the butter into a heavy-based pan and add the chopped onion, garlic and leeks.  Allow to cook for a few minutes until the onion is transparent and the leeks stop looking raw.  Now add the white wine and seasoning, bring to the boil and simmer for about 15 minutes.  Meanwhile cook the pasta for the requisite length of time, and fry the salmon in another pan in the rest of the butter. 

Drain the peas, then stir them into the white wine mixture, then add the creme fraiche.  Bring back to the boil, then stir in the cooked pasta.  Pile into big pasta plates and serve with the salmon fillets on top.  Delicious!

Chick peas and noodles in sweet potato sauce

Some weeks ago now, Becca at Amuse Your Bouche posted a recipe for chickpea dumplings in sweet potato gravy.  I made it, and it was delicious, but the chickpea dumplings were really rather solid.  I think they would have been better with some kind of raising agent added. 

Anyway, I wanted to put my own take on it.  I was vaguely thinking of trying to make noodles with chickpea flour, but I've tried that before and it was a disaster.  So I thought I would make ordinary noodles, and then add some chickpeas to the recipe.  This was how I adapted it.

1 medium-sized sweet potato
1 leek
1 onion
2 cloves garlic (I have some lovely garlic just now, from my brother's garden!)
1 sweet pepper
1 quantity cooked chickpeas (1/2 cup uncooked, or a drained tinful)
1 tin tomatoes
500 ml stock
Seasoning, including cumin and turmeric

250 ml plain flour
1 egg
Enough water to mix

Chop the vegetables and sauté in a little cooking oil.

Add the tomatoes and stock, season, and simmer for 20 minutes.

Then take  a stick blender and puree the stew - you don't want it soup-quality, but just so it's nice and gungy.  Add the chickpeas. 

Now make the noodles by putting the flour into a bowl, adding the egg, and mix it with dough hooks on a hand mixer, adding water as necessary, until you have a really smooth dough. 

Go on mixing for a few minutes, then press through a noodle maker straight into the sauce.  Bring back to the boil, stirring, and allow to cook for a few minutes.  Serve with a green vegetable.

It was delicious, but I now have indigestion.....

Squid in black bean sauce

This was a (fairly successful) attempt to re-create a favourite of mine from the Chinese take-away across the road that closed its doors several years ago now, and I still miss!  I bought the squid bodies from Sainsbury's - Tesco's only sell squid rings, which aren't quite such good value for money.  Sadly, I don't quite know where to source whole squid, complete with tentacles - they are quite the nicest.

About 100-150 g squid (I didn't weigh, but it was 4 of Sainsbury's frozen squid bodies), thawed and cut into smallish pieces.  Or a similar weight of raw squid rings.  Or use whole squid if you can get them.
1 chunk frozen ginger (or grated fresh - a piece about the size of your thumb)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 chilli pepper, chopped (seeds removed)
1 onion, peeled and chopped, but not too finely
1 green pepper, cut into chunks about the same size as the pieces of squid.
1 sachet black bean sauce
Oil for frying

Melt the oil in a wok or large frying pan, and add all the vegetables.  Stirring all the time, once they begin to cook, then add the squid pieces, stirring again, and finally the black bean sauce.  Bring back to the boil and serve at once with rice or noodles, or even vegetable noodles, as liked!

Vegetable rice

I nearly called this bottom-of-the-fridge rice, as it can be (I imagine) made with lots of different vegetables, depending on what wants used in your fridge.  I served this with bought chicken kievs (don't judge me - they are nice once in awhile), but I imagine it could be a meal in its own right if you added some cooked beans, or cheese or an egg, depending on whether you wanted it vegan or vegetarian.

2 tbs cooking oil
1.5 tsp asafoetida (only because I cba to chop an onion!  Use an onion instead if you prefer)
1 tsp dried garlic (or 1-2 cloves of fresh; again, I cba to prepare it!)
1 leek
1/2 small swede (rutabaga)
Handful Chantenay carrots
1 chilli pepper
1/2 cup long-grain rice
250 ml chicken stock (from a cube is fine if you don't have any home-made; obviously if you want this to be vegetarian or vegan, use vegetable stock or plain water - if the latter, up the seasoning a bit).

Cook the asafoetida in the oil for a few minutes - don't let it burn if you can help it - and then add the prepared vegetables.  Allow them to cook in their own steam for a bit, then add the rice and stock.  Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat to the minimum and leave to cook for 15 minutes.  It comes out quite different from a risotto, much more (in my opinion) of a side dish.

Garlicky aubergines with goats' cheese* and root vegetable noodles

* If you don't eat goats' cheese, substitute either regular cream cheese or, for a vegan alternative, hummus or a simple tahini dressing.

2 carrots
2 parsnips
1 chunk daikon

1 medium aubergine
2-3 cloves garlic
2 tbs cooking oil
Salt and pepper
1/2 tub goat's cream cheese (I used one with chives, which was really nice!) (or ordinary cream cheese, or hummus, or a simple tahini dressing)

Spiralize the root vegetables,

and put into a pan with the oil, salt and pepper.  Cook on a low heat, stirring frequently, while you dice the aubergine

and crush the garlic.  Add these to the pan, cover, and allow to cook on a low heat for about 15 minutes, stirring frequently.  Stir in the goats' cheese (or substitute), heat through again, and serve at once.

You could also use sweet potato or butternut squash noodles with this.  Either as well as, or instead of, the carrot and parsnip.  I do like to add a bit of daikon (aka mooli), though, as it lightens things up a bit.

Macaroni cheese revisited

Macaroni cheese is, of course, infinitely variable, but this particular casserole has a couple of new things.  First of all, I discovered that home-made spaetzle should really be kneaded for several minutes, and this certainly does improve their texture and the length of the finished product in my noodle maker.

Secondly, I decided to try Amuse your Bouche's crispy garlic breadcrumbs instead of my normal breadcrumb-and-cheese topping; the first time I tried to make these they were a disaster, but, but I realised that if I made the bread into breadcrumbs first, it would work rather better.   It did!

Thirdly, I used a tin of tomatoes instead of the normal béchamel - I used to do this a lot in the past, but haven't done it with leeks before.

So:

The noodles:

1 cup (roughly 250 ml by volume) plain flour
1 egg
Salt, pepper and mustard to taste
Enough water to make a stiffish dough.

Knead the above - ideally using dough hooks on a stand mixer - for several minutes, until it is really smooth and stretchy.  Press through a noodle-maker into boiling salted water; bring back to the boil, then drain, and rinse the noodles in cold water until they are cold (this helps set them).

The main event:

1 leek, chopped
About 1/4 small pumpkin or butternut squash, diced
c 20g butter
c 1 tbs plain flour
1 tin tomatoes
Seasonings - salt, pepper, mustard, maybe sweet paprika
Several handfuls grated cheese

Cook the leek and pumpkin (or any other vegetable you fancy) in the butter until no longer raw; using a blender, whizz the flour with the tin of tomatoes and pour the result on to the vegetables; bring to the boil and add the noodles and grated cheese.  Smooth the surface, and top with: crispy garlic breadcrumbs (see recipe here).  Bake at Mark 5 for about 45 minutes, until the breadcrumbs really are crispy.

Edited to add: I was not totally convinced by this.  The garlic breadcrumbs were wonderful, a great addition to the repertoire, but I think with a tomato sauce I do prefer onions to leeks, and I'm not sure the home-made noodles showed to best advantage like this.  Maybe commercial pasta would have been better (the dried kind - one can buy fresh spaetzle anywhere on the Continent, but not in this country as yet).  The pumpkin worked well, though.

Well, duh!

There are times when I really think I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me!  I have been cooking for - what - the best part of 60 years, and I always, but always, made a béchamel sauce to go with cauliflower, especially if I was going to make it into a cauliflower cheese bake.

But we have been travelling, and space in our motor home is limited.  So it occurred to me - when I make nachos, I just melt the grated cheese in a little milk - what would happen if I poured the result over the cauliflower?

And, of course, it worked splendidly!  I didn't realise quite how dim I was not to have thought of that that long since....