Vegetarian lasagna

Have you ever tried to take a picture of baked lasagna, successfully?
Whatever ligt, angle and cheese used as topping, the lasagna always comes out as a goey mush.
It could have been improved with some grean lettuce leaves and tomatoes, but unfortunately, I had neither on hand today.

Luckily, most of us have had lasagna before so we know that this goey mush is indeed a great mix of tomatoes, cheese and delicious velvety pasta.

I start making my lasagna by cooking a tasty vegetable tomato sauce. I layer it with lasagna plates and ricotta cheese. Somtimes, when my local food store is out of ricotta (- or I'm too cheap to use ricotta since it costs twice as much as the alternative) I'm known to use cottage cheese that I mash with a fork instead. If you want my honest opinion (- if you don't, stop reading here), it works just as well. The strong flavors in the vegetable tomato sauce will overpower the delicate and distinctive taste in the ricotta cheese. It's the texsture I'm looking for in this dish.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
While oven is heating up, make the lasagna.

Tomato sauce.

1 Tbsp canola oil
2 small or 1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
2 carrots, peeled and cut into small pieces
2 celery sticks, rinsed and sliced

1 small boc (1/2 cup) tomato puree
1 cup frozen spinach
1 can (1 pound) chopped tomatoes
2 Tbsp dried oregano

Salt and pepper to taste

2 1/2 cup ricotta cheese (1 1/2 pound)
lasagna plates
1 medium ball of mozarella cheese
2 Tbsp grated parmesan

Saute onion in the canola oil until transludent. Add carrots and celery sticks, and saute on medium heat for 5-10 minutes.

Add tomato paste, stir well until the onion, carrots and celery pieces are coated well.
Add chopped tomatoes, oregano and salt an pepper. Let boil for 20 minutes, or until carrots are almost done.
Add the frozen spinach. When the spinach is well blended into the sauce, the sauce is done.

My lasagna form is a deep 8 x 4 inch baking dish. Use whatever size that pleases your crowd.

Start with the vegetable tomato sauce.
Layer half of the tomato sauce in the bottom of the dish. Cover with lasagna plates. Spread half of the ricotta cheese over the lasagna plates. Make sure it's spread out evenly. Reserve 1/2 cup of the tomato vegetable sauce on the side, and spread the rest over the ricotta cheese. Cover with lasagna plates, and spread the reserved tomato vegetable sauce on top. This is done to make sure there will be enough moist to bake the lasagna plates througly since the ricotta cheese don't hold enough moisture.
Spread the ricotta cheese on top, cover dish with aluminum foil, and bake for 20 minutes in the oven. After 20 minutes, remove the aluminus foil, spread the mozarella cheese on top, and sprinkle parmesan cheese on top of the mozarella cheese. (I add parmesan as neither the ricotta nor mozarella cheese holds a lot of taste. The parmesan adds an extra flavor that goes well with the tomato and vegetable sauce).

Bake for another 10 minutes, or until the cheese on top is melted and had taken on a golden color.

Enjoy!

Curry Lentil Soup

This soup is perfect for cold days. It's a classic combination of curry, garlic and ginger, and it tastes great.
(From Cuisine at Home)

CURRY-LENTIL SOUP

"Curry powders vary in spiciness - use more or less depending on how hot you prefer your soup."

INGREDIENTS:

1 yellow onion, finely diced
2 T. garlic, minced
2 T. fresh ginger, peeled, minced
1 T. curry powder
1/2 t. crushed red pepper flakes (I used 1/8 tsp very hot red pepper flakes)
Pinch of sugar
4 cups vegetable broth
1/2 cup red lentils
Juice of 1 lime
1/4 cup heavy cream (coconut milk also works)
Salt to taste

Garnish- I never serve the soup with garnish on weekdays, only when I serve it to guests).

1/4 cup sweetened, shredded coconut, toasted
1/4 cup dry roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped
2 T. scallions, coarsely chopped
2 T. coarsely chopped fresh mint leaves

DIRECTIONS:

Saute onion in melted butter in a large saucepan over medium heat, 3-5 minutes.

Add garlic, ginger, curry powder, red pepper flakes, and sugar; saute about 1 minute.

Add broth, lentils, and lime juice. Simmer, uncovered, until lentils are soft, 15 - 20 minutes. (I simmered it about 30 minutes). Remove soup from heat.

OBS: DO NOT bring the soup back to boil after you have added the heavy cream. The lime in the soup will cause it to separate. Re-heat soup slowly over low heat and don't let it boil.

Stir in cream and salt.

Garnish soup with coconut, peanuts, scallions, and mint. (I omitted this).


Makes 4 Cups

From Cuisine at Home

My vegetarian adventure

I've decided to go vegetarian for the next 365 days!

As it is, I actually started on April 1st.
One of my friends thought it was an April Fools Day joke, but I was a few days short of my Easter vacation and it seemed like a good idea to start. Besides it's spring; A lot of fresh vegetables will show up on the market in the next few weeks, and I will have a lot of delicious ingredients to choose from.

The idea to become a vegetarian didn't come to me overnight. First, I love vegetables. Second, I have grown more and more sceptical towards modern farming as the animals live on restricted diets and they are given minimal space to live on. Modern breeding have turned many animals into meat producing giants - with large bodies and feet that struggle to carry the weight. I asked myself, will I continue to support this business?

A vegetarian diet is also supposed to be healthy, but expensive and time consuming.
I am curious to see if this is true.
In this house hold we spend $1000 on food and grocery items every month. I hope my project won't add to an already bulging food budget.

In the weeks prior to my adventure, I spent many hours on the Internet, searching for vegetarian recipes and nutrition. I also started a subscription on Vegetarian Times - a magazine dedicated to vegetarian cooking.

I live a fairly busy life. I won't have time to cook time consuming meals every day. I eat out several times a month, and vegetarian menu charts are few and far between here. I think the restaurant business will give me a hard time in the months to come, but I'm crossing my fingers.

Actually, I met my first 'wall' during my Easter holiday. I was starving, and dropped by a nice lunch restaurant. As a meat eater, I have loved the place and eaten there many times in the past. I have seen vegetarian dishes on the menu, so I thought it was a safe place to start.
Not so. On this day the chef was out, and the temp chef had made two dishes: Meat balls or smoked salmon.

I told the waiter I don't eat meat.
'You'll have fish then', she said and that was that!

I found three restaurants that offered vegetarian dishes during my holiday, but the menu was repeated every day and to be honest, it will probably take a while until I eat mushroom risotto, vegetarian lasagna (which contained too much salt, by the way) or broccoli and gnocchi in cheese sauce again. Two weeks on this diet took the fun out of dining out.

I hope my holiday just turned out to be a small bump in the road.
I'm still excited about my project and I can't wait to try some of the new vegetarian recipes I have found.

Stay tuned!

Lauper - sweet anise rolls

I'm sorry for disappearing from the face of Earth...uhm, I guess that will be face of Blogger...without further notice a few months back.
Real Life got in the way there for a little while, but my stove has been screaming my name and this week we reunited.

I went for the flour first. These sweet rolls contain fine grind rye flour and has more fiber than plain white flour. In my book, that makes them almost healthy. I do agree that the amount of dark syrup keeps them from being labelled "Health Food", but if you serve them with cheese instead of jam, it evens out.
Serve them with tea or coffee.

Lauper (- sweet anise bread rolls)

These remind me of when I was a kid, visiting my grandmother who made these all the time.

The rye flour will keep them moist for days. (- but they never last more than a day or two in this house hold.)

2 1/4 pounds white flour
1 pound finely grind rye
1/2 cup canola oil
2 1/3 cup dark syrup
1 1/2 ts salt
1 envelope anise seeds (3 teaspoons)
2 envelopes of yeast (5 teaspoons)
4 cups of milk

Mix flour, salt and dry yeast in a bowl.

Crush the anise seeds in a mortar and add them to the dry mixture.

Heat milk in a casserole until it's lukewarm. Add oil and dark syrup, mix well and pour into the bowl with the dry mixture.

Blend well. Add a little white flour if necessary.
When you have formed a dough, let it rise until double in size.

Roll out 12 large buns (- I usually make around 20 because I like them smaller), and let rise for 30 minutes.

Brush with eggwash if desired, and bake at 350F for 20 minutes, or until done.

My favourite chicken

I'm picky about my chicken.
For years I only ate chicken breasts, but finally one day I realized that chicken breasts are dry as paper. Neither do they taste much unless you marinate them in something that does.
So I switched to tights. Chicken tights, that is. With skin!

Not only is the meat juicier and holds more taste, I believe this meat is healthier for me too. It makes me happy to eat chicken tights, and being happy is good for my health. My mental health, that is. And everyone knows that ones mental health is important for ones physical health.
See where I'm going?
Since I switched to chicken tights I haven't looked back but I'm back at loving chicken.

I like my chicken baked. I like the meat juicy and the skin crispy.

This is how I make my favourite chicken:

1 chicken tight per person
canola oil
1-2 teaspoons of soy sauce
pepper
a pinch of paprika

Preheat oven to 350F.


Drizzle some oil into an oven proof pan to prevent the chicken to burn.
Then brush chicken with canola oil.(Just enought to coat it lightly).

Place the chicken tights in an oven proof pan. Lightly sprinkle soy sauce over chicken tights. (I will use 1-2 teaspoons per chicken tight)

Then you sprinkle freshly ground black pepper and a pinch of paprika over the tights. (I use the paprika more for colour than for taste in this recipe).

Place on the middle rack in the oven and bake for 30 minutes or until done.
Turn the oven off and let the chicken rest in the still hot oven for 5 minutes before you serve it.

I usually serve this chicken with cheese filled tortellini or rice, with a salad on the side.