Lasagna - being very unphotogenic!

I grew up with lasagna – it was one of those dishes that my mum just nailed every time. Plus we usually had homekill mince to make it with, so that probably made it even nicer! In fact, I’m not sure I remember eating lasagna that wasn’t made with homekill mince. Anyway, I probably would have refrained from posting about this (yup, running out of bandwidth again) but a friend of mine was wanting a lasagna recipe and I want to try to keep in the flow of posting fairly regularly.

I learned a few things when undertaking this lasagna – the foremost being, lasagna is REALLLY hard to photograph well. It’s just not a very attractive dish (well, meat lasagna anyway) and I was a tad over eager when I took it out of the oven dish (note: let lasagna stand before cutting!) I also made it in a slightly unorthodox order, having the mince sauce already made quite a bit in advance….and was kind of following the recipe from memory/making it up as I went along. But I shall endeavour to bring everything together coherently. Lasagna is a simple, filling and very cost efficient dish – and this is how us kiwis (or this kiwi, anyway) make it.

Mince sauce:

250-500 g mince (I can’t remember the exact amount as mum just gave me a bag of mince, but I estimate it would be between this weight range. It’s probably better to cook your sauce with more mince, as if you have mince leftover you can always make spag bog with it!)

2 cans crushed tomatoes/tomato puree – whatever you fancy, depending how strong you want the flavour to be – OR you can do a mixture of canned tomatoes or a few tablespoons of tomato paste, be creative. Use what you have around.

onions, to taste (probably about 1-2, but it’s my opinion you can’t overdo it with onions and garlic)

garlic, to taste

oil, for sauteeing

Chop onions and garlic and sautee in the oil. Add mince, breaking it up with wooden spoon to avoid clumping. It should start to brown very quickly; when it is all browned, add the tomato and stir until well combined. Turn heat down to med-low and leave the sauce simmering to reduce down, I probably left mine for about 30-45 mins? You can leave it  on the stove and do something else (like watch food network with a beer) provided you come back and check on it, giving it a little stir every 5-10 mins and keeping the heat on med-low. The last thing you want is the sauce to reduce down too much and for the mince to burn, but you don’t want the sauce to be too liquid either. Once the sauce is done, set aside and leave on the lowest heat setting or put on a an element that isn’t on, so that the sauce is being kept hot, but is no longer really cooking.

Now, for the next bit I diverged from what my mother used to do; I wanted to give lasagna sheets a try instead of lasagna noodles, which are what she always used. I had been all revved up and was going to make some lasagna sheets with my pasta machine but ended up buying some instead (so cheap!). Anyway, next grease your  oven dish, turn the oven on to 180 degrees celsius and get the lasagna sheets all ready and set them aside.

All that is left now is sorting out the cheese! I can’t remember whether my mother used to make a white sauce with cheese, or whether she just added cheese directly to the mince. I decided to make a white sauce.

2 tbsp butter, approx.

2 tbsp flour

1 cup milk

125-200g cheese, you decide! (I used tasty and mozzarella cheese)

Put approx 2 tbsp butter in a saucepan, let it melt and then add 2 tbsp flour. Stir for a minute or so, making sure it doesn’t go lumpy.  Reduce heat, then start slowly adding 1 cup of milk, little by little, stirring as you go so the sauce gets thick and smooth. If the sauce stops thickening, stop adding milk! You don’t want it to be too runny. Add about 125-200 g grated cheese, I used a combination of tasty and mozzarella. Once this has melted and the sauce is smooth, thick and cheesy – season with salt and pepper and set aside. Time for assembling the lasagna!

Make the first layer of mince – around 1/2 cup, depending on how big your dish is. Basically you want to cover the bottom. Then put a layer of lasagna sheets – for me it was about 2 – or use lasagna noodles if preferred. Top with white sauce, then repeat with another mince layer etc. Make as many layers as desired, or possible – which will depend on the size of your dish. Top with additional grated cheese, you could try something with a stronger flavour – like parmesan – if you had it. I just used more mozzarella.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 40 mins, or until it is cooked (you can generally tell when it is cooked, use a skewer if you are unsure). This will depend on your oven; some are much more fierce than others! Leave to cool a little before cutting – trust me! Let the cheese harden a little. This is also a dish that tastes just as good (if not better!) the next day, so you could even set it aside until then.

Obviously, there are endless variations one could try with the basic lasagna – adding more vegetables to the mince sauce (like diced carrot or courgette) or introducing individual vegetable layers. Online, I’ve seen some people put ricotta in theirs, but personally I’m really not sure about the mince and ricotta combo! I would say the most important thing about lasagna is having good mince and not stinting on the cheese. I also think lasagna noodles are probably easier to use than lasagna sheets, but the sheets are more aesthetically pleasing (and no precooking is required, hurray!). Just make sure they are completely covered with sauce so they cook properly.

Ok, Morshed – I hope these instructions are useful

Stromboli

Stromboli

I’ve made Stromboli before and posted a few pics on my post a selection but I wanted to do it again and take better pictures, as well as posting the recipe.

It packs a punch, even I would struggle to eat the whole thing – but every bite is pure heaven! It also gave me an opportunity to use up some of the beautiful mozzarella that I bought at the matakana markets.

Ingredients:

2 tsp dried yeast

350ml water

500g white flour

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp olive oil

Filling and topping:

200g mozzarella, chopped (I used buffalo mozzarella from the Matakana Market)

200g mozzarella, grated (I used Volumetric Mozzarella – on special from Pak’N'Save a few weeks back)

1-2 garlic cloves, chopped

handful of fresh basil leaves

3 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp coarse sea salt

3 sprigs rosemary, stems removed

1 tsp pepper

1. Sprinkle the yeast into 250ml of the water in a bowl. Leave for 5 mins, stir to dissolve.

2. Mix flour and salt together in a large bowl. Make a well in the centre and pour in the yeasted water and the oil. Mix the flour from the sides of the well. Stir in reserved water, as needed, to form a soft, sticky dough.

3. Turn dough onto a floured surface. Knead until smooth, silky and elastic.

4. Put the dough in a clean, oiled bowl and cover with a tea towel. Leave until risen, about 1 1/2 hours – 2 hours.

5. Knock back, and chafe for 5 minutes, then leave to rest for 10 mins. Shape the dough into a 35 cm x 20 cm rectangle. Cover with a tea towel and leave to rest for 10 mins.

Chopped garlic, basil and mozzarella

To make filling and topping:

6. Spread the cheeses, garlic, and basil leaves evenly over the dough. Roll the dough like a swiss roll, starting at one of the shorter sides, but without rolling too tightly.

7. Place on an oiled baking sheet. Use a skewer or a carving fork to pierce several holes through the dough. Sprinkle with oil, salt, rosemary leaves and pepper.

Ready to pop into the oven!

8. Bake in preheated oven for about 40 mins until golden. Leave to cool slightly, then drizzle over the remaining olive oil.

Out of the oven!

Ready to eat!

Ready to eat!

'Cheesecake'

Recipe is as follows:

1 cup flour

60g butter

1/4 cup caster sugar

1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon water, approx.

2 tablespoons jam, approx.

Cake mixture:

60g butter

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

1/3 cup caster sugar

1 egg

3/4 cup self raising flour

1/4 cup milk

1. Lightly grease two 12 hole shallow patty pans. Sift flour into bowl, rub in butter, stir in sugar. Mix in egg yolk and enough water to make ingredients cling together. Press dough into ball; knead gently on floured surface. Cover; refrigerate 30 minutes.

2. Roll dough on floured surface until 2mm thick. Cut into 6 cm rounds; place in prepared pans.

3. Place about a 1/4 teaspoon jam in each pastry case, top with 3 level teaspoons of cake mixture. Roll pastry scraps, cut into thin strips and place on top of cake mixture.

4. bake cheesecakes in moderate oven about 15 mins or until lightly browned.

Cake mixture:

Cream butter, essence and sugar in small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy; add egg, beat until combined. Stir in sifted flour and milk.

Makes 24. Can be made a day ahead – can even be frozen!

Ready to go in oven

Baked!

(To give a sense of scale)

Just a few from the batch - it makes 24 in total.

Savoury Pie - with Spinach, Ricotta, Prima Donna Maturo, Basil and Egg

I got an idea to make this pie from my Italian cookbook – which had a recipe for a savoury Easter pie, and the ingredients included ricotta, grated parmesan, beet leaves, artichokes and eggs. I decided not to follow the recipe because I lacked too many of the ingredients, but I ran with the general concept.

I will refrain from giving exact ingredient measurements, because I didn’t really use any, but rather made the recipe up as I went along. I began with about half a packet of leftover frozen spinach – defrosted it in the microwave, squeezed out excess water and sauteed it in frying pan with generous amount of extra virgin olive oil. I had thought to do onion and garlic beforehand (I put them in almost EVRYTHING savoury) but forgot. To the spinach, I added basil and some thyme from the garden – washed and shredded. I removed the pan from the heat, then added what was left of my handmade ricotta – about 100-150g? I completed the filling with about 90g of prima donna maturo – grated – which I bought from the Dutch cheese sellers at the Dargaville Farmers Market.

Prima Donna Maturo, Thyme, Basil and Handmade Ricotta

Sauteed spinach

Then I made the pastry, trying to stick with the authentic method described in my cookbook. Instead of using a bowl, I just mounded around 2 cups of white flour on the bench – maybe a bit more – making a well in the centre. I poured in olive oil and a little bit of water, and started to work the flour into a pastry dough, adding more oil and water as necessary. I eventually ended up adding an egg as well. It made the pastry quite springy, and I was worried that the pastry was going to be too tough – but it actually turned out to be well suited to this pie, and wasn’t tough at all!

Once more or less the right consistency, I split the dough in half and rolled out to a circle. I put this in my small, greased pie dish, and trimmed the edges until they were neat. I filled the pastry shell with the ricotta mixture (I found the amount of mixture a bit much, I only needed about half of it in the end – will have to find something to do with the rest!). I then made a circular dent in the middle of the pie and cracked an egg into it. I covered the top with the remaining pastry.

Egg with filling in pastry shell

Topped with pastry

Finally, I brushed the pie top with an egg, then left it in a preheated oven (180 degrees celsius) for about 35 mins. I left it to cool a little before before cutting. I devoured my (very generous) slice with some of my homemade tomato relish.

Pie fresh out of the oven!

Pie - with my epic slice removed!

I was very excited by how well the egg cooked!

Served with my homemade tomato relish!

Vanilla custard

2 cups full fat milk

1/2 cup sugar

4 tbsp cornflour

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 tbsp butter

Heat the milk on med-low heat – so that it heats up but does not come to the boil. Mix the sugar, cornflour and salt together in a bowl. Add slowly to the milk, whisking to combine. Keep on heat, stirring constantly. Add vanilla essence and butter. Keep stirring until thickened. Serve however you want!

4 tbsp caster sugar

1 vanilla bean, cut in half then split lengthways

1 cup yoghurt (or one container of Whangaripo Valley buffalo yoghurt)

2/3 cup cream

1 tsp gelatin

Put sugar into a bowl, scrape insides from the vanilla bean into bowl (reserve rest of bean for another use), break up seeds and distribute throughout sugar. Add yogurt to sugar and whisk to combine.

Put 1⁄4 cup of the cream into a small pot and heat over medium heat until just hot. Remove from heat and stir in gelatin to dissolve it, 2–3 minutes. Add 1⁄2 cup of the yogurt mixture; whisk to combine. Whisk yogurt–gelatin mixture back into remaining yogurt mixture and set aside.

Put remaining cream into a large bowl and whisk to stiff peaks. Fold cream gently into yogurt mixture. Divide mixture into ramekins – I used two relatively large ones (at least 4 cm high, and mine were about 9 cm in diameter). Cover ramekins with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until completely set, 8 hours or overnight.

Set each ramekin in a hot-water bath for 1–2 minutes, run a sharp knife around the edges, and turn pannacotta out onto the plates. This is the tricky part! First time I left the ramekin in too long, and the second time it was too short and had to go back in again. I decorated the pannacotta with some mango powder that I got for Christmas from my mum – it was perfect!

Buffalo Yogurt Pannacotta - the first one

The first bite, smooth and creamy!

The second one, I topped with plum and mango powder – not completely sure that was a good call. I probably should have gone with just the plum, but nevermind.

Second pannacotta - topped with mango and plum

The consistency of this one was a bit better, I think

Anyway, it’s something I will definitely try again. It’s a good start!

Fillings:

Roasted pumpkin puree with handmade ricotta

1 small butternut pumpkin – peeled, cut into chunks, roasted in oil and then pureed until relatively smooth

Few generous scoops handmade ricotta (or storebought if you want)

Seasoning

Just combine ingredients in a bowl, mixing until well combined. Season.

Spinach and ricotta filling

Few portions frozen spinach, or use fresh if you want.

Few scoops handmade ricotta

Season

Make sure the moisture has been well drained out of the spinach, then combine with the ricotta and season.

Pasta:

I’m not going to go into details about how I make my pasta dough again, if you want to read about that, please refer to my previous ravioli post. At the beginning, I followed much the same method – using the circular ravioli cutter and sandwiching filling between two rounds.

Filling on the ravioli round

Spinach on ravioli rounds

I then cooked these, with a greater success rate than the first time I made them. I had only one or two instances of the rounds splitting apart and filling spilling out. The end result, a lovely bowl of classic round ravioli!

Yum!

I also experimented with the same ravioli round by folding them in half to make crescent shapes; I don’t think they were quite as pretty, but still – I’d hardly call them a failure either.

Crescent moon ravioli

Now for the exciting part! Tortellini! I actually kind of made up this method as I went along. I just used a glass instead of a ravioli cutter to make nice perfectly round circles. I then folded them over to make semi circles, and twisted the ends around to join. I was really happy with the results, and thought they looked pretty legit!

Tortellini shapes

End results - pumpkin tortellini!

Spinach tortellini!

And the end result…

Enough pasta to keep my busy for a week! (at least)

I will be most likely posting again with some more exciting sauces to serve the pasta with, but by the time the pasta was finished, I was too tired to make anything exciting. So I just made a sauce with sauteed onions, garlic, cream and grated tasty cheese – topped with chopped chives.

Cooking the sauce

Recook tortellini for a few mins in boiling water

Tortellini smothered in creamy cheese sauce!

Danish pastries!

The recipe is taken from my dear dear Comfort Food book. It is fairly involved, so if you are wanting to make these, do set aside a couple of hours (of course there are breaks in between).

Pastry ingredients:

275g/2 1/2 cups flour

1/4 tsp salt

1 tbsp caster sugar

225g/ 1 cup butter (softened)

2 tsp surebake yeast

1 egg, beaten

1/2 (scant) cup chilled water

Filling ingredients:

3 tbsp near boiling water

2 tbsp ground coffee

3 tbsp butter

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 egg yolk

1 cu ground almonds

1 egg, beaten

1 cup apricot

2 tbsp water

For decoration:

sliced almonds

glace cherries (optional, I didn’t use them)

1 1/2 cups icing sugar (for making coffee icing, I didn’t do this because I left my piping bag at home)

1. To make pastry, sift the flour, salt and sugar into a bowl. Rub in 2 tbsp of the butter. Stir in the yeast. In a separate bowl, mix the egg and water together, add to flour mixture and then knead into a soft dough. Lightly knead for 4-5 mins. Place in a plastic bag and seal. Chill for 15 mins.

2. Put the remaining butter for the pastry between two sheets of baking parchement and beat with a rolling pin to make a 18 cm square. Chill.

3. Roll the dough on a floured surface to a 25 cm square. Put the butter in the middle of the dough square, angled like a diamond, then bring up each corner of the dough to enclose it fully.

4. Roll out the pastry thinly to measure about 35cm in length. Turn up the bottom third of the pastry, then gently fold down the top third. Seal the edges together with a rolling pin. Wrap the pastry in clear film (plastic wrap) and chill for 15 mins.

5. Repeat the folling and folding process three more times, turning the pastry over so that the short ends are at the top and bottom. Allow the pastry to rest for 15 mins between each turn.

6. To make the filling, pour the hot water over the coffee and infuse for 4 mins. Strain through a fine sieve. Cream butter and sugar. Beat in the egg yolk, ground almonds and 1 tbsp of the coffee.

7. Divide the dough and filling equally into three. Roll one dough portion to an 18 x 35 cm rectangle. Spread with filling and roll up from short end. Cut into 6 equal slices. Roll another portion into a 25 cm round, cut into 6 equal segments. Put a spoonful of filling at the widest end of each segment. Roll the pastry towards its point to form a crescent. Roll out the remainig dough into a 20 cm square; cut into four. Place some filling in the centre of each square. Make slices to create 4 triangles and fold ovr almost to the centre, twisting half the triangle. (The picture might help make it clearer). I had a little bit of filling left over.

Rounds and crescents

Star like shape

8. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees celsius. Place pastries on lined baking tray, spaced well apart. Cover with cling film and leave to rise 20 mins.

Cover and leave to rise 20 mins

9. Brush with egg and bake for 15-20 mins until lightly browned and crisp (mine were left in a bit long). Cool on wire racks.

Left them in oven a bit too longer (mum's oven is hot!) but fortunately it didn't affect them too badly, and certainly not the taste!

9. Put the jam in a pan with water; bring to the boil, then sieve. Brush the jam over the warm pastries. How you want to decorate is up to you; I just added some sliced almonds, but you could also top with glace cherries or make coffee icing with the icing sugar and remaining coffee. Drizzle using a piping bag. Leave to set before serving.

Enjoy the decorating process!

Indulge!

SPOILER! Haha, yes this post is about making relish. See below for recipe

I’ve been giving my garden a good clearout. I’ve just got a tiny bit left to weed and then I’m planting my new crops – cabbage (lionheart), broccoli (midget), fennel and butter beans. I’ve planted cabbage and broccoli before and they did really well my first year, last year they were a dud. Hopefully I’ll get lucky this year. I planted fennel last year and it did well, and was a real treat. Butter beans will hopefully do well on my willow trellis.

I took out leeks, and the one decent courgette my plants have produced so far:

Leeks and my lone courgette

I also have a serious abundance of tomatoes, as I mentioned in an earlier post. I was weighing up what to do with them – many exciting options! Chutney, pasta sauce, passata and relish. My lovely friend Theresa gave me some chillis from the place she works in Waiuku, so I settled on making relish. I just used the recipe from the good old Edmonds cookbook. Here it is:

12 large tomatoes (or substitute 1 large for 2 small ones) – peeled

4 large onions

25g salt (approx.)

500g brown sugar

vinegar

1 tbsp mustard

1 tbsp curry powder

2 tbsp flour

3 chillis

1. The first step (which is not included in the Edmonds cookbook) is to peel the tomatoes. My method is to slice a cross on the bottom of all the tomatoes. Place in a large bowl and cover with boiling water. Leave for 3 mins. Remove from bowl with slotted spool and plunge into a large bowl of cold water. Once all have been plunged leave for a couple of mins to cool. After that you should be able to peel them easily, using the cross cut of the bottom to pull from.

2. Once that is done, cut the tomatoes into four pieces, more for the larger ones if you think it necessary. Slice the onions into small chunks. Lay out, sprinkle with salt and leave overnight.

3. Next day, pour off the liquid and place the tomatoes and onions into a large saucepan along with the sugar and the chillis. Add enough vinegar to cover. Bring to the boil. Simmer 1 1/2 hours until reduced down.

Early stage of reducing down

4. Mix flour, mustard and curry powder with a little vinegar to make a smooth paste. Add to the mixture and boil 5 mins. Once combined, you could blend with a stick blender if desired. I decided to blend mine rather than leaving it very chunky (even blended, it’s still kinda chunky)

5. Pour into sterilized jars and seal tightly.

Relish! And more tomatoes ripening for the next batch...

Also, don’t you just love the jar? They were on special at Pak’N'Save this week for $2 and I just couldn’t resist. I still have one spare for the next batch of preserves – whether I make more relish or whether I go for chutney next time. I can’t wait!