Lasagne

This lasagne recipe has to be one of the easiest things ever.

And oh man, has this lasagne has got me through a tough week.

Like that time I didn't sleep enough and cried because I'd already eaten two servings and I still wanted more. Seriously, this is why I advocate going to bed early. But also why I advocate this lasagne, it is clearly delicious. I mean just look at all that cheese.

LASAGNE
Serves 6-8, you don't want to cry because you didn't eat enough
Total time commitment: 10 minutes actively doing things, 45 minutes cooking; not including actually making the bolognese and white sauce
Recipe from common sense/Mum's advice


2 quantities of bolognese sauce
1-2 quantities of white sauce, depending on your mood
Lasagne sheets
Extra cheese

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Get a large baking dish and layer it with half of the bolognese sauce.

2. Top with lasagne sheets so you're covering the top of it.

3. Add the rest of the bolognese.

4. Add more lasagne sheets.

5. Pour the white sauce over the top. Mmm, delicious.

6. Grate extra cheese on top. Even more delicious.

7. Pop it in the oven and cook until the cheese is golden and delicious and the lasagne sheets aren't chewy any more. It will probably collapse a bit as you serve it, embrace it as the joyful mess of lasagne.

DELICIOUS JOY.

Gluten Free Friday: Bolognese Sauce

This is one of my favourite staples, but somehow I managed to spend 14 months living out of home before making it. The recipe is amazingly straightforward, requires very little active cooking time, and is delicious.

Are you sold yet?

I know its a bit mean putting something you traditionally eat with spaghetti as a GFF post, but there are a bunch of other ways you could use this! I'm thinking of subbing tomatoes for salsa and basil and oregano for chilli flakes and having it on top of nachos, because that's how I roll.


BOLOGNESE SAUCE
Serves
Total time commitment: 15 minutes, plus simmering
From my mum's recipe


1 onion, diced
500g mince
1 carrot
50g tomato paste
400g can diced tomatoes
Basil and oregano, to taste

1. Heat some olive oil in a pan and cook the onion.

2. Add mince and cook until browned.

3. Peel and dice the carrot, and add to pan. I added broccoli stalk and zucchini for extra vegetable power, what of it.

4. Add tomato paste, diced tomatoes, and basil and oregano, and simmer until everything is cooked, the carrot/vegetables is/are tender, and it isn't overly liquidy.

Prosciutto, Sage and Pumpkin Spaghetti

Firstly, can I just say, why does GO! have an ad for Harry Potter that is some kind of rap using lines from the film? What is even happening there?

Ok. I'm glad we got that out of the way.

Because now, we can get on to one of the most delicious pastas I have cooked in a while. When I was visiting Grandma and Grandpa a while ago, I was lamenting that now I don't get the recipe liftout from the paper any more, so Grandpa started collecting them for me. Isn't that just the best? This is a Marg Johnson recipe I've taken from my collection. With added feta, just for kicks.

While I've got you here - is anyone else sick of Valentine's Day things already? I just DON'T CARE. Although I saw this on a craft blog and I think its appropriately cute and lacking in pink and hearts.

How to make custom fingerprint art on ManMade

The original recipe called for 2tbsp lemon juice to be added to the pasta when you're combining it, which I didn't do because I didn't have any. I don't think it would go that well with the feta - any opinions?

PROSCIUTTO, SAGE AND PUMPKIN SPAGHETTI

Original recipe by Marg Johnson
Serves 4
Total time commitment: 40 minutes. Most of this is waiting for the pumpkin to roast, so if you can pre-cook the pumpkin the time will be cut down to around 20 minutes.


Olive oil
1/2 large pumpkin or 1 small pumpkin, cut into chunks
Handful sage leaves
1 tbsp garlic
Chilli flakes
100g prosciutto
400g spaghetti

1. Place the cut pumpkin into a baking dish, drizzle with olive oil, and top with garlic, sage leaves and chilli flakes. Doesn't that look like it's going to be delicious?

2. Cook at 200C until tender. You need to be able to stick a fork through the pumpkin. This should take about 25-30 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to the boil and cook the spaghetti. When the pumpkin is just about done, place a tray with the prosciutto in a single layer in the oven. Cook it for about ten minutes until its crispy.

4. Time to combine everything! Place the pumpkin and pasta in a large bowl and toss to combine. Crumble prosciutto and feta on top and serve.

Cooking Basics: Pizza bases

In spirit of "Buy Nothing New" month, I thought I'd finally get around to posting this pizza dough recipe. We never seem to leave the pizza around long enough to take a photo :P

I got a recipe from Miss Italia, but sadly she is in Italia this semester and I had to google about for one. Not as cool, guys. :(

PIZZA DOUGH


2 cups flour
7g dry yeast
1 tsp caster sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
3/4 cup warm water

1. Combine ingredients in a bowl and knead a bit

2. Put it back in the bowl, cover with glad wrap and leave for 30 minutes to rise

3. Come back, take the dough out of the bowl, and punch the air out of it. Seriously. Punch it once. Bread-making is good for anger management.

4. Knead it and roll it out to the size you want.

Miss Italia taught me to put olive oil on both sides of the dough before you put the topping on it. And so did The Goon, whose mother is a cooking teacher. So there's a nifty tip for you!

Pumpkin Gnocchi

I made regular potato gnocchi one when I still lived with mum and dad, and it was a disaster. So I didn't have high hopes for the pumpkin gnocchi, but it was lovely and simple and helped me finish the six kilos of pumpkin! This is one of the many, many recipes I've bookmarked from Closet Cooking. It helps if you have an entire pumpkin cooked, mashed and frozen in portions in the freezer, I'm just putting that one out there.

I made this once with a white sauce, and then froze the rest of the gnocchi and cooked it last night with a tomato sauce. Both were perfectly acceptable.

PUMPKIN GNOCCHI

2 cups cooked, mashed pumpkin

2 cups plain flour

1. Mix together

2. Flour the bench and roll out a handful of the dough into a sausage shape

3. Cut it up into bite-size pieces. Do this for all the dough.

4. Cook the gnocchi in boiling water until it rises to the top of the saucepan

5. If you want to freeze some, squirrel it away now! If not, eat it with all its delicious goodness.

Eggplant Parmigiana

I started writing this mid-cooking last week, then started running late for Panto (even more so than I was!) and neglected it until today. Catchups!

I bought an eggplant on my weekly shopping trip with Gordo (so named because of his resemblance to this guy right here), and I couldn't think of what on earth to do with it so I adapted this from my usual Vegetarian Schnitzel recipe, which goes:

1. Put schnitzel in a baking tray

2. Cover with a can of diced tomatoes

3. Cover with cheese and put in the oven for 15 minutes while you make some spaghetti to eat it with.

I did get halfway through this and have a horrendous moment where I thought we had no diced tomatoes, but thankfully I'd bought some on special the week before last week. CRISIS AVERTED, GUYS.

EGGPLANT PARMIGIANA

This was more than enough for me, it could have fed anywhere from two very hungry people to four moderately hungry people. I suppose it depends on eggplant sizings and how much pasta you like.

1/2 a large eggplant, sliced (I do like... 1.5cm slices, its up to you)

1 small onion, diced

1 tsp crushed garlic

Olive Oil

1 small can diced tomatoes (you know, regulation can size... 400mL or so)

Cheese (I used tasty, gruyere and parmesan)

As much pasta as you like!

1. Salt the slices of eggplant and leave them to drain for about half an hour. This makes them easier to cook, apparently. MUM SAID TO DO IT OKAY, TRUST ME.

2. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, cook up the onion in the garlic and olive oil. Step back for a minute and smell how good it is (bonus smell points if you substitute olive oil for butter). Add the tomatoes and make it into a base. Saucy!

3. See what I did there with the 'saucy' pun?

4. Put the eggplant in a baking dish and pour the tomatoes over the top. Grate some cheese onto there and put it in the oven for about 15-20 minutes - I judge it by how melty and delicious the cheese is.

5. While this is happening, cook some pasta. I use fettuccine. Put that in a bowl, put a slice of eggplant/tomato/cheese on top, and away you go!

Pastry and conversation

Apologies for the lack of posting. Going to see my parents means I haven't had to cook for a while. However! With the amount of patisseries springing up around the city, Miss Italia and I decided to have a patisserie tour as she is my baking buddy and enjoys food as much as I do. I am surprised I was able to fit in (a very small) dinner this evening, I must say!

First stop was Jean Pierre Sancho for breakfast. We decided to diplomatically share what we got for maximum deliciousness. Aside from the fact that we weren't given knives (making sharing very messy and difficult), the pain au chocolat and almond croissant were excellent. The atmosphere was great, and the staff seemed to know their regular customers quite well which is always nice.

Almond croissant and pan aux chocolat

Lunch was at Fiorentina in North Perth. I've been looking lustfully at the cannoli in their Fremantle store whenever I walk past, so I was really looking forward to eating here. I was a bit disappointed with the vegetarian roll I had for lunch - there was too much mayonnaise for my taste and the bottom half was a bit soggy (the bane of my lunchtime existence, and the reason I like eating out for lunch instead of having home-made soggy sandwiches!), so that somewhat tainted the experience. I was also kind of upset about my tea being a teabag and not loose-leaf, but that's just my snobby tea-drinking pettiness :P

Vegetarian Roll with lettuce, mayonnaise, capsicum, cheese and artichoke hearts

The pastries from Fiorentina, however, were a redeeming feature. Miss Italia chose a mignon fruit tart with pineapple and I had a mignon cornucci (we were both a bit full to have the large sizes! Also, I miss saying the word "mignon" every day). Both of them were delicious, and Miss Italia informs me that the creme patissiere was excellent (which is the filling to less educated people like myself). I was expecting the cornucci to have Italian custard but it seemed to have a hazelnutty filling which I quite enjoyed.

Mignon fruit tart with pineapple, mignon cornucci

Last stop was Choux, renowned for their macarons and general deliciousness. We decided on the opera cake, which was layer upon layer of yum. If I was more well-versed in how they are baked I could give more information, but for now "Oh my GOODNESS, eat it" should suffice. They also were lovely enough to sell us some broken macarons for half price, as well as some proper ones.

The Opera cake, in all its glory

The failcaron, or "how to make yourself feel better about your macaron making skills"

The bags of broken (left) and non-broken (right) macarons:

Chestnut, lime, caramel, lemon and pineapple-avocado

Miss Italia is one of my favourite people to dine with as she has an excellent knowledge of food (particularly of the baking variety) and pulling apart the layers of the Opera cake made me stop eating it so quickly and in fact savour all its delicious layers. Well done, good sir. On top of that she is delightful conversation and a generally awesome person. I am pre-emptively mourning over her imminent exchange for the semester :(