Homemade lasagna à la Ijeoma

Lasagna time! My most favourite dish ever and always an excuse to eat too much. Since I still work - and have to eat alone most of the time - I insisted on making this in the weekend so that I could be there too. 

I took this recipe from my mum, ages ago. The base is still the same, but I made some little changes which makes it better (in my humble opinion :p).

It's really different from the prepacked lasagnas you can find in any supermarket: there's not a lot of bechamel sauce to make the lasagna totally bland, it's full of vegetables and it's totally fresh!

Ingredients for 4-5:

- 1 kg carrots

- 2 zuchinis

- 3 bell peppers (red, green, yellow or any combination you like)

- olive oil

- 1 large onion

- 4 cloves of garlic

- 500 grams of minced (pork-veal) meat

- 1 teaspoon of cumin powder

- 1 tablespoon of herbes provençales

- 1 teaspoon of oregano

- chilli flakes to taste

- 2 small cans of tomato paste

- 200 grams Emmental cheese, grated

- 100 grams Parmigiano Reggiano

- 1 tablespoon of butter

- 1 tablespoon of flour

- 500 ml milk

- nutmeg, pepper and salt to taste

- lasagna sheets (about 9)

How to:

Cut all the vegetables, the onion and garlic in small cubes.

Heat the olive oil in a large pan. Fry the onion and the garlic in it.

Add the minced meat and stir continuously so that it doesn't get burned.

Now stir in the carrots. Put the lid on the pan and leave to simmer for about 10 minutes.

Add the peppers and leave them again with the lid on top of the pan. They have to have gotten tender.

Put the zuchini in with all of the herbs and the tomato paste. Make sure all is spread out evenly in the pan. Let simmer with the lid on for another 30-45 minutes.

Make a bechamel sauce with the butter, flour and milk. Season with the nutmeg, pepper and salt.

Now make the lasagna by layering the vegetable-meat sauce, the bechamel sauce, the grated cheese and sheets of lasagna (about 3 per layer). End with cheese so that the lasagna can get a nice crispy crust on top of it. Put enough sauce on the sheets of lasagne as they won't get tender when they're not wet.

Take from the oven and let it rest for a few minutes.

Serve in large enough portions (see picture ^^), you'll see that you just can't stop eating anyway ... 

It is simply too delicious to throw away the left-overs. Keep them aside and rehaet them in the oven. The taste is even better after a day!

We were only three this time. My sister wasn't at home, so we just divided the slightly smaller lasagna between the three of us. A lot! (I dicided to take a long walk with our dog to reduce my guilt about overeating :) )

P.S.: mushrooms in it are also a very nice option! Fry them a little and put them in the vegetable-meat sauce or make them as a seperate layer.

Buon apetito!

How to prepare chicken as if it were ossobuco ...

I'm going to babysit this afternoon. The whole afternoon, so no time to cook tonight. As my parents both have to work and my sister has to study for her exams, I decided to make something I could do in advance. A kind of stew or something alike.

I've always looked at recipes for ossobuco, liking them but never tried or tasted them. When I went for the weekly shoppings, I thought of taking ossocuco home. But as luck isn't very reliable, the shop didn't sell ossobuco (neither the veal nor the turkey kind).
I took home chicken insead. I reconed that if there is turkey ossobuco, chicken pieces - parts of another kind of bird - should do the same trick.

For the rest, I just follow the same steps as if preparing the real thing.

Ingredients for 4:
- 4 large or 8 smaller chicken pieces (with bone)
- a few sticks of celery
- a few carrots
- large onion
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 200 ml white wine
- 1 can (400 grams) peeled tomatoes
- 1 small tin of tomato purée
- a little flour
- salt and pepper to taste
- 4 bay leaves
- teaspoon of thyme
- olive oil
- 350 grams of tagliatelle
- zest of 1 lemon
- handful of parsley
- 1 clove of garlic

How to:
Cover the chicken in a thin layer of flour.
Heat the oil in a pot (large enough to place each piece of meat next to eachother) and fry the chicken so that it browns on each side. Spice things up with pepper and salt. Take the chicken out of the pot and add all of the diced carrots and celery and the chopped onion and garlic. 

Once they have sweated a little, put the chicken pieces on top of it all. Add the wine, the tomatoes, tomato purée and the herbs. 
Lower the heat and let all of it simmer for 2 to 3 hours.

Before serving, taste whether it needs more pepper or salt.

I made the whole thing in advance. By doing it the night before, I didn't have to hurry to the kitchen in the morning before leaving for the babysitting, and the tastes would be able to combine more beautifully!

To serve, cook the pasta according to the instructions on the package.
On the plate, put some of the pasta, a piece of chicken, the sauce and sprinkle it all with a mixture of the crushed garlic, the lemon zest and the chopped parsley. These last things form the so called 'gremolata'.

Appetitoso!

Back from Ireland

Hello everyone!


I've been away for a while for the Summer vacation. I'm still a student - not for long now because next year June I hope to complete my Master of Political Sciences - and the Summer is really the ONLY time of year I can get away for longer than a day. That is if you don't have to resit exams of course!


I went with two of my best friends, Johannes and Emily, to Ireland. We explored the West coast in the County Clare. Our aim was to hire a car, but unfortunately the car hire companies don't trust students with licences younger than two years ... We only found out about that a day before we had our flight to Dublin, so we improvised a bit and were able to catch a train to Ennis the same day our plane landed. After a few hours by train, we arrived and our trip could start for real.
Not having a car on hand, we decided to hire bicycles instead. At least we didn't need to prove our skills beforehand to the shopkeepers ;)


Taking your holiday in Ireland is a risk. With on average nearly 300 days of rain a year, it's a miracle to not get wet, especially on bikes. But the near impossible happened: we had the best week of the year yet with blue skies, a lot of sun and 20°C! (that couldn't be compared with the much higher temperatures of +30°C in my home Belgium at the same moment, but who cares?)

Ireland is a wondrous destination. I can recommend it to you all. I'm a nature lover and the nature is everywhere. There are also numerous ruins of monasteries, castles, churches, high crosses ... so that people interested in history and culture have everything they need.


We stayed at a cottage we rented for the holiday. A super nice woman called Brenda Reilly took the greatest care of us, with even a delicious welcome pack on the first day. 


Anyway, after such a holiday, I'm totally re-energated and ready for another year. 


Today it was the first day of me cooking at home since Ireland. I had this strange craving for pizza for a while, so I made my healthy home made version of it again. 
I made a mainly vegetable with a little ham one for me (round) and a partly meat-partly fish one for both of my parents (the elongated ones due to not enough space on the tray).

The dough and the tomato sauce is the same as for the other pizza I once made. 

Toppings round pizza:

- 1/2 roasted yellow bell pepper

- 50 grams ham

- diced mozzarella cheese (as much as you like)

- grated gruyère cheese (again, as much as you like)

- fresh basil leaves

- chilli flakes

Toppings for one of the elongated pizza's:

- 1/2 roasted yellow bell pepper

- 25 grams ham

- 25 grams salami 

- 1/2 tin crab meat

- 6 anchovies

- 2 or more olives, halved

- fresh basil

- mozzarella cheese

- grated gruyère cheese

- chilli flakes

On the pizza's for my parents, I divided each pizza in half approximately and topped each half with either meat or fish. the other ingredients were put on both parts.

They really liked theirs, and I liked my - slightly lighter - version also greatly!

Pasta con pesto, a little pimped

I didn't know how many persons would come for dinner. My sister and her boyfriend are leaving for the Summer holidays to the South of France, and they might or might not dine with us tonight. I thought of something which can be made easily for 3, 4 or 5 people without problem and it was pasta con pesto Genovese.


I'm a huge pasta fan. You might have noticed as three out of the last four posts involved pasta. I could eat it every day if my dad wouldn't mind.


Just the pesto along with the pasta is good, but it lacks some vegetables and colour for me. So I pimped the dish a bit to suit my taste :)
I also traded half of the basil for rocket. It's both goof on its' own, but why not taking both, then?


Ingredients for 4:
- 400 grams pasta (such as tagliatelle)
- handful of fresh basil
- handful of fresh rocket (rucola)
- 80 grams pine nuts, lightly roasted in a hot skillet
- 200 grams parmigiano reggiano
- 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
- olive oil
- pepper and salt to taste
- 8 cherry tomatoes
- bruschetta herb mixture (I use the one from Oil & Vinegar)


How to:
Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and put them on an oven tray with their rounded sides down. Sprinkle them with the bruschetta mixture. Put them in a 150°C oven for at least one hour. Take care the herbs don't burn, that taste isn't very good.
Grate the cheese. Put it in a pot but keep some aside to serve.
Pull the basil and rocket into smaller pieces and put them in the same pot. Keep a few leaves apart for serving.
Put the garlic, the salt, pepper and the pine nuts in the pot and start crushing all the ingredients together. Pour in enough olive oil to make a thick liquid.
Cook the pasta according to the package and drain.
Serve the pasta with a few spoonfuls of pesto, some dried cherry tomatoes, some leaves of basil and grated parmesan cheese.


Heavy but sooo good ...


Buon appetito!

Pollo con le olive thanks to a loving grandmother

We were going to have friends over for a barbecue today. Were because I just received the message from my mum that the people we invited postponed their visit. 
A pity, because it's just marvelous weather: finally the sun broke through the clouds and we actually get temperatures higher than 20°C all day!


But in life you don't have time to regret for long: it'll be pollo con le olive instead. A dish originally from Siena, Italy.

The inspiration comes out of an old cook book I got from my grandmother just yesterday.
My sister and I felt like making a bicycle tour, and we could visit our grandparents in the meanwhile. It's been a long time since we've been there because of school, exams, ...
They were very happy to see us. 
My grandfather began talking about the TV he has in his room - the TV that was formerly ours, by the way ^^ - and how it could be put on and off, how to change the channels, et cetera. We felt that he liked us being with him, even though he didn't have much to say himself. 
My grandmother made us tea and put a whole table full of biscuits and chocolates, in case we were starving. I just love her!


When we were just about to leave, they both insisted we took a look at some things they  liked us to have. I was shown a whole stack of cook books (my grandmother knows I love cooking. I learned to love it because of her, so it's a common interest). My sister had to look at a rather nineties-looking raincoat, which she had trouble with declining.
My eyes immediately fell on this Italian cook book which mentioned classic dishes. taking it with me wouldn't harm and the fact that I chose it made my grandmother happy too. 

Ingredients for 4:
- 1 whole chicken of about 1,5 kg
- 5 fresh sage leaves
- 150 grams black olives
- extra black olives for serving
- olive oil
- 5 cloves of garlic
- pepper and salt to taste
- 800 grams peeled tomatoes
- French loaf or rice for serving


How to:
Cut the chicken in several pieces (the legs, the wings, the breast pieces). Sprinkle them with pepper and salt. Wash the sage leaves and dry them with a towel. Cut the sage leaves and the garlic in very small pieces.
Heat the oil in a skillet and fry the sage and garlic.

Then add the chicken pieces. When they have browned on all sides, pour in some of the wine.
Now put the tomatoes in too. When the tomatoes have cooked along for a while, you can pour in the rest of the wine. Cover the skillet with a lid and let it all simmer for at least 15 minutes on low heat. That's what the recipe says, but I doubted the chicken would be ready in only half an hour. I put it on the fire for about 1 and a half hour. In that way the sauce will be much more tasty, I reconed. 
I guess my skillet was slightly too small for the chicken in it, quite messy looking! 

Cut the olives in half and remove the stones. Stir them under the sauce of the chicken. Simmer with the lid on for again 15 minutes at least. My cutting in half of the olives wasn't very successful: the stones were unremovable unless I cut round them ;)

Serve with the French loaf or rice and some left over olives.


It was delicious. It was the very first time I used sage in something I prepared, and it made it really good! 


Buon appetito!

Pizza from scratch

A few days ago my sister asked me when we would eat Swiss cheese fondue again. I don't like it a lot, but she's doing her exams this month, so no question of hers can be denied I guess. I went for the fondue at the supermarket - I've never prepared it myself, so the shop's will do for the time being.

For myself - not a fan of the bread in cheese combination - I decided to make my own pizza from scratch. 

Knowing my own habits of messing around, I made the dough and the tomato sauce this morning before taking a shower (so that my hair wouldn't be white from flour again). 

Ingredients for a 1 person's pizza dough:

- 85 ml luke warm water

- 1 teaspoon salt

- 2/3 tablespoon honey

- 1 tablespoon olive oil (I used scented oil with bay leaves and peppers)

- 116 grams flour

- 2 to 3 grams instant yeast

How to:

Mix the water, yeast and honey and leave them for a couple of minutes.
Then add the flour to form a sticky dough. Add the salt when all the other ingredients have been mixed thoroughly. It'll look somewhat like this:

Knead for a little while and make a ball of it which you put in a small bowl covered in the olive oil. Cover the bowl with a towel/tin foil/... until it has risen. As I made it early in the morning and the pizza was meant for tonight, I set it in the fridge. 

Ingredients for the tomato sauce:

(enough for 3 pizza's - put the rest in the freezer if not needed)

- 1 can of peeled tomatoes (400 grams)

- 1 little can of tomato paste (70 grams)

- 2 cloves of garlic

- 1 tablespoon basil

- 1 tablespoon oregano

- 1 teaspoon salt

- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper

- 2 teaspoons sugar

How to:

Heat the peeled tomatoes, the tomato paste and the mashed garlic cloves until they cook. Add the herbs, sugar, salt and pepper and let simmer on low heat for at least 20 minutes.

I'm quite fond of my toppings. I think I've not quite often chosen different ones the last couple of years. They're nearly always tomato sauce, cooked ham, parmesan cheese, fresh basil leaves and a little gruyere. You might say it's like pizza prosciutto, but my version.

After assembling the pizza, it was ready to be put in the oven (230°C) for about 20 minutes. I usually depend on my instincts and take it out when I think it should. The crust must be light golden brown in colour and must sound hollow when tapped.

I dare say it's been a really good dinner. I watched my sister and parents eat their cheese fondue and I enjoyed my pizza in the meanwhile :)

Believe me, this pizza tastes much better than it's freezer counterparts!