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 do you translate 'vispannetje' properly? 'Little pan of fish'?

I bought nearly 3 kg of fish filets for my birthday party. Problem was the organisation of cooking for over 30 people in our small kitchen, so we changed plans. The fish, however, was already in our freezer and we now have these fish-dish-nights to eat our stock. 

You have to be creative for doing this: my dad loves fried fish, my mum doesn't like fried fish, my sister usually hates fish and I love to eat fish in all sorts of ways as long as there is enough variation. A little too many different tastes to please all. But we try to do as good as we can, don't we? ;)

Tonight it's a Belgian classic: vispannetje. It can be literally translated as little fish pan, but that sounds a bit ridiculous. Just keep in mind it contains fish and sea fruit, is prepared in the oven and tastes lovely.

As I thought my brother-in-law Jasper was coming over for dinner, I substituted the mushrooms by leek (as he doesn't like mushrooms at all), but it turned out he only came to visit and was gone before we ate. Anyway, it'll be vispannetje without mushrooms ... Leeks taste really nice in this dish, so don't think it's only second choice!

Ingredients for 4:
- 3 or 4 small leeks  OR 250 grams of mushrooms (cut in rings or slices and fried (optionally) fried in some butter*)
- 1 carrot
- 500 grams fish filet
- 200 grams mixed sea fruit (mussels, squid, shrimps, ...)
- 3/4 cube of fish stock
- spoonful of butter
- 400 ml of milk 
- salt and pepper to taste
- 100 grams grated Emmental cheese
- handful of breadcrumbs
- dill

How to:
Grease a large ovenproof dish and scatter the leeks/mushrooms, the sea fruit and the fish in it. Scatter the chopped dill over all of this.
Now cover the dish with the cheese and the bread crumbs.
Make a light béchamel sauce with the butter, a little flour, milk, and the fish stock. Make it not too thick. It should be much more liquid than solid.
Pour the sauce over the rest of the ingredients. 

Put the dish in a 250°C oven and let it all bake for 30-45 minutes.

* You don't really need to prefry the leeks or mushrooms, but for some people the strong taste of leeks is better baked off. The only thing you need to make sure is that they are covered by the sauce while baking in the oven. They'll get tender there too.

Serve this with mashed potato or a carrot-potato mash. 

Smakelijk!

Trying my new oven ramequins: chicken and vegetable pot pies

I was in Antwerp last week with my mum and one of her best friends. We visited the fashion museum there, the MoMu: www.momu.be. There was an exhibition of women's clothing in the period 1750-1950 (Een leven in mode from the collection of Jacoba de Jonge). It was amazingly beautiful to see all these dresses. I was dreaming of myself wearing one of those, even though they must have felt like a prison in disguise with the corsage and hoop skirt.  

The museum, and this exhibition especially is worth visiting!

After enjoying the good weather on the Vrijdagsmarkt, with a delicious sandwich at Cafe Camino ( http://www.facebook.com/antwerpencafecamino), we went for a stroll through the city center.

We came across the Dille en Kamille shop, and as we all love the shop, we went in. Of course we didn't come out empty handed! I found 4 ramequins that I wanted for ages to make individual pies for everyone at home.

Their first use was for making chicken pot pies. I'd seen so many recipes, but I made my own version of it. I added rosemary and vegetables for more taste.

Ingredients for 4 ramequins:

- 1 full chicken breast (400 grams), in very small pieces

- 1 small zuchini, in very small pieces

- 1 large carrot, in very small pieces

- 2 cloves of garlic, crushed

- butter or oil for frying

- pepper and salt to taste

- 1 teaspoon of dried rosemary

- spoonful of chicken spices

- 1 tabelspoon of flour

- 2 dl cream

- 1 roll of pastry 

- 1 egg yolk

How to:

Heat the butter or oil in a skillet and fry the carrot, zuchini, and chicken pieces. Season them with the herbs (rosemary and chicken spices) and the salt and pepper. 

Make sure the chicken is cooked through and the vegetables are softened.

Then spread the flour on top of them. Quickly turn it around so that all of the ingredients have been covered. Then pour the cream. Stir thoroughly.
Then spoon the filling you've prepared into the buttered ramequins. 

Cover the filling with the pastry and use the yolk for a nice golden shine on top while baking. As you can see, I decorated each pie with our own initial (M, N, J & I). Unfortunately, there was no one who noticed it when I served them, so it was all work for nothing ... ;)

The only thing that remains is baking the chicken pot pies at 230°C for about 45 minutes.

I served them with fries and salad. 

Delicious!

Farmhouse chicken casserole

My dad loves to go to flea markets. Whenever the weather is alright and he has some time off, he visits one or another. On Sundays there are often at least two or three he goes to. He has a great eye for making money out of things others regard as trash. He buys something very cheap and sells it - after consulting websites such as Ebay - for a lot more.


After all these years he still brings home little things for decorating. My mum isn't too happy with the eclectic style of our living room. She likes it more sober, but yeah ... he can't be convinced about that.


Another thing he does when going to these flea markets, is bringing home fruit and vegetables. There are always a few farmers who sell their goods. The best strawberries come from their fields. 


This Sunday he brought spring onions and potatoes. As I was going to prepare chicken drumsticks - once bought for the barbecue but never used due to rainy weather, and put in the freezer for later - I thought I could just as well combine them with the onions and potatoes.


The result: farmhouse chicken casserole, or my adaptation of a British dish.

Ingredients for 4:

- 1 or 2 drumsticks per person (I had provençale marinated legs, which worked well)

- 8 small potatoes that won't fall apart during cooking

- 4 spring onions

- 3 large carrots

- 1/3 cube vegetable stock

- 1/2 l water

- black pepper

- Maizena express

- fresh parsley

- 100 grams flour

- olive oil or butter

How to:

Wash the potatoes and cut them in half. Don't peel them, so that they will keep their taste better. Clean the sping onions and cut off the excess greens. Peel the carrots and cut them in half. 

Roll the drumsticks in the flour. They have to be covered with it all over. 

Heat a pan and melt the butter or olive oil. Fry the drumsticks in it. They don't have to be cooked through, they just have to get a little crust outside. 

In the same pan, fry the potatoes and the vegetables lightly. They don't have to be cooked through either.

Now take a casserole that's quite large. Put all the vegetables, potatoes and the chicken in it. Grind black pepper over it to taste. Don't add salt because the stock is salty too.

Dissolve the stock in the water and pour it over the casserole. 

Cover it with foil or a lid.

Put it in the oven and let it simmer for at least 1 and a half hour at 230°C. 

The vegetables should be just tender but shouldn't fall apart. The chicken should fall off the bone when touched. 

Take out all the thning out off the casserole so that only the fluid remains. Add the Maizena express, stir well and put all things back in the casserole.

Don't cover it now, so that it can grill for a few minutes.

Ready to serve with parsley sprinkled on top of it!