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!

Tagliatelle with tomato-rocket sauce

I've just finished two weeks of doing the animation at children's camps. they were an fantastic two weeks, with lovely children and amazing themes.


The last week was in the theme 'Cups, cakes and whoopies'. We baked - chronologically - apple cupcakes, chocolate whoopie pies, black and white biscuits, ham and cheese quiche, cakepops and chocolate chip cupcakes. I basically spent half the time in the kitchen with 17 6-8 year olds, and half the time we played around or made things out of clay, crayons, papers, etc. ...
Today I was honoured to hand them all a diploma of topchef! They were delighted to hear they received one. My signature on it made it all look very 'real' ;)

I came home around 6 pm, and knowing I had a weekend off duty, I was bursting with energy. Preparing dinner didn't take long. I longed for pasta, and just took all that was left over from the past week: rocket, cherry tomatoes, basil and some parmesan cheese.

It was only me, so the recipe is this time for 1 person!

Ingredients for 1:

- 65 grams tagliatelle

- 8 cherry tomatoes

- handful of fresh rocket (rucola), pulled in smaller pieces

- handful of fresh basil, pulled in smaller pieces

- teaspoon of dried oregano

- dash of salt

- half a teaspoon of sugar

- chillie flakes or black pepper

- 2 cloves of garlic, crushed

- 20 grams parmesan cheese, grated

How to:

Put all ingredients for the sauce (everything except the tagliatelle and cheese) in one small pot and put it on high heat. Crush the tomatoes so that the juices can be released. The sauce has to simmer on low heat for around 20 minutes.
Cook the pasta according to the package. 

Drain the pasta and add it to the sauce. Turn it all around so that the pasta takes up some of the sauce.

Serve with the cheese.

A very easy recipe for those days you don't have the time to spend hours in the kitchen, but very tasty and healthy anyhow!

Pasta with chicken livers and pepper sauce

It's been a very busy week. I've been monitoring a children's camp the past five days. The theme of the week was 'animals', and I was in charge of twelve 6 to 8 year olds, which were adorable. We had a falconer visiting us, who showed us falcons, owls, buzzards, an eagle and a vulture. The children and I were delighted, but who wouldn't be?


The coming week will be camp again, this time in the theme 'cupcakes'. This title is not covering all we will be doing. We'll be doing all sorts of baking activities such as preparing cupcakes (of course, hence the title), making quiche, cake pops, biscuits and whoopie pies.  Lots to look forward to!


Today is the first day I can cook again after all this busyness. It'll be pasta with a sauce of peppers and cilantro and chicken livers. Liver isn't everyone's favourite, but I can assure you it's very good. You have to try it!

Ingredients for 4:
- 450 grams chicken livers
- 300 grams pasta
- olive oil
- 2 peppers (red and yellow)
- 400 grams peeled tomatoes (canned)
- 1 small can of tomato paste
- crushed chillies (flakes)
- powdered ginger
- 2 or 3 cloves of garlic
- fresh cilantro
- pepper and salt to taste
- 100 grams grated cheese


How to:
Make the sauce. Heat the olive oil in a pot and add the garlic which you've cut into small pieces and the peppers, diced. Once they've fried for a while (make sure to stir a lot), you can add the tomatoes and the tomato paste. Let it cook for a few minutes on high heat.
Season with salt, pepper, a little cilantro and the chilli flakes. Lower the heat and let it all simmer for about an hour.
In the mean time, you can cut the chicken livers into smaller, bite-size pieces.

Heat some olive oil in a non-stick skillet on the fire and fry the pieces of liver in it. Once they're done (you can check by cutting a piece in half), powder some ginger on top of the chicken livers.

Add the chicken livers to the sauce and let them simmer along for a while, so that the sauce can take up the flavours.

Cook the pasta until tender. Mix the cooked pasta with the sauce and the chicken livers, season to taste and serve with some grated cheese.

Have a nice meal!

Pasta with Summer flavours

The weather is dreadful yet again. No sign of Summer, only rain, lots of wind and a dark sky. Let's hope it's changing for the better once the 21st of June comes. I'm prepared to wait for the official date to call it Summer, but after that I expect much more from the skies above us!

To ease the pain, I have to do with food that gives me a joyful feeling.

Today it was pasta with fresh vegetables, Italian ham, pine nuts and fresh cheese. Due to the vegetables that aren't cooked along, you get a nice crunch and it's really a cross between a pasta and a salad.

Ingredients for 4:

- 300 grams pasta (penne for example)

- 200 grams fresh cheese (I used Philadelphia)

- 150 grams Italian ham

- 35 grams pine nuts

- 80 grams rucola (rocket)

- 100 grams cherry tomatoes

- 3 dl milk

- pepper and salt to taste

- crushed dried chilli to taste

- some cheese to top (if you like) like emmental, gruyère ...

How to:

First, cut the tomatoes in half and place them next to eachother with the wet side up on an oven tray. Put the tray in a 150°C oven for about 1 hour. The tomatoes will come out a little dried and their taste will be even sweeter.

Cook the pasta al dente. 

In the meanwhile, cut the ham in smaller, bitesize pieces. Roast the pine nuts.

Warm the cheese in the milk. It'll get thickened while heated. Add pepper and salt to taste to the sauce.

Toss the cooked pasta in the cheese sauce so that it gets soaked up.

Now assemble everything: spoon a bit of pasta in a plate, put some ham, pine nuts, rucola and cherry tomatoes on it. Then spoon some more pasta on top of it. Put some ham, pine nuts, rucola and cherry tomatoes on it again, crush some chilli on it and cover with some cheese.

I promise: it's a heavy dish, but the Summer flavours make up for at least some of the bad weather!