Cold Night Cookery: Vegetable Lasagne

If you don't like this, I don't like you

With the nights drawing in and the cold weather howling outside my window every morning I have decided to do something wild and spend more time at home. Over the last 12 months most weekends have been spent jumping on expensive trains to visit loved ones around the country. While I have enjoyed every minute of these visits, my winter plan was to spend more time enjoying my home, taking in some music, having lots of baths, writing and of course cooking.

This Friday night was a rare gem, my housemate and I were miraculously at the same place at the same time on a weekend and we also had a lovely visitor. No better time to cook my extra special vegetable lasagne.

In our household growing up we didn’t eat a lot of minced meat, my dad couldn’t really stomach it and my mum followed suit so rather than fry minced beef for our lasagnes and and chillis we either used vegetables, and later on in my childhood, Quorn.

Quorn is a marvellous thing when added to hearty meals, adding bulk and if you ask me actually tasting nicer than mince (I hate the look, sound and smell of minced beef cooking). So in my endless quest for the perfect vegetable lasagne I have finely tuned and crafted the ingredients until I have found the ultimate combination of taste, texture and nutritional value (ish, ignore the cheese).

The inclusion of the soft jarred peppers in oil is a 2012 revelation as a result of doing my weekly shop at Sainsbury’s. Sainsbury’s own jarred peppers are wonderful, slightly charred and sitting in a delicious, delicately flavoured oil that I like to keep and add to other dishes. I personally can’t have a vegetarian lasagne without a courgette or two and I couldn’t explain to you why. The jury is out about how to chop them and it depends on my mood. Sometimes I want a fine dice, sometimes I want them a little more chunky, other times I go for circular cuts to fully absorb the flavour. Tonight I’m feeling circular. I don’t usually use aubergine (or eggplant to the foreigners), tonight I feel like it. I’m probably going to layer it with the pasta after separately chargrilling it, maybe slopping it about afterwards with some olive oil and basil. We’ll see how we go.

I’ve experimented with different kinds of pastas, blindly believing that fresh is best I recently used fresh sheets to find that they disappointingly shrivelled up when I added them to the hot sauce, like they were ashamed of their long durum wheat yellow bodies (it’s Friday afternoon, it’s getting a bit abstract). So now I’m of the mind-set of screw you fresh pasta and I’m back to good quality dried stuff, sometimes I go for the green, today its traditional.

The cheese sauce is quite possibly the glue that holds the whole wonderful construction together; I obtained this wonderful recipe from my mother who can’t half make a mean cheese sauce. I understand that I’m supposed to be making a béchamel but who cares, I’m adding cheese. I’m also sprinkling the top with cheese and blobs of mozzarella. Lighten up, it’s Friday.

Finally to top it all off a lovely glass of red wine at room temperature. Pinotage should do it tonight. Ah. What a week. Oh and I appreciate I haven’t updated you on the running training for a while. Yeah..it’s going um....well....

Cheerio

HYKAEI BEST vegetable lasagne for a cold Friday night with friends

(Serves 6 or 4 hungry people)

Quorn mince (one bag)

2 onions or 3, whatever

Some garlic, diced, sliced, jarred. Whatever you have the energy to do with it

A couple of big jars of passata and a tin of tomatoes (preferably organic)

Some soft peppers in oil (I like Sainsbury’s own)

Olive oil

1-2 Courgettes and maybe a nice looking aubergine

A ball of mozzarella

Some fresh basil

Either dried or fresh lasagne sheets. I used fresh the other day and they weirdly shrivelled when I put them on the hot sauce so maybe go with some good quality dry ones

For the sauce

A block of good cheddar (just some nice mature/extra mature- nothing too extreme otherwise it will be overpowering)

Milk

Butter (real butter please not margarine). I like the French stuff

A little flour

Method

Firstly chop your onions up to a relatively fine dice, they should at least not be huge. Get a bit of olive oil going and fry until tender, adding some garlic until your kitchen starts to smell like mamas kitchen (I also appreciate the irony that Italians don’t EVER use garlic and onions at the same time). At this point add your veg, if you chopped the aubergine into small chunks add this now, you’ll probably need more oil, these things drink oil like Jamie Oliver on a slow day. Also add your courgettes ensuring that you have the heat high enough to get some colour on them all. Now it’s time to add the Quorn, ah magical, from freeze dried to mince in 0.2 seconds. Done.

Now you need to start adding your tomato based things to the mixture, either chop your peppers up or just throw them in whole adding a bit of the oil as well for good measure (not too much). Pour in your passata and tomatoes, a bit of water if you like and even some tomato puree if you want to go tomato crazy. Leave this to bubble away like a tomato sauce nightclub for a little while, use your instincts, if it starts thickening and looks awesome, it’s nearly done. Tear up some basil and add some seasoning, sometimes I add sugar sometimes not, always a bit of pepper, maybe salt. See what you think. You can EVEN throw a bit of your glass of wine in for depth of flavour.

If you are layering your aubergine like me then use this moment to fry in batches and set aside.

Right sauce DONE, set aside.

Now you are on to your cheese sauce, you need to watch this because it will cook quite quickly and then you will frantically need to construct your masterpiece (two people are better than one). First of all you need to make a roux. I never have exact measurements for this, just throw in a good old dollop of butter, a fair slice from your beautiful French stuff. When it starts to melt add a couple of heaped tablespoons of flour. I never add enough at this stage so don’t listen to me, add more. Stir until it makes a paste and now you need to add your milk whilst whisking, you can add some nutmeg at this stage if you want to be traditional. I never do, that stuff gives you hallucinations. Again this is a judgement call, it should be relatively thick now and this is your moment to throw in handfuls of salty amazing cheddar until the sauce can barely take no more.

Now to construct, layer sauce with pasta, a smidge of sauce, eggplant and repeat until you slather the top with cheese sauce. Dot with torn mozzarella and basil and sprinkle with the remaining grated cheese (stop eating it). The key is to make sure all of the pasta is covered by liquid or it won’t cook.

Time to select a wine, gutsy Pinotage wins!

Put it in a hot oven, make yourself a simple green salad, cut some bread and dunk it in olive oil, and pour yourself a glass of red.

I saw you eating that leftover cheese sauce!

Bon appetite!

On love..

In the most sentimental entry of this blog's history I report live to you from Sydney International Airport with a few words about love (I promise next week ill get back to talking about pastry).

This later part of my 20s has been marked by the loss and gain of great love. I'm coming around to the idea that life is a constant ebb and flow. People coming in and out of your life constantly, changing little or big aspects of you. Brief encounters, people who change your outlook or perspective, people who teach you things, those who show you a path that you don't want to go down, those that shock you, those that comfort you.

But what of great, enduring love? That bit is trickier, the quest for lifelong love. That bit may require sacrifice and compromise but never ever the changing of yourself.

Today I am lucky to have that perfect luxury, the enduring love of friendship, that higher order kind of love that doesn't judge or anger but rather supports, nurtures and changes you into the person that you were meant to become.

So to all those that I love dearly. I am grateful daily to you all for changing my life. I'm so happy to be part of your world.

So wherever you are reading this, on the train, at work (naughty), over toast and tea or wine and steak. Take a moment to be grateful for those you love because its these small moments of gratitude that form the beautiful patchwork quilt that is your life.

So with love, thanks and in the search for the perfect cheese toastie.

Goodbye for now Sydney.

How not to train for a half marathon: The aerobics class

It's been a running joke (pardon the pun) for the last two weeks (usually when i'm sitting happily with a slice of pizza and a glass of wine), when my training is going to start. I usually smile, laugh and say soon (trying to look serious). But it's always followed by the thought...when is my training going to start?

With that in mind I decided to get my cardio up to semi normal levels by attending a weekly aerobics class a mere 10 minute walk from my house, so no excuses.

It's funny how our perception of ourselves never map on to reality. In my head i'm wonderfully co-ordinated, positively graceful. Gliding through the world with the greatest of ease, salsa-ing my way through life doing a constant two step.

It's times like aerobics class when that illusion falls apart.

I arrived and the peppy, lovely perma tanned lady greeted me and handed me a form to fill out. After she was fully reassured that I wouldn't drop dead in her class, I stood amongst the usual characters, clasping what looked like a giant deflated balloon, bopping to the obligatory blasting house music, ready to get fit.

Five minutes in I caught a glimpse of myself in the window and realised how utterly and comically ridiculous I looked, flailing around in a crazy fashion, with not even my arms co-ordinated with the rest of the group. I began to get the giggles, feeling like Louis Theroux investigates the aerobics class or feeling like this may be great material for a short story. My giggles were compounded by the most remarkably fit old lady in front of me who was using her stretchy giant balloon as a ninja belt as she effortlessly sashayed backwards as I spun the wrong way and collided into strangers.

As the music continued from one bad dance track to another, hundreds of squats down and my heart rate up I began to feel a little euphoric. By the time 'We are young' came on and we were doing horrendous sit ups I started to feel positively giddy.

So as I happily bounced home, I thought three things: isn't exercise fun, i'm so uncoordinated and boy do I want quiche.

So that's what I had, but that's ok. The peppy lady with the freaky abs would say I deserved it.

The Loneliness of the Not So Long Distance Runner

Running isn't so bad

In a slight change of tac, rather than write about the time I ate a butter encased cheese filled croissant, I've decided to write about something a little crazy that I did recently. Sign up for a marathon.

It's safe to say i'm not runner, nor am I sporty. I have an aversion to the gym, I can't catch to save my life and I have repressed memories of PE where I was kicked off the netball team after one terrible game as Goal Defence.

That aside, this year is all about challenges and distancing myself as far as possible from my comfort zone. So here I am, four and a half months from the marathon, slightly terrified, slightly in denial with a faded print out of my bootcamp style 'training schedule'.

I decided that it might be quite amusing to document the highs and lows of my 'training', the times that I don't bother because I have to eat a 3 course meal or go to Australia. The times that I go and want to throw up after 11 minutes (that happened today) and the pure of euphoria of doing something new.

In true researcher style i've already done the groundwork about how to be a runner, apparently you have to have good shoes, a lot of will power and dedication and an acceptance that you will get blisters and occasionally want to cry.

Glancing at my beginners 'how to get around the marathon without dying' schedule today I decided to test out my stamina by going for my first run in a year. The back drop was idyllic as I huffed and puffed my way around 4k going through a range of emotions, the low point 10 minutes in where I actually wanted to keel over and get into the foetal position and the high point 33 minutes in when I realised that I was over the hump and could actually keep going.

Sights of my run included a couple going to 2nd and maybe 3rd base as I jogged by, a few lovely squirrels, some lazy walkers eating ice cream (who I scoffed at in a smug runner satisfaction) and the chicks of Spring that have now grown into lovely scary ducks.

Level of pain post run..hard to say. It's been 5-6 hours and I can already feel my legs seize up. Maybe I went in too hard.

As I came home a little out of puff tucking into my yoghurt and blueberries and nuts, I realised why some people do this. The euphoria of pushing your body is quite rewarding, I got into a little world of my own with the backdrop of Hot Chip thinking about life and the future and how nice the park looked drenched in orange.

So run 1 over, 4k done. I will update on the highs and lows of the rest of my training.

Now if you'll excuse me I think I've earnt a piece of cheese on toast, if I can get up.
Ouch

Lunch and Love at Auntie Fu's Inn

Auntie Fu's Inn

There were many highlights on my China adventure but none so rustic and memorable as my lunch at Auntie Fu’s. Auntie Fu’s is located about 2 hours South of Shanghai and a little into the countryside amid the farms full of chickens and green tea. Fu’s had become famous for rustic organic produce and of course a great lunch. A trip to Fu’s had become a middle class mecca, hippy Westerners driving down to pick their organic chicken and neighbours stopping by for the best corn in town.

My journey so far had opened my eyes to the real side of delicious Chinese food, rice, usually steamed or fried, usually a whole fish simply steamed with soy or a fresh school of prawns, many vegetables sometimes pickled, sometimes fresh with a little vinegar and meats flavoured with star anise and sticky with sugar.

Today at Fu’s things were a little different, it was a hot 35 degree day and we were led up a rickety staircase into a tiny room barely able to fit the signature round table. Our first delectable treat was a bowl full of freshly made date and logan tea, it was delicate and cool and beautifully fresh, we all happily downed it with a smile.

Next were the signature ‘starters’ some small crab with endame beans, a school of fried prawns and a pile of unidentified steamed greens with garlic. Next came the meats, sticky belly pork with seaweed (delicious), one of Fu’s golden skinned chickens hacked into delicious pieces, a big pile of fried rice and the most delicious steamed yams ive ever tasted. To conclude a big bowl of ham hock and sweetcorn soup was presented with thick juicy corn delicious doused with some rice.

Dessert was my favourite xi gua, sticky rice cakes and some sugar cane that we all peeled ourselves.

Rustic dessert

As I sat there in the unfamiliar surroundings listening to the fast conversation that I couldn’t understand with it’s now familiar tones I thought how oddly normal this meal was, a simple deconstructed good old fashioned Sunday roast with the ladies. Odd how something so foreign to me a month ago had become so normal.

The conversation turned to love, as all the women shared their stories I felt warm in the fact that no matter where we are in the world or where we are in our lives, some things never change. In this case, get a group of women together over lunch and talk will inevitably turn to boys. As stories got thrown around, some sad, some hopeful, some fresh wounds and some old ones, collective words of wisdom were gathered from around the table. ‘Love yourself first’, ‘keep your options open’, ‘wait until it’s worth compromising’ and never lose yourself.

And finally, my favourite gem of wisdom from a lady with the best sugar cane bite of the lot of us, translated of course.

If you like him, never call. Never stop flirting no matter how old you get and surround yourself with men who fancy the pants off you.

So here’s to never giving up on love, Sunday lunch, Auntie Fu’s pumpkin and loving yourself first. All the way from China.

Post Shanghai Musings

Chinese menu trauma. Nice scarf!

Nihao lovely readers!

Well i'm back, i'm alive, i'm only partially covered with a fine mist of old Chinese man saliva and I'm adjusting to being in a country where I'm moderately less likely to be blown away by a typhoon and people understand what I say.

To say that going to China alone was one of the scariest experiences of my life would be an understatement. It was scary for a number of reasons:

-The place is absolutely fucking huge
-My fear of crossing the road in the UK where conformity reigns and green means safety was put to the test as crossing the road became a survival of the fittest
-I don't speak a word of Chinese

However, despite my daily terror, Shanghai was the most fascinating, challenging, exciting and thrilling trip of my life.

So now I am home in the comfort of my kitchen I can finally reflect upon my dining experiences, of which there were many, gross ones, exotic ones, vaguely familiar ones, outrageous ones and delicious ones.

So let's start our journey in a rustic farm, lamenting about love and bloody delicious pumpkin.

Bye bye (that is literally how you say bye in Chinese)

Pre-Shanghai Musings

So it's the eve of my journey to Shanghai and due to life becoming frantically busy I haven't had a chance to write in a while. I haven't even published my pre-written entry about an amazing coffee I had in Farrington. How rude.

So first thing tomorrow I leave for China, first class to St Pancras. Travelling in style naturally. Although the endless luggage and tripping over myself in my usual haphazard way might ruin the international business woman look that I am so yearning for.

I'm a little nervous about this trip as it is catapulting me far from my comfort zone. As much as I am a believer that the greatest things happen in life when you step out of your comfort zone into the dark unknown, i'm still a little scared. I really like my comfort zone, it has brownies. Look (I made brownies).

So rather than spend the next two months arranging flowers in my beautiful kitchen, cooking, watching Friends and drinking cups of apple and cinnamon tea I have decided to take the scary option of arriving alone in an unfamiliar country with no concept of the language and only the best translation iPhone app for assistance.

I do however, have a list of places to eat, a list of things and people to see, a list of potential new friends, a handsome Australian visitor, a suitcase full of my best strutting around China clothes (including 5 pairs of uncomfortable shoes) and an empty diary ready to be filled up with memories.

So I guess the only thing to do in this situation is to shut up, get on the train and do a long jump out of my comfort zone.

That is after all, where the most magical things happen.

So goodbye for now Britain. I have a date with Shanghai.