Mushroom Pesto Lasagne

Mushroom Pesto Lasagne

One of my favourite dishes to have is avocado pesto pasta… It’s so good and creamy. This week Aldi was selling a pack of two avocados for 49c… so this just had to be made. And I love mushrooms. Love love mushrooms. So this came about…

It’s also a thundery and raining day and just the kind of day to have a cosy romantic meal.

Ingredients (makes a big casserole dish enough for 4-7 people, depending on appetite) 1 pack lasagne sheets (depending on size of dish) Pesto: 4 ripe avocados 1/3 – 1/2 cup of basil (depending if dried, frozen or fresh. We used 1/3c of the first two types) 5-6 cloves garlic Juice of 1/2 lemon (~3 tbsp lemon juice) 1 can coconut milk (note: if making non lasagne pasta, can leave this out and the above is a lovely avocado pesto sauce!)

Filling: (realistically you can put anything you like in it!) 1 pack mushrooms 1 aubergine 1 can chickpeas/cannelloni beans 1/3 a broccoli 1 onion 1/3 cup walnuts 2-3 sun-dried tomatoes

Preheat oven to 180°

1. Prepare the pesto: slice avocados open and spoon out the inner goodness. Chop the garlic and then add the garlic, lemon juice and basil to the avocado mix. Mash. Add coconut milk.

2. Chop up all the vegetables to desired thicknesses. Fry the onions, then add the rest of the vegetables and cook as normal.

3. Put away about 1/2 cup of the pesto sauce to the side (not necessary persay, as we only thought of it after – otherwise your top layer has veg in it… which isn’t so bad either). Add the rest to the cooked veg/beans mix.

4. In a casserole dish, arrange the lasagne sheets in a layer. Top with a layer of the pesto/veg mix. Add another layer of lasagne sheets and more pesto veg mix. Repeat until out of the mix, then top with a final layer of lasagne sheets. Cover these with the non- veg pesto sauce that was put to the side earlier.

5. Put in oven until top is slightly browned. Enjoy!

 

If you just make some pasta, then the pesto sauce (+/- the coconut milk, depending how you like it), it also tastes amazing.

 

Cream of (Coconut) Mushroom Soup

Cream of (Coconut) Mushroom Soup

I LOVE mushrooms! And I’ve never made mushroom soup before – so this was such a treat. (Even Conor, who has quite the vengeance against mushrooms, ate his whole bowl).

Ingredients:

1 pack mushrooms (250g)

2 onions

4 cloves garlic

1 can coconut milk
4 baby potatoes (or equivalent in big potatoes)

1 vegetable stock cube/equivalent of bouillon

3/4 cup dairy free milk

1 tbsp dairy free butter

1 cup water

Spices/herbs: thyme, parsley, rosemary, black pepper

1.  Cut up the mushrooms, onions and garlic. Put butter, mushrooms and onions in a pot and fry until slightly browned and mushrooms have lost their water.
2. In the meantime, oeal and chop the potatoes into small cubes and boil them until soft enough. Add to pot.

3. Make up the stock using 1 cup of boiling water. Leave to simmer on medium heat for 10-15mins. Add herbs/spices and chopped garlic.

4. Add the coconut milk and dairy free milk. Cook on medium heat for about 15mins or until desired consistency. 

Carrot Sesame Burgers

Carrot Sesame Burgers

It’s a splittingly sunny day and we decided instead of heading to the beach it’d be cheaper and more productive to go see Pacific Rim (brilliant film!) and make some burgers.

The main ingredients (carrots, onions, potato, kidney beans) are stuff that were always on the shelves when Conor lived with our friend Paul, who’s currently away where there is probably very hot weather, and are very student staples. The sesame seeds may not be such ‘staples’ but last year they were always around the house and are cheap enough in Lidl/Aldi.

So anyways, BBQ time!

Ingredients:

3 Carrots

2 baby potatoes

1 ½ onions

3-4 cloves garlic

2 cans kidney beans

1 packet cashews

1/3 cup sesame seeds

½ cup flour

Spices: Basil, paprika, thyme, black pepper (to taste)

Preheat oven to 180˚

1. Peel the potatoes and carrots. Boil the potatoes and mash them.

2. Grate the carrots.  Mash the kidney beans.

3. Finely chop the onions and garlic. Put cashews in a blender.

4. Now put them all ingredients together with the spices and flour and roll out into flattened ovals. Put on a well greased baking tray and top with about 1 tsp of oil each. Put in oven and flip over when one side is slightly golden (about 10-15mins), then put in for another 5 mins.

Lovely in some pitta bread with houmous and veg. 

Lemon Macaroon Cream Pie

Lemon Macaroon Cream Pie

We’ve just finished watching all of the TV series ‘Hannibal’ and it really makes you want to cook (In almost every episode there is a dinner scene of a very fine dining nature - admittedly very non vegetarian but it's the idea of fine dining nonetheless). So we decided with all these urges to cook to go all out on a fancy meal. This is the dessert in our dinner (Courgette Nests with Sun-dried Tomato & Sesame starter, Cashew & Tomato Savoury Strudel main)

It’s basically lemon creamy stuff in a macaroon base.

 

Ingredients:

Filling:

Juice and grated rind of 1 lemon

1 block tofu

3 tbsp sugar

1/4 cup oil

2 tbsp cornflour

1 tsp vanilla essence

Base:

1 cup desiccated coconut

1/3 cup flour

1/4 cup dairy free milk

1/6 cup sugar

3 tbsp golden syrup

3 tbsp dairy free butter

1 packet crushable biscuits (we used ‘Oaties’ – like Hobnobs)

Preheat oven to 180°

1. Make the base: Crush the packet of biscuits in a bowl until all are crumbs. Then add all the other ingredients for base to the bowl and mix. Put in a well greased tray lined with baking paper and put in oven for 5-10mins.

2. Make The filling: (grate the rind off your lemon and juice it). Then, using a blender, blend all the ingredients together. Pour into the base.

3. Place in oven for 20-30mins and then leave to cool. Once cooled, refrigerate until need. We topped with some melted chocolate that then cooled once in the fridge.

We ate outside and once the dessert was brought out, a neighbourhood cat came to get some!

(If I was to make it again I’d make the rim crust not as thick… but it was macaroon dough so still delicious) 

Cashew & Tomato Savoury Strudel

Cashew & Tomato Savoury Strudel

We’ve just finished watching all of the TV series ‘Hannibal’ and it really makes you want to cook (In almost every episode there is a dinner scene of a very fine dining nature - admittedly very non vegetarian but it's the idea of fine dining nonetheless). So we decided with all these urges to cook to go all out on a fancy meal. This is the main in our dinner (Courgette Nests with Sun-dried Tomato & Sesame starter, Lemon Macaroon Cream Pie dessert)

Ingredients:

1 packet puff pastry (defrosted to instructions)

1 packet shortcrust pastry (optional) (defrosted to instructions)

1 red pepper (we used one in a jar for flavour)

3-4 sun-dried tomatoes

3-4 cloves garlic, chopped

3-4 florets broccoli

1 packet cashews

1 handful spinach

1-2 tbsp tomato puree

1/2 cup tomato passata

Spices/herbs: thyme, black pepper, paprika, mint (to taste)

Preheat oven to 180°

1. Soak the cashews and then blend to a chunky consistency in a blender. Finely chop the red pepper, broccoli, spinach and sundried tomatoes. Mix in a bowl with the cashews and spices/herbs. 

2. If using both the shortcrust and puff pastry (The Jus roll brand puff pastry comes in squares we discovered, so this little mistake resulted in a good idea)- roll out the shortcrust pastry and place the squares of the puff pastry on it. Alternatively, just use a roll of puff pastry.

3. Spread the tomato puree and passata over the pastry. Then add the vegetable mix. Roll up starting from one edge into a log. With a brush or likewise, coat the log with soya milk to create that sheen. Put in oven for ~30mins.

We enjoyed it with some fragrant rice, and with some Chianti (but no fava beans admittedly) of course.