My First Easy Cheese/Meat-free Lasagna

Some recipes are waiting and waiting for you to be prepared and you still avoid doing it because not brave enough to just go on. It´s like that famous door that waits for you to be open and you spend the rest of your life in the front of it waiting someone to open up for you. 

No more waiting for me! Including in terms of recipe testing. When I want to do something and wish for it, I know now that everything is up to just me, the one and only in charge to make it happen.

Lasagna was one of those meals hard to be done at home. Not sure what was the psychological blockage about, but it was like this for a long time, until this Friday when I just put together all the ingredients and finally made it. 

The most important part of the preparation has to do with the cheese filling, as you need some experience in order to properly know what goes better for a tasty result. For instance, I´ve used ricotta chese, but I bet a cottage cheese or some labne with a less neutral consistency would have bring a stronger salty taste. Otherwise, it was not only a great fulfilling meal exprience for the main Shabbes meal, but also a cool kitchen project developed for and together with my son who helped intensively with the filling of the sheets. 

Next on the agenda is a meaty lasagna for whom I am trying to figure out the right ingredients right now.

Ingredients

125 gr mascarpone
2 beaten eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
125 gr. shredded yellow cheese
6 non baked Barilla lasagna sheets
1/4 red pepper, finelly minced
125 ml. tomato sauce, at room temperature
fresh dill, on taste - alternatively, you can use parsley
4 gloves garlic, finelly minced

Directions

In a bowl mix well the cheeses, the eggs, the salt, the dill and the garlic. Keep some cheese for the top of the lasagna. Pour the tomato sauce in a different bowl.

On a sheet of lasagna, add the tomato and the cheese filling. For the cheese filling, we used a cooking brush. Repeat the operation until you are on the last sheet. Add the rest of the tomato sauce - preferably have some extra to let the lasagna cook in its own sauce. On the last sheet, add the extra cheese and eventually some additional tomato layer. 

What I really liked about preparing this lasagna is that I figure out how many options you have for playing with ingredients, including when you are not mixing meat and cheese. You have a lot of options on the veggies side, for instance, by adding slices of fresh tomatoes, or aubergines, or onions or champignons, or corn, or even some fried potatoes - but it looks rather like a mousaka that I will try as well. 

In my variant of lasagna, there is no oil used and I loved it this way, but you can also add the oil if you want a greasy final result. A big lover of spices, this time I prefer to not add anything, but some oregano or za´atar goes good as well. 

For more tastier results, labne instead of ricotta and Greek cheese instead of the mozarella could help.

Let it heat in the oven at 250C. Serve it fresh, at the room temperature!

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Cooking time: 45 minutes

Bon Appétit!

Roasted Strawberries, Are They Worth the Hype?

Why should you roast fruits when you can eat them fresh? The same goes to: why should you add sugar to fruits? If they are not sweet enough, you better find other fruits than damage their original sweetness? Hence, my dislike for sour cherries - besides the jam version. But I am open for new ideas and recipes - easy ones, too - therefore I gave a try to this one from Leah Koenig´s Modern Jewish Cooking.

Ingredients

250 gr. fresh strawberries, freshly washed and cleaned
100 gr. fresh lemon zest
4 tablespoon white sugar - brown sugar goes as well
Whipped cream - optionally

Directions

Add the strawberries, lemon zest and the sugar in a bowl and mix well. Let it rest for a couple of minutes.
Heat the oven at 250C at least 10 minutes before starting the roasting. Display the strawberries on a baking sheet and keep it in the oven for around 30 minutes.
Serve it warm or with some added whipped cream on the top.

I´ve been not very impresed about the taste, maybe because I was parcimonious with the use of too much sugar, but the other people in the house appreciated it and strawberries disappeared within minutes. Warm strawberries are a good idea, but maybe I have to see if they are a great one when prepared as a jam. Strawberry-experiment to be continued and extended in the next weeks.

Before the baking

Preparation: 15 minutes

Roasting: 30 minutes

Serves: 3-4 hungry humans

After the baking. Does it look like a painting? Love the genuine red colour

Bon Appétit!

Grean Beans with Pistachios and Labne

Half a year without posting and it paid off: the DA sunk, the regular revenues from my blogging and photography activities as well and the chances of being accepted for a serious collaboration with a serious brand are slim, if not completely non-existent.

Torned between the need of keeping an online face and the pressures on the personal front, I decided to take the break first, and come back. Now, I am back. Hungry, in the mood for experiments and keen to share some personal stories of resilience and mindfulness. 

One of the most inspiring cookbooks I´ve read lately is Leah Koenig Modern Jewish Cooking. My kind of cookbook where simple kosher ingredients are mixed creatively. There are plenty of things I´ve learned from this book, but in the next 4-5 posts will share the most relevant for my current cooking state of affairs, as it allowed me to try and experience new ingredients, products and tastes. As usual, I´ve adapted the recipes, added extra ingredients or eliminated some. 

Here it is, for the sautée green beans with labneh!

If there is a Middle Eastern product that I am always longing for, there it is labneh. I love the texture, the versatility - it goes so well with fish, bagel, eaten from the box, prepared with dill - and the consistency. It combination with green beans, sautée, Iranian pistachio and walnut oil, among others, it can be easily eaten as a meal in itself, as it is heavy and nutritious. The preparation may take some time - around one hour - but it elegantly save your entrée part for the Friday evening meal.

Ingredients

200 gr. green beans, washed, with the ends on both sides

2 full tablespoons walnut oil

5 big garlic cloves, halved

around 20 Iranian pistachios, crushed in a mojar (the original recipe mentioned almonds, but I prefered to keep it up with the citrus note) 

2 full tablespoons lemon zest

1/2 tablespoon salt

100 gr. normal butter

250 gr. fresh labneh, from the fridge- as an alternative, you can add some parmesan and any sort of hard cheese on the top as well

Directions

Heaten the oil in the pan at 250 for around 10 minutes. Add the garlic and roast it slowly for a couple of minutes. Add the beans and the lemon zest and slowly roast it from a side to another. Add the butter and keep mixing up. As the beans may be a bit too green, the butter tenders it. Continue with the pistachios and keep mixing. 

When ready, wait for a couple of minutes until it cools down, add the labneh - or your choice of cheese - on the top and serve it either as an individual dish or as a companion to fish or summer salads. 

Serves: 3

Preparation time: 30 minutes

Cooking time: 30 minutes

Bon Appétit!