Contemplating Meat Free Mondays

When I was a teenager, I went through a vegetarian phase. I think most people do at some point in their lives. I told myself it was a moral thing, but really I thought it would help me lose weight, and most of my friends were doing it. I'm dead principled, me. The weight thing might have worked, had I any idea what a vegetarian diet actually entailed. Instead, I ate frozen vegetable lasagne all the time. It was by far my favourite food (after chips, obviously). I still hold quite a flame for vegetable lasagne, and to me it's up there with all the great comfort foods. And, because it's made of vegetables, it's very healthy (yes yes I know it's made of cheese and pasta). I've been toying with the idea of meat free Mondays for a while, partially to assuage the terrible guilt I inevitably feel after a weekend of booze, chicken cottage and pizza (every weekend), and partially because I think it's a Good Thing, health wise. Also, it's nice and forces me to be creative. Some may not agree, but I do the cooking, so boo urns to you.

So recently I made a vegetable lasagne, the recipe for which I got from BBC Good Food, obviously. The best thing about this lasagne is that it was incredibly simple, and there was no faffing about making white sauce, I just used more cheese. There are no pictures, because my phone was charging when I made it, but come on, everyone knows what a lasagne looks like. It's a lovely, easy, and most of all comforting, Monday night meal.

The recipe called for 700g grated courgettes, but I got tired of grating halfway through, and so grated one and sliced one. This made the texture nicer though, in my opinion.

Also, my local Co-op, being the worst supermarket in the world, didn't have the recommended ricotta, so I used marscapone. I'm sure this is a terrible sin, but whatevs, it's hardly the most authentic recipe I've ever seen anyway. AND courgettes in a packet were over twice the price of the loose courgettes sitting right beside them. Plastic must be very expensive. Buy loose courgettes everyone.

Creamy courgette lasagne  

(Serves 4, but I recommend only serving to  two and eating the leftovers because I love leftovers)

9 lasagne sheets (I used egg and didn't boil them first, it was fine)

Oil

A large onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 big huge courgettes (or maybe 5 small ones) Grated and chopped

A red pepper

A handful of spinach

A tub of marscapone

100g grated cheddar (recipe said 50g but I love cheese)

Tub of fresh tomato sauce from the supermarket (or make your own, if you're so inclined)

Pop the oven on to 220 degrees. Heat the oil and fry the onion for a couple of minutes. Add the courgettes and cook until the courgettes are soften and a slightly worrying bright green colour.

Heat the sauce in the microwave for about 2 minutes.

Stir in 2/3rds of the two cheeses and season. This cheesey mush is delicious (to me, it's probably actually disgusting) so resist the urge to eat it.

Spread a layer of the mush (so appetising) at the bottom of a baking dish, then a layer of pasta, then a layer of tomato sauce, then repeat. 

Blob the rest of the marscapone on top, and then all the grated cheddar you have left. 

Heat in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

Serve with a salad, if you feel like it.

So that's what I had for dinner last Monday. Hardly inspired, but I enjoyed it plenty. I'm off home this weekend (for a wedding and a 90th birthday party and exhaustion) and then on holidays (SALZBURG) the following week, so I probably won't be cooking. But if I see anything exciting, I'll be sure to take a picture, mean to blog about it, and forget.

Porkie Pies

Did you watch The Great British Bake Off? It was amazing, and one of my favourite things on television. I'm not overly excited by some other cooking competition TV (notably Masterchef - so much shouting, so tense!), but this is wonderful. There is the right amount of tension, and everyone is so lovely and British and nice. Janet is (was) my favourite. Oh Janet! So sweet. And so unlike the others. Like me, Janet is no stranger to the 'a couple of grams more or less won't make a difference either way' method of cooking. Janet, if by chance you see this, come teach me how to bake, please.

Although I haven't had a chance to watch the final yet, I do know who won, and I am aware of the squirrel star of the show, which is an Internet meme waiting to happen (view it here at your own risk).
 
A couple of weeks ago they made pork pies. Having never had a pork pie, I was intrigued by the idea. The results look suitably delicious, but terribly difficult to achieve. Leaving them over night, using jelly, inserting an egg in the middle. All an awful lot of work. Last Saturday however, I had the urge to bake something. Having originally planned to roast a pork belly, I soon decided that as it was 30 degrees outside I'd rather make something easy I could have on a picnic. I found this recipe, for cheats pork pies, on Donal Skehan's website, and decided to give it a go. I altered it slightly to my tastes. To be fair, they are basically just glorified sausage rolls. Calling these pork pies would be telling pork pies (I have been working on making that less laboured all week, there is no way), but they were delicious and I would definitely have them on a picnic again, in 10 months time (sob). You probably don't need all the 'splashes' I recommend, I just used what was in front of me.

Easy Pork Pies (makes 12 miniature pies)

Ingredients

3 rashers of bacon
400g sausage meat (the butcher didn't have any, so he kindly just split open a load of sausages for me. I'm sure this would be very easy to do yourself)
2 onions, sliced finely
2 small cloves of garlic, sliced finely
Salt and pepper
Mixed herbs
A splash of Worcester sauce
A tiny splash of Tabasco
2 sheets of shortcrust pastry (this means two packets, incidentally. I'm sure most people know this, but I did not, and it resulted in a rushed second journey to the shop. Which I didn't enjoy)
1 beaten egg to glaze the tops

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees/gas 6
Fry the bacon on a medium heat until it's crispy and golden.
Fry the onion and garlic in the bacon fat on a low heat until they're soft. While this is going on, cut the bacon into small pieces and place in a bowl.
When the onions are done, mix them with the sausage meat and bacon in the bowl. Use your hands for this, it's fun.
Cut 12 circular disks from the pastry to fit the muffin tray, and then 12 smaller ones for the lids. For this I used a mug for the big ones, and a small glass for the little ones. You probably have special cutters for this though.
Place the larger disks into the muffin tin, and fill each with about 1 tablespoon of pork mixture.
Top with the smaller disks, making sure to seal.
Brush the tops with the beaten egg (I used the back of a teaspoon, because a pastry brush is very low down on my list of things to buy at the moment)
Pop in the oven for 20 minutes
Allow to cool (I ate one warm which was lovely too)
Enjoy. I served mine with just a few cornichons and some English mustard, but a nice crisp carrot salad would have been lovely with this, I think. The butcher I went to also sold Tayto crisps and Club Orange, which made for a delicious and nostalgic picnic.