Roasted Pumpkin Lasagna with Butter Beans

Piping hot and bubbly out from the oven, it looks "alive".

This recipe uses two ingredients that I don't normally cook with: 1. carrot - I'm ok with carrot, I just don't give much thought about cooking or eating them; 2. celery - I'm better with celery now than when I was a kid. There's this other issue with celery: they come in big packages - I don't want to be thinking what to cook with celery for 7 consecutive meals. So it's not hard to see this is a combination that I'd usually avoid. It's probably the frozen cooked butter beans that called me to this recipe, which ironically plays no part in the original recipe.

I kind of messed up the part with the roasted pumpkin and cooked butter beans. The original instruction is "Clear a spot in the bottom of the pan and add the chopped roasted butternut squash and about 1/4 of the beans with their liquid. Mash the two together with a potato masher or the back of a spoon, and then add the rest of the beans to the pot." I didn't de-froze the beans fast enough (I forgot we now have a microwave). I also think butter beans are not as easily mashed as canned cannelini beans. Therefore, after some considerable futile attempts, the butter beans remained mostly "unharmed" and intact in my recipe.

The lasagna noodle recipes that I found online seem pretty strict forward. I'm not a pasta person or I wouldn't mind investing in one of those pasta maker and make my own noodles.

I'm glad I didn't reduce the recipe and made what's enough for 6 persons. Adrian did have a little comment "look like we'll be having lasagna for a few more dinners." When I said we could give it away, he looked surprised "give it away? WHY?" Yes, the lasagna is G.O.O.D.

For the filling:

• 1/2 a large pumpkin, roasted with olive oil, salt and black pepper. Mashed.
  
• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• small bunch of fresh thyme, leaves picked and chopped
• small bunch of fresh oregano, leaves picked and chopped
• 2 big handful of cooked butter beans
  
• 1/4 cup white vinegar
  
• salt and pepper

1. Saute onions with salt. Add celery and carrots. Stir to coat. Cover and let cook over medium heat for 10 minutes.
   
2. Stir in thyme and oregano. Stir to coat. Cover and let cook for another 5 minutes.
   
3. Stir in garlic and fry till fragrant.
4. Add cooked butter beans and mashed roasted pumpkin.
   
5. Deglaze with white vinegar. Add some water to thin it out if necessary. Season with salt and pepper.
   

For the béchamel:

• 5 Tbsp butter
• 1/4 cup flour
• 3 cups milk, heated
  
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

1. Melt butter over medium heat. Whisk in flour. Continue to whisk until the mixture turns golden brown (about 6 - 7 minutes).
2. Add heated milk, one cup at a time, stirring constantly until the mixture is smooth.
   
3. Bring it to boil and cook for another 30 seconds. Season with salt and nutmeg.

To assemble:

• filling
• bechamel sauce (set aside 1 cup for topping)
  
• 4 oz. of mozzarella cheese
• 3 oz. of ricotta cheese
• Lasagna noodles
  

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Grease a 10cm x 20cm Pyrex baking dish with butter. Mix together mozzarella and ricotta. Set aside 1/4 cup.
2. Layer from the bottom in this order: bechamel, lasagna sheet, filling, and cheese. Repeat as many times as necessary. End with 1 cup of bechamel sauce and sprinkle the top with 1/4 cup of cheese.
3. Bake in the oven for 45 minutes, until golden brown and bubbly. Cool before serving.
   

Roasted Ratatouille

Ratatouille originated as a vegetable stew from Provence and Nice in France. A "classical" ratatouille has tomato as the main ingredient, with zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, onion, garlic, bay leave, thyme, basil, or mixed green herbs such as herbs de Provence. I opted out eggplant and used the leftover carrot, and red and yellow bell peppers instead.

Roasting really brings out the flavor of the vegetables. You can serve this as a side dish, or main with crusty bread, rice or noodles, or roasted potatoes.

I have adapted this dish based on a book called Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook by Robin Robertson.

Ingredients:
1/2 of each red bell pepper and yellow bell pepper, diced
1/2 large carrot, cut into coin slices
1 small zucchini, cut into coin slices
2 small tomatoes, chopped
1/4 large onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
salt and pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoon thyme
3 tablespoon basil pesto (homemade or store bought)
2 tablespoon parsley, chopped

1. Preheat oven to 200C. Lightly grease baking tray.
   
2. Toss together all the ingredients, except zucchini and tomatoes, together in a medium bowl.

3. Pour over baking tray. Cover and bake for 20 minutes.

4. Remove cover, add zucchini, tomatoes and thyme. Bake uncover for another 20 minutes, or until vegetables are tender.

5. Stir in basil pesto, sprinkle with chopped parsley. Serve warm.

Baked Stuffed Bell Peppers

What happens when you take everything that’s fresh and colorful and stuffed to the inside of a bell pepper? This is an amazingly light and flavorful dish – baked bell pepper stuffed with fresh corn, lentils, zucchini, carrots and cilantro. I also added a little coriander and cumin for flavor and some lemon juice to brighten it all up. Finally, this baked dish is complete with breadcrumbs and a dusting of Parmesan cheese. Not only is this a beautiful dish, the vegetables are just cooked; you can taste "fresh".

This recipe is adapted from here. I chose to use lentils instead of black beans for two reasons: 1. I can't find black beans. 2. there are two bags of lentils in my kitchen.

I was going to pair this with a chilled avocado soup. Unfortunately, I used up all the coriander I needed. So I chose to blend the avocado up with coconut milk and agave nectar, and froze it and later left it out in room temperature, for a ice-cream of sort. You can never go wrong with coconut milk - I had to make second servings to satisfy Adrian's needs for satiety.

Ingredients:

2 large bell peppers
1 sweet corn, shucked
1/2 cup cooked lentil
1 small zucchini, diced
1/4 of a red onion, diced

1/2 carrot, diced

juice of 1 lime
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. sea salt
1 cup chopped cilantro leaves
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1/4 tsp. ground cumin
3/4 cup breadcrumbs
1/4 cup grated Parmesan

1. Preheat the oven to 175°C and grease a baking dish. Slice the very top off of your bell peppers, then use a spoon to carefully hollow them out.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the corn, zucchini, lentils, onion, olive oil, lime juice, cilantro, salt and spices until evenly combined. Carefully, spoon them into the bell peppers until over-stuffed. If you have extra filling, place in the dish around the bell peppers.
3. Top each of the bell peppers with breadcrumbs and generous grating of Parmesan cheese. Bake for 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Serve with a side of crusty bread, pasta or rice.

Corn Soup

I think I like corn a lot. The sweet and savory smell of steamed buttered corn always makes tme drool. Although I don't order corn soup from restaurant - I guess they are never as good - I do have a desire for it. It has taken me this long to make a corn soup because..... not sure. I thought Adrian didn't like corn?
Anyway I decided to give it a go. It seems like a good one to have with the leftover Savory Tomato Pesto Pie. The corn and carrot add to the sweetness, and the milk to the creaminess. This recipe uses boiled milk with corn cobs as broth - it boosts the flavor of the corn and tastes like you are eating fresh corn of the cob!

Ingredients:
(serves 2)
1 ears of corn

1 cup milk

1/4 yellow onion, diced

1/2 carrot, peeled and sliced

1 large garlic cloves, minced

1/2 cup water

salt and pepper

2 large sprigs of fresh thyme

sour cream, optional

1 Cut kernels form the cob, reserve cobs. Boil milk with cobs in a large saucepan over medium heat. Reduce heat and cover for 8 minutes.

2 While the cobs are cooking in milk, heat a bit of oil in a skillet and saute onion until soft. Stir in chopped carrot, kernels and garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Stir until vegetables are soft.

3 Add vegetables, water and thyme sprigs to the cob/milk saucepan. Cover and cook over medium heat for 20 minutes. Discard cobs and thyme sprigs.

4 Using a hand blender, blend mixture until smooth. Serve hot or cold with sour cream.

The Carrot Cheesecake that brought me Homemade Pizza and Brownies

The idea of putting carrot into a cake troubled me. First of all, I'm not usually big on carrots. Second, why would anyone be making pastry with a root vegetable? Apparently, there is a bit of history to it: Early on in the history of Europe, sugar was an insanely expensive commodity and was rarely available to the masses. In order to sweeten cakes, people looked for the sweetest ingredients available. Carrots, which are the second sweetest vegetable (sugar beets have the most sugar, hence the name), were always at hand. So it made sense to use carrots to sweeten a cake. Carrot cake was/is usually topped with a cream cheese-based icing and it was only a matter of time that someone decided to top a carrot cake with cheesecake, which is also usually made with cream cheese. And that's the kind of carrot cake I'd eat.
I'm a big fan of cheesecake. It's such a delightful treat. I like its creamy texture and tart sweetness. It's the way to pamper one's taste bud.

Carrot Cheesecake
I mus thank Pee Wee for her carrot cupcakes. It reminded me of the carrot cheesecake back in KL that I liked so much. It always gave me idea of what to do with the carrot that I had left from the Butternut Squash Apple Soup.
The recipe calls for coconut but I didn't find it at Central Tops. How bizarre; no dried coconut at Thailand supermarket, the land where coconuts are aplenty? Never mind. I substituted it with dried blueberry. Instead of crushed pineapple, I could only find sliced pineapple. I figured they must be not that different?

Ingredients:
***Cheesecake***
16 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon flour
3 eggs

***Carrot Cake***
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
8 1/2 ounces can crushed pineapple, packed in juice, drained well, reserve juice
1 cup grated carrots
1/2 cup coconut
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

***Pineapple Cream Cheese Frosting***
2 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 tablespoon butter, softened
1 3/4 cup confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon reserved pineapple juice

In large bowl of electric mixer, beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until smooth. Beat in flour, eggs and vanilla extract until smooth. Set aside. Meanwhile prepare Carrot Cake.Carrot Cake:
In large bowl, combine oil, sugar, eggs and vanilla extract; mix well. Stir in dry ingredients; mixing well. Stir in drained pineapple, carrots, coconut and walnuts.

Spread 1 1/2 c. carrot cake batter over bottom of greased 9 springform pan. Drop cream cheese batter over carrot cake batter by spoonfuls; top with large spoonfuls of remaining carrot cake batter. Repeat with remaining cream cheese batter, spreading evenly with a knife. Do not marble with a knife. Bake in preheated 175C oven for 50 to 65 minutes or until cake is set and cooked through. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate. When cake is cold, prepare Pineapple Cream Cheese Frosting.

Pineapple Cream Cheese Frosting:

In a bowl of electric mixer, combine cream cheese, butter, confectioners' sugar, vanilla extract and reserved pineapple juice. Beat until smooth and of spreading consistency. Frost top of cheesecake. Refrigerate 3 to 4 hours before serving.

What I like most about this carrot cheesecake, deliciousness aside, is that it brought me and Adrian a homemade pizza and chocolate brownies. I took a slice of the cake to my neighbor, Divya, whom, by the way is a great mom and cook. She was making dinner for 6 guests (on top of her two sons and husband). I was asking about making pizza dough and she offered to show me. The demonstration turned out to be my dinner.

It wasn't an ambitious night for us. I even told Divya not to give us too much brownies because we kind of had too much sugar from the night before (friend's birthday). But they were so good that despite the sugar rush up in my head, I couldn't resist having more. I especially like the chewiness. And who would have guessed it's vegan?
And the thin crust spinach sun-dried tomato pizza was a real bomb! If there's any food that would turn two not hungry yogis into eating, this is it. Good words aside, Divya later text me and said she forgot to add basil to our pizza.

Butternut Squash/ Pumpkin Apple Soup

Dishes made with fruits always fascinate me. Even salad. Must be the Asian Chinese gene in me. I've been wanting to make some vege+fruit soups ever since I saw the carrot orange soup on the menu of some sandwich place at Central World. And I came across a Butternut Squash Apple Soup on one of my favorite food sites. It took me a couple of week to finally gave the recipe a try. Not that it's hard. But it calls for CELERY.

There are a few foods that I disliked and grew to okay with because of their nutritious values such as olive and bitter gourd. Celery is one that I'm yet to overcome. It just tastes so much like bitter water. In order to convince myself for the Butternut Squash Apple Soup recipe, I researched on my Food Encyclopedia. I got to admit it's pretty cool. It is high in Vitamin C content and has been used in Chinese medicine to lower blood pressure (my grandmom would have approved). Among others, the coumarins in celery not only fight against free radicals but also targets and eliminates potentially harmful cells such as cancer cells. In addition, the acetylenics compound has been shown to stop growth of tumourous cells. Sounds good to me.
By the way, can anyone tell me why do they always sell garnishes such as chives, coriander, spring onions in bulk? Although they are cheap but how can I possibly finish all of them before they wilt? The celery I bought today came in one huge stalk (as pictured). All I need for this recipe is a rib or two. It's putting my creativity to test.
Did you know celery is supposed to go well with peanut butter? How bizarre. I should ask my Origami Yogini friend to try - she has no idea what to do with peanut butter. Japanese never cease to fascinate me....
.
Butternut Squash/ Pumpkin Apple Soup

I didn't use butternut squash. I used the extra golden pumpkin I bought for the Roasted Pumpkin with Arugula Salad. Besides, I have made many pumpkin soups and it's time to make a difference. This soup is very easy to prepare. The addition of tart green apple is meant to balance the sweetness of the butternut squash. It works just as good for pumpkin. You want the 3 portion of butternut squash to 1 portion of green apple. Make sure you taste and season before serving or it can be rather bland.

Ingredients:
(serve 4)
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 celery rib, chopped
1 butternut squash, peeled, seed removed, cubed
1 tart green apple, peeled, core removed, chopped
3 Cups of vegetable broth (miso for me)
pinch of cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and pepper

• Sautee onion with celery and carrot. Add in butternut squash, apple and broth. Let simmer until the butternut squash is soft. Transfer to a blender and puree till smooth. Taste and adjust with cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and pepper.
  

Real Mayonnaise, are you with me?

People either roll their eyes or shake their head with an involuntary "sigh" when I mention "mayonnaise". I wonder why? If you think about it, mayonnaise is merely a thick condiment made primarily from vegetable oil and egg yolk. Of course they are not healthy if taken in excess, but then, what is? According to a research published by The New England of Medicine, women who ate the most Vitamin E-rich foods showed the lowest risk for heart diseases. And if you spend a minute or two reading the food label, most mayonnaise are made of heart-healthy oil. Mine is made of soybean oil. You may also find some mayonnaise made with omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to reduce sudden death from heart attacks. Don't even think about using reduced fat or low fat mayonnaise. For one, if you are concerned with the calorie content, simply remove or reduce refined sugar and white flour in your diet. Besides, both reduced-fat and fat-free mayonnaise can break down when heated and leave an unpleasant texture. We don't want that to happen here, do we?

Smothered Cabbage Wedges

I replaced white cabbage with the extra red cabbage left from the other night. Red cabbage has a sweeter flavor than the plain white cabbage. It is also a good source of iron, vitamin C and calcium, as well as being packed with other vitamins and minerals. In general the nutrients are best enjoyed either raw or lightly cooked. However, things just got to be scarified sometimes - I'm going for the savory of baked mayonnaise cheese here....
Also, I chose to use the Thai-style sweet chili sauce because that was the only organic chili sauce I could find that doesn't cost a bomb. Most importantly, I can pronounce all the ingredients on its label.

Ingredients:
(2 serving)
1/2 medium cabbage, wedged and de-cored
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 Cup green pepper, chopped
1 tablespoon onion, chopped
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
1 tablespoon chili sauce
salt and pepper to taste

1. Cook cabbage wedges in salted boiling water for 10 minutes. Drain and place in a baking dish.
2. Sautee onion and green pepper until tender. Fold in flour and stir for 1 minute. Gradually pour in milk. Keep stirring until it thickens and becomes bubbly.
3. Adjust with salt and pepper. Pour the milk mixture over cabbage wedges. Bake at 180C for 20 minutes.
   
4. In a bowl, combine mayonnaise, cheese and chili sauce. Spoon the mayonnaise dressing over the cabbage and bake 5 more minutes or until the cheese melt.

I'm pairing this dish with a Pumpkin Apple Soup.