Just make it simple: Ratatouille

After my meat laden last post, I decided it would be nice to go just vegetables for this one. Fine, for the ongoing reason of the Bloggers Around the World World Cup challenge, I also wanted to have something French for today. Now we just make it simple and have a typical French vegetable stew, which we know as Ratatouille. I tried this recipe from The Little Paris Kitchen by Rachel Khoo. I only made minimal adjustments according to what I could do with. Really, the only problem with that book is, the index isn't working properly.

What we need:

Olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1-2 cloves of garlic, finely mashed

Some thyme (and time as well, of course)

1 aubergine, finely sliced

1 courgette, finely sliced

1 red and 1 yellow bell pepper, cut in stripes

6 tomatoes, quartered

A bit of sugar

Salt

Just do it:

First we start in a pan and heat up a splash of olive oil. Then we add the onion, garlic and thyme and let it go until the onion is translucent. After that comes the aubergine and we cook it soft in a few minutes.

Now we concentrate on the oven, which we like to heat up to 180 °C. We have a baking try ready. In there we toss the courgette, peppers, tomatoes and the content of the pan.

Off it all goes to the oven ... but wait, don't forget to cover the tray with aluminium foil.

Hm ... eh ... about one hour should be enough for the vegetables in the oven. Then remove it, sprinkle a bit sugar on it, add salt to taste, mix it through and transfer it back to the oven in the top section for about 4 minutes.

You can now go and eat it just like this, maybe with a bit of extra olive oil on top, maybe with some lovely bread or maybe you eat it cold the next day ... maybe if you have leftovers.

Whatever you do, I hope you enjoy it. I'm going to enjoy the res of my day whether it rains or not, whether the sun will shine for me or not. I'll just do it.

Warning: Extremely Delicious Vegetable Lasagne

Ha, you weren't expecting this. You thought this crazy guy would give you another one from his loose bottomed tart tin. Nope! Instead I give you something from the bottom of my heart and i hope you will love it too. Today I have a vegetable lasagne for you. 
Simple? Yes, but be warned, in my opinion this vegetable lasagne tastes extremely delicious. Of course, I have to say this, but there is only one way to prove me wrong. You would have to try it for yourself. Besides that, you will also find some ... eh ... what to call them ... eh ... let's try ... twists and an unexpected ingredient.
Less talking more cooking ...

Ingredients:
6 lasagne sheets
1 medium aubergine
2 small courgettes
A few splashes of olive oil
1 large tomato
1 clove of garlic
2 tbsp. tomato puree
100 ml water
50 ml red wine vinegar
A few basil leaves
Salt and pepper
200 ml crème fraîche
1 egg
A hand full of grated parmesan
3 tbsp. grated radish

Method:
The times I made a vegetable lasagne before, was to cook all the vegetables into a kind of sauce. However, we are not doing this today. We like to preserve the pure individual tastes of the single vegetables ... at least most of them. I was inspired to do it in a different way by watching an episode of MasterChef Australia.
Therefore we cut the aubergine and the courgettes in a way they fit to the lasagne sheets, that is they are going to be cut into fine slices. Then get a baking tray ready with some grease proof paper and heat up your oven to 180 ºC.
Be generous with salt to the sliced vegetables. Off into the oven they go for about 15-20 minutes. Just make sure, they don't get burned.
Meanwhile get your tomato sauce ready. Get a pan ready on heat. Be generous again. This time with olive oil in the pan. The ancient principle 'those who give bountifully, will receive bountifully' still applies.
Cut the tomato in small chunks and throw them into the hot oil to let them sizzle away. Finely chop your clove of garlic and toss it into the oil as well. When you start to smell the beautiful odour of the garlic on your kitchen add the tomato puree, the water and the red wine vinegar. Go through the sauce with a spoon and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper. On a low heat reduce the sauce for a while. When the sauce is thick enough and you are almost finished use the basil leaves to finish off the sauce.
Before we can start putting the lasagne together we have two more jobs to do. The fist one is to pre-cook the lasagne sheets in boiling salted water for about three minutes. The second job is to prepare some kind of white sauce to put between the layers.
For this white sauce we simply ... yes, very simply ... spoon together, the crème fraîche, the egg, the parmesan and the grated radish. Well, I suppose you could use horseradish, too. 
Anyway, I used to have radish when I was way younger and then ... didn't have it for a long time. Due to the fact, that radish is in season right now, I thought I give it a go again. For sure I had something in mind for it, but I just ended up eating most of it raw. So far I never had used radish in cooking. Bravely I decided to grate some of it into my white sauce for my vegetable lasagne. Well, it worked ... well.
After this brief detour into my use of radish we get back to our lasagne. We are almost there.
Now get yourself a 20 cm x 20 cm oven-proof dish. Remember that the oven is still at 180 ºC. We start the lasagne with a splash of olive oil that you rub onto the bottom of your dish. Then a few slices of aubergine follow, two sheets of lasagne, white sauce, courgette, white sauce, lasagne sheet, aubergine courgette, white sauce, lasagne sheets and white sauce.
Well it all depends on the amount of sliced vegetables you have. Feel free to change things a tiny little bit. Just make sure, you have three layers of lasgane sheets.
Before the vegetable lasagne goes into the oven, grate some extra parmesan on top and while you are at it allow some olive oil to be drizzled on it, too.
The lasagne should go into the oven for about 15-20 minutes. It may look like this afterwards ...

You see, there is a bit of colour on it. If you want more, you have to give more. This vegetable lasagne will make for four humble portions, but be warned ... I said it before ... it tastes extremely delicious. So you might want to plan ahead for this.
Whatsoever. serve the lasagne with a few spoons of the tomato sauce on top.

You know, if you add more sauce there is more of it to enjoy and it will all drip onto your plate and you might want to do something with the plate later.
In my opinion, this vegetable lasagne was the best I had so far. You can still taste the aubergine and the courgette individual and you have a gorgeous tomato sauce, too.

I can only recommend to try it for yourself. I might be wrong here, but ... you'll never know if you don't go for it.

Speaking of going for it, this post will go to some blog challenges in no particular order ...

Elizabeth's No Waste Food challenge hosted by Ness at Jibber Jabber UK this month. Fine, I would never have thrown the remaining radish away, but here I used the left over radish in a delicious way.

Javelin Warrior's Made with Love Mondays. Check it out for yourself!

Helen's and Michelle's Extra Veg Blog Challenge. If I haven't used some extra veg here, I don't know and then again, I used the radish as I have never used it before.

Camilla's Credit Crunch Munch. Having a vegetarian meal with vegetables either on offer or in season or both will help you to save some money.

Manjiri's and Jacqueline's Pasta Please challenge. The theme for April is Olive Oil. No, I wasn't especially generous with it because of this challenge. I just wanted to and found it necessary for the sauce to work properly.

The Four Seasons Food April Challenge from Delicieux and Eat Your Veg. The goal was to celebrate vegetables. In my opinion ... again ... this is what this very vegetable lasagne is doing.

Then we have the Simple and in Season challenge from Ren. Do I have to say it again that radish is in season?

Just because I can, I add this post to Recipe of the Week from Emily, too.

Last but not least we have Karen's Cooking with Herbs challenge. Guess why?

Jamie Does' Ratatouille-Style Briouats

How are you? That is a really difficult question. Well, it depends also on who is asking. Some ask and immediately move on. They wouldn't even notice when you say 'miserable'. Anyway, I feel miserable and things are good at the same time. While there are aspects in situations in life that can really make you feel bad, there are also other things that can help you keep going and still feel good. You know what I mean. I don't have to mention all the details. 
For instance when you are home alone, feeling lonely and having no power to cook something good for you, a ringing telephone can make a difference. So I really was happy yesterday, when that happens and I got a surprise invitation for dinner ... at once. So everyone can make a difference for someone else.
At times you also can make a difference for yourself, if you have the power to cook something. You can enjoy something really lovely. That's what I did the other day, enjoy something really lovely: Ratatouille-Style Briouats.

Roast leg of lamb with aubergines and onions

Sometimes I get the idea I want a leg of lamb. Well, that happens not that often, maybe not even a hand full of times during the year. What do I do then? I go through all my cookbooks and see what I can do . The last time I did some French version with beans and something. That was very delicious.
Now I wanted to try something else. I ended up with a classic Italian way of cooking lamb with aubergines. Therefore I had to trust Jamie Oliver again to have a fantastic meal: Roast leg of lamb with aubergines and onions. You find the recipe in his book Cook with Jamie.

Apart from the lamb, the aubergines and onions, there were a lot of herbs involved, such as rosemary, oregano and parsley.
First of all the leg of lamb goes into the oven just rubbed with olive oil and salt and pepper.
After that the rosemary, aubergines and onions join.
In the meantime you have to prepare a tomato sauce with the usual suspects, garlic, chopped parsley stalks, anchovy fillets, tinned tomatoes, dried red chillies, vinegar, salt and pepper.
When the lamb is cooked, it gets removed from the roasting tray to sit around for some minutes.

While that is happening and having some room in the roasting tray, the tomato sauce is going to assimilate all the flavours and vegetables in it. So you pour the tomato sauce to the aubergines and the onions and cook it for a couple of minutes on a gently heat.
Afterwards it's time to eat. Get your usual lovely bread to it and dig in. If you fancy a salad together with it, fell free to do so.

For one person or for even two persons, you have quite some food here, the chance to eat a few times from it. It would be perfect, delicious and fantastic as it is, but you could have it as a pasta dish, too.

All in all I can say, Jamie hasn't disappointed me. Once more, it worked out totally perfectly.
Do you like to have a leg of lamb at times? What is your favourite way of having it?

Christine & Christian - Episode 4: Up and running

After a few hours of warm up by leafing through the pages of Tasting India, I started cooking from it on Thursday April 11th. 
I mentioned there would be over 250 recipes in the book. Now after carefully counting ... that is if I really was that careful, but that would be too many 'ifs' ... I came to the number of 283 recipes in the book, not counting any variations. I added, though, also individual recipes for spice mixes and pastes, of which I might need some more then once. That also means there are also some quite simple recipes in it.
While cooking for 5 days I managed 8 so far, including one for garlic and ginger paste ... or was it ginger and garlic paste. No worries. I was also invited to cook some Indian food with some friends. On that day, there was also butter chicken on the menu, which tasted very very luvly. Fine, that doesn't count for the recipes, because I didn't make it from the book.
I contributed a gorgeous dal, which tasted as luvly as the chicken, although one of my friends said, it was even better than the chicken. Ah, whatever, very lovely.
I leave you with some food impressions before I have a few more words.

 

Dal Makhani - one of the best dals I ever had ... with that ginger and garlic paste, tomato puree, butter and cream it promises a lot of taste and ... guess what? Have no fear!

Butter Chicken - I wonder, why it has this name. There were a lot of spices, yoghurt, milk and obviously chicken.

Just give me a large plate of it ... anytime!

Sweets for the sweet - Wholemeal Halwa. Don't ask, just taste ... there is a touch of cardamom to it ... if you do it right. All that stirring was some good exercise. Was it half an hour? It was supposed to be less.

 That would be something for hot days - Ginger Lime Soda. I just hope we will have some days this year, so I can put that drink to proper use. It's really refreshing. The ginger isn't too intrusive.

Eggplant (Aubergine) Masala - There were two green chillies and two dries red chillies going into it. I wonder what that will do, if you have properly hot chillies. Those fresh green ones from my windowsill need some more sun. This eggplant masala is delicious how it is with some rice ... good I have a rice cooker.

I hope, that gives you also some good inspiration for our current Bloggers Around the World - India. If you like to know more about one of those dishes, ask away ...
 
Now I had also chance to stock up some things. While sitting at home unprepared and pondering about what to cook, I was still in need of some vital ingredients and there was no chance for shopping. By now, it's fine! I'm up and running ... as you can see above as well.
What about fresh coriander, though? That might cause a problem, searching through shops for some. Parallel to that I started my coriander growing program again. Better late then never, although it will take some time before I can use some of that ... if it works at all. I definitely should get some more ready plants for the garden, when the time is right.

Going Greek? What about some delicious Moussaka

καλημέρα! How is your Greek? Mine is no better then everyone else's. For sure you can be sure (sure?) that everyone speaks a bit of Greek, since you find it everywhere. Just one example, or maybe two. The expression 'philosophy' comes from Greek words meaning 'the love of knowledge' (or similar). You remember Socrates? He said: "I know that I know nothing!" I'm still wondering, though, how he could new that. 
Anyway, wrong subject. Then there are terms like 'democracy', 'biology' and most probably we could go on and on and on and on ... but we don't want to.
At least I can eat Greek food and that is what matter now. So why not have some then?!
I can offer you some moussaka kind of dish today. 

What follows now, is moussaka the way that came to  my nind, when I was longing for some food using aubergines.


Ingredients: 
Olive oil
400 g minced meat (beef/pork)
1 medium sized onion, finely chopped
2 medium sized aubergines, in slices
400 g plum tomatoes or tinned tomatoes 
200 ml water
200 g Kritharaki (Greek rice noodles)
150 g yogurt
1 egg
250 g feta cheese
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Salt and pepper

Preparation:
Let's say, we begin by slightly frying the onions in the olive oil. How about that?
We go on by adding the meat and, well, eh, yes, give it the appropriate colour, as you may have guessed already.
Then we add the tinned tomatoes with some extra water, let things boil and then simmer for a while, as we finely season it with salt and pepper. Plan about 30 minutes for the simmering.
Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, mix the yogurt, the egg, the feta cheese and the finely chopped garlic. Season with salt and pepper as well. 
Have your oven-proof dish ready and grease it with a little bit of olive oil and then put in one layer of aubergine slices. On top of this simply bour your Kritharaki.

Then follows a tomato meat layer. In fact, just put on all of it. Go for another aubergine layer and then finish it off with the yogurt-cheese mix.

Have it in the pre-heated oven at 200°C for 45 minutes.
Then plate it up and ... enjoy this moussaka kind of dish ... Καλή όρεξη!

However, before I leave, I like to link things up a bit.
Since I found those Kritharakin in my pantry, this goes to the December Pantry Party at The Law Student's Cookbook. 

Bookmarked Recipes: Asian Dressed Aubergine

Every day, thousands of bloggers worldwide write down thousands of lovely recipes, which are in turn are read by ... well ... it would be nice if by thousands as well ... each.

However, a wonderful thing is to get to know that actually some likes your recipe and has tried it as well. Considering this, I would say Ruth from Ruth's Kitchen Experiments had a brilliant idea, the Bookmarked Recipes blog challenge.

 

This month it is hosted by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes. Thank you, you two, for that!

There is a long list of bookmarks on my Internet browser. So I am glad to try one and share my experiences with you.

For this I have chosen to try a recipe from Jacqueline (don't get confused here) from How to be a Gourmand. It is: Asian Dressed Aubergine (I guess you have gathered that already from the title of that post). 

There were these aubergines that fell into my hands. Well, I bought them to be honest. No miracles involved here. I would love to grow my own, but things do not always work out.

The recipe is not too complicated. It promises some nice Asian flavours to which I was looking forward to. After all I was in the mood for that kind of flavours.

Most of the ingredients I already had in stock. Only the aubergines had to be bought (I told you). Right, I could have bought some sweet basil and coriander. As I know, though, this is not an easy matter around here and since all this was very spontaneous after those aubergines were seen by me, I somehow had to do without those. Why not use normal basil and rocket? I don't know, we will see later, although under normal circumstances I would urgently suggest that you really use coriander (that is, if you like the taste).

My coriander on the windowsill was far from being ready to be used. And I didn't want to wait for that.

The aubergines were easy victims.

Coating them was also no big deal, although of course the marinade was slightly adjusted. Off they went to be grilled. Patiently I was checking again and again, whether the colour would be right.

As soon as that was the case I could do the rest. As Jacqueline mentioned in the recipe it would be optional to add some red chillies. That is what I did. after all I have a more or less large collection of plants on my windowsills.

When I harvested a few of the chillies the first time I thought, well, that is not like chilli, not really hot. It tastes rather like normal peppers. 

However ... things have changed ...

What do you think? Does this look nice? I simply had the aubergine without anything to it. After a long day most of the time just sitting around that would be fine. It tasted really nice, despite the few adjustments and ... of course the chillies did really burn ... and it took a while afterwards to let my mouth cool down.

Nevertheless it was nice. I wasn't disappointed. Therefore I can only recommend to try it for yourselves, making sure about the chillies before you use them, though.

Since you are finished reading here, why not read the original blog post.

Baba Ghanoush sort of thing

Do you know Baba Ghanoush. It is an aubergine puree - very delicious. So I just did a kind of this puree, but with a little variation - some kind of a mix in the direction of what they sell at this oriental stalls on the marketplace at market day (costs you a fortune, sort of, when you buy it there).

That's how you do it then. Grab yourself two nice big aubergines and chuck them for 20-25 minutes at 180°C in the oven - turning it from time to time. Meanwhile get yourself 200 g of feta cheese, 100 g of creme fraîche, 2 cloves of garlic roughly chopped, olive oil, salt pepper, some dried tomatoes (depends on your taste how many you like to use - I used some), a bit milk (a splash), some cumin. Put it all in a food processor or liquidizer. When the aubergines are ready, peel them (if you can stand it, do it right away or you have to wait until they cool of a bit). Cut them in chunks and add to the liquidizer. Then do it and have a nice puree. You may have to add some liquid to make it work - maybe more oil or milk.

I had to go a little bit piggy to get all from the liquidizer. It is just to delicious to waste any. What do you do now with it?

Have some nice bread and go ...

Or you can put it between a baguette with some roasted meat or ham on it and maybe some slices of tomato. Yummy yummy! Maybe you have also some lamb available.

Just enjoy it!