Zucchini Lasagne

I have always wanted to make lasagne! Ever since I ate this wonderful Italian food in one of the street side Italian restaurant in Dusseldorf I became a huge fan. Lasagne is not for the diet-size conscious mind. It is for people who like to indulge in an extra dosage of cheese fueled by an uncompromising desire to eat the best! However, a lasagne made like this can be eaten once a year. Lasagne can also be made healthy and tasty and be a very wholesome and hunger satisfying lunch/dinner. Here I present to you a very healthy and tasty lasagne.

Lasagne-zucchini-onions-tomatoes-milk-basil-thyme-pepper-flour-cheese-salt.

First read the instructions on your lasagne package! Some require boiling in water before using them as layers and some can directly go into the oven without pre boiling. I choose to have a lasagne that doesn’t require pre boiling since it is easier to handle! Wash the zucchini and cut into thick round pieces. Cook on medium heat in an oiled pan along with sliced onions. Sprinkle salt and freshly ground pepper. Keep aside and let it cool. Meanwhile, chop fresh tomatoes into a pan and start to cook on medium heat with addition of some water. Once the tomatoes are cooked and smashed, add basil and thyme and two table spoons of butter. After the butter melts, add half a cup of milk and stir well. When the milk starts to boil, sieve in a table spoon of all purpose flour with constant stirring until the sauce thickens. Adjust salt in the sauce and add pepper if required.

Alternate layers of lasagne and cooked zucchini-onions in an oven bake-able glassware. Finish with lasagne on top and pour the sauce so that entire surface is covered. Sprinkle cheese on top (shredded or cut into thick strips). Bake for 40 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius. There is no need to pre heat the oven. Serve hot with a good red wine!

Potato au gratin!

Yo, food blog after a long time! Surprises are good, so I have heard and so I have experienced quite recently. So in celebration of my surprise, I decided to surprise some people with this food blog. I know this sounds lame, nevertheless, let move on to food.

Potatoes are fascinating and probably there are very few people in the world who can hate them. Boiled, fried, grilled, baked or even in the form of vodka, potatoes are everywhere. Almost every guy who starts to cook, especially abroad, makes the traditional urulakezhangu fry (potato fry) and proudly starts his kitchen career. I was no exception. My first in Germany was potato fry and I used the spices available in the German supermarket and was quite proud of my near desi flavour. Years have passed since that first potato fry and lead me this current potato au gratin.

It might not be the traditional au gratin, so people wanting to complain, I already accept this. Nevertheless, here is how I made this tasty yet another poetic potato.

Potatoes-onions-cream-butter-gouda cheese-salt-nutmeg-thyme-basil-pepper.

Select big potatoes (be it any kind) and peel the skin off. Make thin slices and arrange them on a bake proof glassware (or ceramic). Fry onion in butter and spread a layer of fried onion over the potatoes. Arrange potatoes slices again over this. Take 300ml of 30% cream and mix into it salt, powdered nutmeg, thyme, basil and freshly ground black pepper. Pour this evenly all over the potatoes. Add one more layer of fried onions if desired and spread the shredded Gouda cheese over this. Gouda can be substituted with cedar cheese or the common store sold pizza cheese. Pre heat the oven for 10 minutes at 200 C and then bake for 30 minutes with heating from top and bottom.

Basic bakes, the YMCA cake!

Trips down the memory lane are frequent and things that cause these trips are sometimes as simple as a folded piece of paper or a distant sound of a train engine or as in this case, a cake. My Heinemann blog would have already revealed how much I like cakes and how much I want to learn baking, and now I am getting this opportunity to keep small steps into the world of baking. Thanks to my friend!

She did not tell me what we would be baking, but we bought the ingredients. Flour, sugar, vanilla sugar, raisins, sweetened orange peels, sliced and broken almonds, plant margarine and eggs. May be an expert baker can already guess the outcome and the look and the taste, but I couldnt. I was just eager to learn my first cake. And even when it was out from the oven, I did not recognize it until we cut it. Voila!! I was the six year old kid again. When I held the cake in my hands and sank my teeth into the grainy soft nutty mid section of this aromatic piece of nostalgia, I was not in Germany, but I was in YMCA. Wearing white shorts and a white shirt and after an hour long of gymnastic lessons with master Ismail, dad used to take me to the tea shop that stood near the bike parking. A simple tea shop with "Goldspot, the zing thing" scribbled all across and cartons of "Fruti" hanging in the windows and glass canisters filled with biscuits and cakes. They had these cakes and dad always used to buy this for me. One cup of tea. And they used to serve tea in a cup and saucer those days!

Separate the white from the yellow from 8 large eggs. Into the yellows, add 300 g of powdered sugar and whisk well until the sugar dissolves. Beat the egg whites until it is fluffy (until it does not fall down when you invert the bowl) and then fold the whites slowly into the well beaten yellow. Now add in 400 g of flour (Type 405) slowly with constant stirring. The resultant will be a thick batter, not a dough. Now goes in 10g of vanilla sugar for the mild flavor, 100 g raisins, 100 g sweetened orange peels and 100 g of the almonds. Mix well into the batter and then pour this into a nice oven able tray. Pre heat the oven at 200 C for 10 minutes and then bake this at 180 C for 90 minutes. Well, the time of baking depends on the efficiency of your oven. So it is a good idea to check if the cake is done after 60 minutes by driving a knife into the center and if the knife comes out without sticky batter, it is done! Dont worry if the top will become a bit black, you can always scrap it off and restore the baked brownness! Allow it to cool and then serve as slices. This cake can be stored for more than a week!

People who are baking egg less could find an alternative and post it to me ;-)

Zakąska Agnieszki !

Ok, first things first. Let us deal with the pronunciation of the dish. ZA-KAUN-SKA. It sounds complicated, but it is not so complicated to make if you are a gifted baker or as in my case, a gifted observer! Yeah, I am playing the part of the student with this dish and it is from the Polish cuisine. Agnieszki in the name of this dish stands for the innovation and the modification introduced by the person cooking, Agnieszka. At this very moment she is cooking it and I am writing this. ( Wednesday, 17.11.2010, 20:00 )

Wash the leeks (2) and discard the hard green part. Cut into round slices the rest of the onion. Peel the celery (1) and cut in into nice 1 inch cubes. Add these together into boiling water and add along one table spoon  of butter, some salt and 2 spoons of sugar. Within few minutes, the room is filled with the magnificent smell of onions and celery. Celery, by far, has the most interesting smell for a vegetable that I have ever come across! Once the celery is 70 % cooked, take it off the heat. Strain the water off and transfer the boiled vegetables to a hot pan with melted butter (1 spoon). Now add two cubes of vegetable stock and cook until the stock is spread over the vegetables. The cubes are actually well concentrated vegetable stock containing vegetables and spices like thyme, rosemary and turmeric and salt. One good idea to substitute this would be to use the readily available Knorr veg clear soup powder (oh yeah, EUREKA!).

Pour nearly 150ml of cooking cream (25-30 % fat, thick) over the prepared vegetables and mix evenly. Now, into a nice glass oven able bowl, spread a layer of French pastry (yet again readily available) so that the pastry lines the base and the sides of the bowl. Prick the bottom with a fork so that the pastry can breathe when in the oven! Transfer the vegetable-cream mixture into this and cover the top with strips of the pastry in random or netted orientations. Pre-heat the oven to 180 Celsius and then put this inside for 40 minutes (@ 180 degrees ). Allow to cool for a few minutes before serving. Play around with spices if you need to make it hotter! 

Oh, the taste is divine. Leeks and celery and cream with mild spices. The taste will transport you to the nostalgic 1800's of Europe. The ingredients might be tough to procure in India, but I know that people reading this will add their names to the second part for their own modification introduced!