Pumpkin and Spinach Lasagne

When The Bloke and I got married last year, we were presented with a cookbook. Well, truth be known, we were presented with several cookbooks, but Huey will have to wait his turn, as his coriander and harissa filled concoctions are not on the table for discussion today; and while Damian Pignolet's French is a beautiful read, I'm a bit too rough around the edges for all but the most peasant-y of Gallic gastronomy.

The cookbook I am referring to is a compilation of family recipes from both sides of our families, beautifully put together by my Mum (who even found the same sort of ribbon that we used for our bonbonniere to use in the binding). Its true meaning kinda got lost in the bothers surrounding the wedding day, and although I have used it a number of times since receiving it (mostly in vague attempts to recreate my Oma's blaukraut), it wasn't until the intertwining of The Bloke picking it up for a flick through, and a special on silverbeet at our local market Banana Joes that we talked about how special it is. Go on, everyone say "NAAAAAWWWWW!".

This recipe comes from Scott's Aunty Julie (his Dad's sister). I've tweaked it a bit, as I am wont to do, but the basic skeleton is the same. It was delicious, of course (I wouldn't share a dud with you, would I?) and although my distaste for the combination of spinachy things and cheese as a vegetarian standby is well documented; the substitution of the far-more-ballsy silverbeet, and addition of butternut pumpkin and an aged cheddar to the topping kicks this into the territory of highly acceptable cuisine for my less bloodthirsty friends.

Julie's Pumpkin and Silverbeet Lasagne

Ingredients
1 butternut pumpkin, seeded, peeled, and sliced thinly.
1 bunch silverbeet, de-stalked, chopped, and washed
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 large brown onion, finely diced
1 clove organic garlic, finely diced
2 400g tins of tomatoes, smashed up with a knife
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 cut water
1 tablespoon balsalmic vinegar
2 teaspoons brown sugar
Two sprigs thyme, washed, de-sprigged and finely chopped
3 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons plain flour
500mL milk
1 bayleaf
1/2 shallot
1 1/2 cups aged cheddar, grated
1/2 cup parmigiano-reggiano, grated
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method
1. Heat a glug of olive oil in a frypan, the way you always do when you make a red sauce. Add the onion, cook, stirring, until beginning to caramelise, add garlic and cook for a further minute. Add the white wine and cook for a minute, add the tomatoes, tomato paste, thyme, and water, stir. Add the brown sugar and balsalmic, bring to a boil then reduce heat to a simmer and cook for half an hour. At the end of the cooking time, taste and adjust for seasoning, then remove from heat.

2. Meanwhile, in another frypan, heat some more oil. Fry the pumpkin in batches over a medium heat until soft and beginning to brown, remove from the pan and set aside. Add the silverbeet to the pan, then the nutmeg, and cook, stirring, until wilted. Add salt and pepper to taste, remove from heat.

3. Chuck the pumpkin back into the pan, then add the ricotta and stir until everything is evenly coated with its creamy goodness. Taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary, set aside.

4. Bung your oven on - around 200 degrees celcius should do it. Pour yourself a congratulatory glass of wine for reaching the halfway stage of the recipe.

5. In a microwave-safe jug, nuke the milk, shallot and bay leaf for two minutes until steaming, remove the bay leaf and shallot. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan. Add the flour and cook, stirring, until it begins to foam. Add the milk all in one go and whisk rapidly until all lumps have had the bejeezus beaten out of them. Allow to bubble over a medium heat, stirring occasionally so it doesn't burn on the bottom of the pan and annoy The Bloke whose job it is to wash up, until thick. Remove from heat, add 1/3 of the grated cheddar, set aside.

6. To assemble, place 1/3 of the pumpkin mixture in the bottom of a large lasagne dish. Place a layer of lasagne sheet on top, then cover with the red sauce, a thin layer of the bechamel and a light sprinkle of cheddar. Repeat process twice more, making the last layers of red sauce and bechamel thick to use up the last bits in the pans. Top with remaining cheddar and parmesan. Bake in the oven for around 40 minutes, or until cheese is golden and beginning to brown.

7. Serve with a non-sooky white wine, sourdough garlic bread and a garden salad.

Hippy This! Substitute olive oil for the butter (NOT dairy-free marg, unless you particularly enjoy the texture of KY Jelly on your palate), soy milk for the milk, vegan cream cheese (seasoned with yeast extract and pepper if it is too sweet as many of them are) for the ricotta, and vegan hard cheese for the cheddar. Present it to your vegan dining mates on a plate made from bacon.

Tuna Noodle Casserole

Ahhh, the much maligned pasta bake. Something that most people have in their arsenal for those lazy weeknights where inspiration is lacking almost as much as motivation. Unfortunately, the invention of pour on sauces has degraded what was formerly an acceptable albeit artless meal, into a construction rather than cuisine. The sad fact of the matter is, there's a component of our society that use the back of a Continental packet as their Escoffier, the label on a Maggi jar as their Larousse. I feel for them, I really do. Food advertising, depicting wonder women brandishing a nutritional substitute on one arm and a flock of glowing children on the other; or clueless blokes saved from singledom by a flavour sachet, has a lot to answer for.

But honestly, what's so hard about chopping up a few veggies, simmering a tin of tomatoes for a couple of minutes, and slapping it into a Pyrex dish with some cooked noodles and sprinkling of pre-grated parmesan? It's not exactly rocket science, is it? You can even slap together the sauce component on a grander scale and freeze batches to stick in the nukebox if you truly don't have a minute spare between Monday and Friday. You don't need those preservative laden timebombs, people! Do you *usually* keep a tub of maltodextrin on hand as a secret ingredient in your cooking? Is lactic acid normally in your pantry? No! So why in the name of Zeus' butthole do you buy food "products" with that crap in it?

Yeah, I'm ranty about this stuff, but only because lazy dinners don't need to be fake dinners. Take this recipe for example. Based on a version that my Mum bakes, only jazzed up a bit with capers, lemon and feta cheese, it contains things that most food-oriented folks would have tucked away at the back of the fridge. And if you're missing a veggie - substitute! A withered head of broccoli, an eggplant that's seen better days, some steamed sweet potato that was starting to grow sentience as well as eyes - any of them could be chucked into this old standby to deliver you from the depression which is a cheese jaffle for supper.

Tuna Noodle Casserole

Ingredients
1 red onion, finely diced
1 clove organic garlic, finely diced
1 teaspoon sambal olek
1 400g tin good quality tuna in oil (I use Sirena or Sole Marie)
1/4 red capsicum, diced
1/4 green capsicum, diced
1 zucchini, diced
2 tablespoons tomato paste
10 green olives, sliced
2 teaspoons capers
Juice of half a lemon
1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled
3 tablespoons parmesan cheese, grated
Olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the packet. Pre-heat oven to 200 degree celcius.

2. Heat a couple of good glugs of olive oil in a frypan. Add the onion, garlic and sambal olek, and cook over a medium heat, stirring, until onion is soft.

3. Add the capsicum, zucchini and tomato paste, cook for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the drained tuna, olives and capers, stir, then add lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste and remove from heat. Chuck the cooked pasta into the frypan and stir until coated by the sauce.

4. Throw the pasta into a baking dish, toss the cheeses on top, slug a little olive oil over the lot of it and bake in the oven for about half an hour.

Serve with a leafy green salad and a smirk. Woah to go in 45 minutes. If you don't have time for that, suck my balls and become a breatharian.

Veal Parmagiana by B.B Kow

Far out. All I wanted to do today was have a faux feminist huff and then sit outside with a Coke Zero and a fresh packet of Marlboros, but no. Some whiny little manbitch had to poke at my pride, much like Jesus being skewered on the cross, and now I'm here, having to update this thing instead.

How did this unjust scenario arise? Whilst perusing the Vogue Forums for new ways to dispose of my non-disposable income, I came across a thread lauding the arrival of a new range of low fat, no sugar icecreams. My hatred of diet products (aside from sugarfree softdrinks for dental reasons) is strong at the best of times, but when they are combined with an insipid marketing campaign involving "fashion launches" supported by Ralph Magazine, and a vacuous "Skinny Cow" diary as part of the branding, my hatred spills across the spectrum of disbelief into Chernobyl territory. Aside from the mindless diary constructions of Modern Woman (TM) dilemmas ("oh gosh, I hope I can stop at one glass of chardy less I end up occy-strapped to some dude's bed with my panties fashioned into a gag whilst he dresses as Big Bird and nibbles at my feet!")*, the prospect of making the exciting choice between sticks or cups reads as less culinary decision and more sheltered workshop training.

Late last year, the same target audience as inhabits the Vogue Forums were getting their miniscule knickers in a knot over Skinny Bitch, a vegan diet book written by a former model and a former modelling agent. Leaving my trainwreck addiction to Australia's Next Top Molehill at the door, the tome of "ethical" weightloss from a couple of washed up clotheshorses really got my goat (and sheep, and bull) up. Taking popularised celebrity diets like Atkins to another level, this book attempts to provide aspiration through insult. The fact that Victoria Beckham perusing a copy was the catalyst for it entering the greater public eye provides a more than adequete summation for its existence.

Skinny Cow. Skinny Bitch. What's next, Dozey Bint, the DIY Guide to Getting a Man in Bed? Pregnant Scrag, the DIY Guide to Keeping Him? Airy Slut, How to Match Your Diet to Your Skull Contents? Honestly, it's enough to send a lady scrabbling for a bottle of gin, a block of gruyere, and a job in an abbatoir.

I'm sure you're wondering where this hysterical ranting fits in with today's recipe. No, I didn't go out and slaughter a few of our four-legged friends in protest. But I did have a think about how my previous blog title, "Cook This, Bitch" fits in with the other appropriations of female insults, and I decided that knowing that I am a self-hating human first and a woman second wasn't going to be apparent in the eyes of casual readers. So to avoid being lumped in with the trash, my new header is "Smoking in the Kitchen." You may read this as you wish (as long as you know that I was considering Smoking in the Girl's Room but it only had double entendres and not triple as per the kitchen reference).

Anyway, on with the show, so I can get back to painting my nails and sticking cut outs of Ann Coulter's head onto knackery horse bodies. Hey, I don't just hate her 'coz she's XY.

Veal Parmagiana by B.B Kow

Ingredients

1 schnitzel-cut slab of veal per person
1 tin of tomatoes, smashed up with a knife
1 tin of water
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 french shallots, finely diced
1 clove organic garlic, finely diced
1 1/2 teaspoons mixed dried Italian herbs
2 tablespoons green olives, chopped
1 eggplant, cut into 5mm slices
3/4 cup mozzarella cheese, grated
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Steamed vegetables to serve

Method

1. In a saucepan, heat a good glug of olive oil, add shallots and garlic, and sweat over a gentle heat until they begin to caramelise. Add the tomato, water, balsamic vinegar and herbs, bring to the boil then reduce heat to a slow simmer and cook for about an hour, until tomatoes are pulpy. Add olives and salt and pepper to taste, remove from heat, set aside.

2. Meanwhile, salt the eggplant slices and allow to sit for 10-15 minutes to draw out any bitterness. Rinse and dry well with a tea towel. Slosh a few glugs of olive oil into a fry pan, heat and fry eggplant slices in batches until golden, turning to cook both sides. Remove from pan and drain on paper towel.

3. Heat grill to hot. Line a shallow baking tray with foil. Season your veal steaks with salt and pepper. Heat some more olive oil in the same pan as used for the eggplant, and cook for about a minute on each side. Remove from pan immediately.

4. To construct your parmagiana - place the veal steaks on the baking tray. Place slices of eggplant evenly over each steak. Top with napoli sauce and mozzarella. Place under grill and cook until cheese is bubbling and golden.

5. Serve with a merlot blend and steamed vegetables. Know that the world is one skinny cow down and better for it.


*Apologies to anyone who actually visited the Skinny Cow website expecting more of such titillations. You didn't really think that people who care about kilojoules would have such depravity contained within them, did you?