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SuperBiasedMan

Idle Cook Club - Veggie Feeds-me: My Body Is Ready

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I made this: https://food52.com/recipes/27789-vegetarian-lasagna

Ended up being more work than I like given the finished product. I will probably keep the sauce recipe and the cheese quantities, but replace the zucchini and eggplant with mushrooms and spinach.

the pattern I used was:

 

Mozzarella
Sauce

Noodles

Sauce

Goat Cheese

Eggplant
Ricotta

Noodles

Sauce

Goat Cheese

Zucchini

Ricotta

Noodles

Sauce

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I think I'm gonna make a second more traditional (tomato-based) lasagne tomorrow since I cheated and pre-empted the club. I shall post here with results.

 

(also it's still weird to hear them called noodles, noodles are just stringy shapes to me. I call em lasagne sheets)

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So, I saw Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time making lasagna and they did something that I'd never seen before. Instead of just sprinkling cheese for a layer, they made a cheese sauce. I decided to try it and it came out pretty good. Usually having discrete cheese layers hold the thing together sideways, but also tend to make a tough layer in the middle that can split the lasagna layers apart or be difficult to cut through. This was pleasantly cheesy all the way through and much easier to cut with a fork and get a representative core sample. I would recommend trying it.

 

For reference, I made a tomato and meat sauce out of hamburger, fresh tomatoes, green and sweet yellow onions, garlic, full fresh basil leaves, dried oregano and parsley, and a little cheat of canned spaghetti sauce to make sure there was enough liquid in the pan to get the fresh tomatoes really stewing. Then I went:

 

Bottom of pan

Noodles

Cheese sauce

Meat sauce

Noodles

Cheese sauce

Meat sauce

Noodles

Shredded cheese

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Yo yo yo! I accidentally sorta kinda plagiarized this thread in a way. Not really. Well my thread's cookbook themed as well, buuut...

Let's be friends. If y'all like a recipe from here, then post it for inclusion in the Super Cookbook!

https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/10646-the-idle-thumbs-super-cookbook/

 

Many apologies, SuperBiasedMan. I'll be sure to not plagiarize you again. After all, there's a whole set of other threads that I've got to rip off.

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The lady and I are going to try a variation of this, I believe. She has to pick her battles with cow dairy products, so that's going to be the biggest change. We're going to make our own sauce, completely omit the ricotta (increasing the goat cheese), and make our own mozzarella. I may also omit the zucchini because I am not a huge fan, we'll see. I generally do not like spinach in a casserole, so that's not a likely change for me.

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I just ate some left-overs of Cm0nster's black-bean lasagna with tortilla chips and they made the dish better imo.

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Lasagne is great with something crunchy on the side, as i do think it can lack texture oftentimes.

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The lady and I are going to try a variation of this, I believe. She has to pick her battles with cow dairy products, so that's going to be the biggest change. We're going to make our own sauce, completely omit the ricotta (increasing the goat cheese), and make our own mozzarella. I may also omit the zucchini because I am not a huge fan, we'll see. I generally do not like spinach in a casserole, so that's not a likely change for me.

If you do the zucchini i suggest cutting length wise as opposed to coins, much less work.

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If you do the zucchini i suggest cutting length wise as opposed to coins, much less work.

Oh for sure, same with the eggplant most likely.

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Just made mine from the Thug Kitchen book, mushrooms & lasagna with tofu ricotta and pesto. Have to say I am a fan even with all my clumsy first-timer mistakes

 

IMG_20160106_210558.jpg vs IMG_20160106_215916.jpg

 

Seems like there were some problems with the recipe that weren't tested out. First off, I ended up with about twice as many noodle sheets as I needed. Then my marinara ran out about 3/4 of a layer too early... But all in all it came together decently and look forward to checking out some more recipes in the future!!

 

The only one from my main celeb-chef squeeze, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, is Green Lasagna Rolls which sounds like a cool and easy twist similar to Dibs' open lasagna

 

 

 

I haven't encountered that TVP designation much here in North America, is it seitan or a ground beef imitation? We have got some good veggie ground here (Trader Joe's is dirt cheap and some of my favorite) that works well in a hell of a lot of my cooking.

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I made a second lasagne, since I cheated a bit by doing my previous one in advance. Also I wanted another crack at the sauce. I decided to do a lasagne more like the ones I used to eat, with a tomato sauce and mince (veggie mince of course).

 

It uh, was a bit of a hot mess (though a tasty one). I made more béchamel sauce than before and the lasagne was deeper in the dish, so I don't think it cooked quite as well, and came out goopier than last time. Hopefully it'll set better to eat as leftovers tomorrow.

 

I sort of used a recipe but deviated heavily from it so I wont bother linking to it. I basically fried up some garlic, onions and mushrooms. Once they'd been cooked nicely I added the mince as well as a tin of chopped tomatoes and passata to a boil. Then spinach as well as basil and oregano. I cooked that a bit to thicken it and it formed a lot of the lasagne.

 made the same béchamel sauce, but tried to cook it for a little longer to see if that'd help and it didn't.

 

Layer order, top to bottom:

 

Béchamel

Cheese

Pasta

Some Tomato/mince

Pasta

Most of the béchamel

Pasta

Most of the tomato/mince

 

And here's the photos that don't look pretty:

post-34425-0-87985200-1452213058_thumb.jpg

post-34425-0-29562500-1452213072_thumb.jpg

 

I hope it's more solid after a night in the fridge.

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I haven't encountered that TVP designation much here in North America, is it seitan or a ground beef imitation? We have got some good veggie ground here (Trader Joe's is dirt cheap and some of my favorite) that works well in a hell of a lot of my cooking.

 

I don't know, but I am in N. America and I buy it from the health food store in the dry good bulk bins, and it says TVP. It is always dried. You add water.

I found an online photo. It looks like this

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Yeah it's called both interchangeably here. I guess that in some cases they feel like "TVP" sounds less appetising as a name.

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I don't know, but I am in N. America and I buy it from the health food store in the dry good bulk bins, and it says TVP. It is always dried. You add water.

I found an online photo. It looks like this

Yep! That's the exact same one I've seen. that's what I think about when someone says TVP. It's not seitan, because it's not wheat gluten, so it'll have a different taste and texture from that.

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We did it! We made a heavily modified version of the recipe Cordeos posted. We made our own sauce and mozzarella, and roasted the eggplant and zucchini in the oven prior to assembling and baking.

 

Notes:

- Omitted ricotta completely. We doubled the goat cheese and used it like the ricotta in the recipe - beat an egg into it and layered it onto the noodles.

- For our version of the recipe, it is HIGHLY recommended you use oven-ready lasanga sheets. We ended up using a spatula and basically "icing" the goat cheese right onto the noodles. It worked great, and I'm glad she thought of it after the first layer.

-Did not use all the lasagna sheets in the 9oz box like the recipe suggested. Just used enough for 3 layers.

- slicing the eggplant and zucchini lengthwise instead of into coins was a complete waste of time. my grand vision of having perfectly sized slabs to go onto the noodles went out the window when they collapsed into roasted veggie state after they were cooked.

- I am not a vegetarian. I did not miss meat for even a second in this. I am also not a huge fan of zucchini, but it was totally fine in there. I don't like the texture of spinach in pasta casseroles, so I wouldn't add it. Mushrooms would be totally welcome!

- We usually have potential but reservation when we make something for the first time. We both loved how this came out. It didn't want for anything except maybe a mushroom.

-We had a little leftover zucchini. The lady rolled them around some goat cheese, topped it off with sauce and mozz and baked for somewhere between 5-10 minutes.

 

Pictures below (she is an excellent photographer, any good pictures are credit her):

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Vl4Qb9w.jpg

Ufjtgte.jpgjrf51Qc.jpg

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I made a pretty basic lasagne, with hot Italian sausage and spinach:

 

First I stripped the sausage from its casings, broke it apart, and browned it up in a dutch oven:

post-5965-0-04346300-1452485762_thumb.jp

 

Then I added a diced onion, some oregano, a bit of thyme, and let it go for a bit until the onion softened up. Then I added a large can of crushed tomatoes:

post-5965-0-36347700-1452485768_thumb.jp

 

I let it simmer for about 10-15 minutes until it lost that raw tomato taste, then added salt and pepper and put it aside:

post-5965-0-40867100-1452485774_thumb.jp

 

In the meantime, I sautéed some spinach with a bit of nutmeg (a quality secret ingredient for greens in cream sauces like creamed spinach):

post-5965-0-76521200-1452485780_thumb.jp

 

Also in the meantime, I mixed ricotta cheese with some shredded parmesan cheese and an egg, and my girlfriend shredded a pile of mozzarella cheese. Behold the mise en place:

post-5965-0-36968400-1452485787_thumb.jp

 

Once the spinach cooled enough to be touchable, I chopped it up and pressed most of the water out with paper towels, then added it to the ricotta mixture:

post-5965-0-68108300-1452485794_thumb.jp

 

Then begins the layering. Basic order is sauce, noodle, ricotta, sauce + mozzarella (sauzzarella), noodle, ricotta, sauzzarella. I used oven-ready noodles, because although I mistrust them it's what was in stock and I didn't care to make another stop for groceries:

post-5965-0-68080200-1452485801_thumb.jp

post-5965-0-88481800-1452485807_thumb.jp

 

Here's a side view of the final stack before going in the oven:

post-5965-0-44327500-1452485813_thumb.jp

 

Baked it covered with foil for about 45 minutes, then uncovered for about 10 more to brown the cheese a bit. Here's a side view coming out of the oven:

post-5965-0-03910800-1452485819_thumb.jp

 

And sliced up:

post-5965-0-68648800-1452487048_thumb.jp

 

Also a photo of the negative lasagna space (NLS) because it looks nice:

post-5965-0-29043100-1452487041_thumb.jp

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I made a slow cooker spinach lasagna from a recipe my partner's father sent us. I had trouble getting the rectangular noodles to layer correctly in my round slow cooker, so it all immediately fell apart when we took it out. And I had to rush to get it made before I left for work (and, in fact, got to work 30 minutes late) so I couldn't squeeze the moisture out of the spinach like I wanted, so it was too wet. 

 

Still, as far as spinach and noodles and cheese melted into a slop go, it was fine.8ydovc.png

 

2nk5nk4.jpg

 

 

 

2r6cuat.jpg

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I feel like I have been making Lasagna wrong my whole life:

 

Pastelón (Sweet Plantain “Lasagna”)

 
INGREDIENTS
1 lbs ground beef
1 onion,minced
3 gloves garlic, minced
1 green pepper, minced
½ chopped cilantro
2 tsp adobo
2 tsp oregano
2 Tbs vinegar
1 envelope sazón
2 bay leaves
8 green stuffed olives, halved
½ cup raisins
¼ cup tomato sauce
4 plantains, peeled and sliced into strips
3 eggs
2 Tbs milk
2 cups white shredded cheese
vegetable oil
salt
 
INSTRUCTIONS
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Butter square pan with 1 tbs of butter.
 
Combine, beef, onion, pepper, garlic, cilantro, adobo, oregano, vinegar and sazon. Mix well.
 
Heat a large skillet at medium-high heat with 2 Tbs of olive oil, add meat mixture.
 
Cook beef until brown and of the juices bubble up, add bay leaves, olives, raisins and tomato sauce. Mix and let simmer for 10 minutes, set aside.
 
Heat a large frying pan with vegetable oil, just enough to coat the bottom. Fry plantains for 2-3 minutes on each side or until golden and slitely crispy. Drain on a plate with paper towel, set aside.
 
To assemble pastelon: Take your prepared square pan, start with a layer of plantains, then beef, then a fistful of cheese, repeat. You want to finish with cheese and plantains. Beat 3 eggs with 2 Tbs of milk, pour over the pastelón. Let it sit for a minute allowing the egg to soak in. Top off with just a bit more cheese.
 
Bake in oven at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.
 
Eat like a pig, scarf it down, don't share with anyone 


http://thenoshery.com/pastelon-sweet-plaintain-lasagna/

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Pastelón is delicious. You can also serve the meat mixture (aka picadillo) over rice for a lazier option :)

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post-33965-0-10078700-1452635670_thumb.jpg

 

That's the meat filling.

I fried some onions and garlic on olive oil till they started getting glassy/brown.

Added minced meat (mixed beef and pork), chopped carrots as well as salt and pepper and mixed till it started browning/drying up.

Then I added store bought pelati (peeled tomato sauce), rinsing out the bottle with a little hot water, plus basil and thyme. 

I covered that pan and let it cook for around 30ish minutes, maybe 40?

 

That's around 650g of meat, 3 mid sized carrots, 3 small onions, 3 cloves of garlic, around 400 mL of pelati

 

 

post-33965-0-25758900-1452635680_thumb.jpg

The picture's the bechamel sauce. Melted around 150 g of butter, added flour and kept mixing to avoid clumps, then added around 0.5L of milk (out of the fridge) as well as salt, pepper and nutmeg.

 

Constructing it, I used store bought dough leaves. I buttered the bottom of a metal baking pan, added sauce, added a layer of dough, meat filling, sauce, dough, meat sauce, etc. At the top I put all the leftover meat and most (30%) of all the sauce, making sure I covered the sides so they don't dry up.

 

Left cooking for ~35 minutes at 220 C here's about 1/3 that was left over.

post-33965-0-07767600-1452635687_thumb.jpg

 

I liked the taste, it didn't come out damp and it also held itself together. 

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You used dough leaves? I've never heard of those (googling seems to bring up pies), but they look like they worked really well, you got real crisp looking layers.

 

 

Also reminder that a new food is upon us soon, when dibs emerges to pick his theme (and of course following is optional).

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I don't know actual english cooking terminology, I guessed some of what I wrote and googled nearly all the spices. I used this thing 

Despar__testenine_za_lazanjo_250g.jpg

 

It's bone dry pasta sheets, I just put them on directly without cooking or even dipping in water. The rest of the stuff seemed moist enough to make up for it.

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