Monday, April 23, 2012

Classic lasagna



Lasagna has been my favorite main dish like...forever. I can't remember at all when was the first time I ate it, or how many times I ate it. Too many times I guess. You know there is some foods, if you eat too them too many times, you just start at some point to not like it anymore...but not lasagna. It didn't happen. I still enjoy them so much when I eat them. And I also enjoy preparing them myself. The recipe I usually do is quite easy in my opinion, the only tricky thing in it might be the bechamel (white sauce). And well sometimes I end up making my Bolognese too liquid which gives the result you see on the picture on top: it doesn't look so pretty but at least the taste stays great. 

Ingredients

- 12 lasagna sheets
- 100g grated cheese

For the bolognese

- 4 tbsp olive oil
- 500g ground beef
- 2 onions
- 200g tomato sauce (best if it's the kind with crushed tomatoes inside)
- 2 tsp chopped parsley leaves 
- salt and pepper

For the bechamel

- 50cl milk
- 30g butter
- 40g flour
- salt and pepper
- 1 pinch grated nutmeg


Directions


Bolognese:

In a large casserole pot, heat oil over medium high heat. Add the onions cut in small pieces, and saute until soft and translucent. Add the ground beef and let it simmer until cooked. Add the tomato sauce, salt, pepper and the parsley. Mix well and let simmer at very low heat for about 20 minutes. 

Bechamel:

In a small kettle, melt the butter over low heat. Add the flour and whisk with a wooden spoon until smooth, about 5 minutes. Gradually add the milk. Whisk constantly to avoid lumps. Simmer and whisk over medium heat until the sauce is thick, about 10 minutes. The sauce should be thick enough to coat the back of wooden spoon. Remove from heat and add the nutmeg, salt and pepper. 

Let's put everything together:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees celcius. 
In a gratin dish, put the different preparation and ingredients: lasagna sheets side by side(to cover the whole dish), bolognese (you should make sure that it covers properly all the lasagna sheets so that they get wet, that way they will easily cook in the oven, without any need to precook them), bechamel. Do that for as many times as you have bolognese, but keep some bechamel for the end. To finish the dish, put those ingredients in this order: lasagna sheets, the rest of bechamel, and the grated cheese. 
Put in the oven for about 20 minutes. 

Monday, April 16, 2012

Scottish shortbread - a very easy recipe


When I visited Scotland last year, I ate a lot of shorbread there. And since then I wanted to try to bake them by myself. It didn't happen until recently, when I got a new Jamie Oliver cookbook about Great Britain. The recipe for shortbread there was really easy and only few ingredients were needed; the kind of ingredients one only has at home! So it is the recipe which inspired this one. There is very few modification to what's in the book. It came out to be really good, but I know I can still improve from there. And I will try again! because I love Scottish shortbreads.

 Ingredients


- 200g flour
- 50g caster sugar; plus extra for sprinkling over
- 125g unsalted butter
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract

Directions


Preheat the oven to 170 degrees celcius.
 Mix the flour and sugar together. 

 Rub in the butter with your thumb and forefinger,

 then add the vanilla extract and squash, pat and push it into a dough.

 Form a ball and then roll it until it's 1cm thick (add a little bit of flour on top if it's sticky)

 Cut small finger shapes so that it looks like that. And put them on a baking sheet.

 Sprinkle over some sugar and put in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes.
It's ready when it has a lovely golden colour. 
Leave it to cool down before eating.

 It's perfect with a cup of tea!

And if you have some left, put them in an iron box. 

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