Aubergine and pasta bake

The Meat Eater looked at his plate and said ‘this looks suspiciously vegan’. Huh? It was covered with cheese and not the slightest bit vegan. The boy is paranoid.

aubergine-bake-full

It’s a recipe adapted from Rose Elliot’s New Complete Vegetarian. The only bit I adapted was where she uses wholemeal auelli; I used non-wholemeal pasta (as I get moaned at if I use wholemeal despite the taste and texture being identical) and spirals, not auelli (as I haven’t a clue what auelli looks like and anyway, I had spirals in the cupboard).

Also, I didn’t fry the aubergine slices as that’s too fiddly and takes too long. Instead, I brushed some oil over them and roasted them in the oven for about 20 minutes.

Oh, and I used a large can of tomatoes, not 225g.

I didn’t use an egg, either.

And I only used one onion, not two.

Okay, I adapted it quite a lot.

aubergine-bake

Pasta and aubergine bake (serves 4)
(Adapted from Rose Elliot’s New Complete Vegetarian)

1 large onion, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for brushing
450g aubergine
75g pasta shapes
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
1 tsp dried oregano
50g fresh breadcrumbs
50g cheddar cheese, grated

  1. Fry the onions in 1 tbsp olive oil for about 10 minutes.
  2. Slice the aubergine into thin rounds, brush with oil and bake in the oven at 200C for about 20 minutes, until tender.
  3. Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the packet and drain.
  4. Mix the pasta, tomatoes, ketchup and oregano with the onions and season with salt and pepper.
  5. Put the aubergine slices in the base of a greased shallow ovenproof dish. Spoon the pasta mixture on top, cover with the rest of the aubergine slices and sprinkle with the breadcrumbs and grated cheese.
  6. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.
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Spinach and cheese muffins

cheese-and-spinach-muffins

A friend on Facebook mentioned he’d had a spinach and cheese muffin. I’d never heard of a spinach and cheese muffin but I love spinach and I love cheese and I especially love them together so I trawled the internet for a recipe.

I found this one at Uma’s Kitchen Experiments, went to the supermarket to buy spinach, muffin cases and a muffin tin (and accidentally came back with spinach, muffin cases, a muffin tin, a pack of Rolo Ice Creams, two Halloween-themed packets of cake bars, a big bag of crisps, a cardigan and a stripy top) and made my first ever batch of muffins. Delicious. Definitely not the last batch I ever make.

spinach-and-cheese-muffins

I halved the recipe to make six muffins instead of twelve, and also used a couple of shallots instead of buying a red onion just to use a quarter of it.

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Bannisters’ Farm Cheese & Roasted Onion Filled Potato Skins

bannisters-farm-cheese-and-onion-skins

Someone on Twitter last night tweeted she’d seen an advert for frozen baked potatoes. ‘WTF’, she said, ‘get a potato and put it in the oven/microwave’.

Personally, I think anyone who puts a raw potato in the microwave to bake doesn’t deserve to have a potato in the first place but I’ve nothing against frozen potato-based products. Especially when they’re filled with cheese and onion.

Speaking of cheese and onion, by a happy coincidence, yesterday a delivery of Bannisters’ Farm products arrived. All of them potato-based. Oh yes, there’s a happy Meat Eater in the house at the mo.

Amongst the delivery were potato skins filled with cheese and roasted onion, baked potato halves filled with mature cheddar cheese, ready baked potatoes and a bag of roasting potatoes.

I love proper oven-baked potatoes – who doesn’t – but they need about two hours in the oven (unless you put them in the microwave, but see what I said above about microwaving raw potatoes) to cook them to perfection. Which is where frozen ones come in. The cheese and onion filled potato skins I cooked yesterday only took 20 minutes (you can also microwave them for 3 minutes or put them on a BBQ).

You may be thinking ‘okay, they’re quick, but I bet they’re full of crap’. Aha – wrong! The ingredients are simply: potato, cheddar cheese, roasted onion, water, sunflower oil, Monterey Jack cheese, mustard powder and white pepper.

But the proof of the potato is in the eating though, yeah? Yeah. The skin was crispy, the potato was soft and fluffy and there was a creamy topping of cheese and onion. I’d have liked a stronger cheese taste and one of my potatoes was mostly potato but one of The Meat Eater’s was mostly cheese so he said if you average them out, that makes them perfect. I think there’s logic in there somewhere.

I served them with Quorn Mini Kievs and baked beans.

bannisters-farm-potato-skins

The Bannisters’ Farm range costs between £1.39 – £2.50 and is available nationwide from Morrisons, Ocado, Tesco, Waitrose, Iceland, Booths, Nisa, Farmfoods and selected Sainsbury’s Local stores.

For more information visit www.bannistersfarm.co.uk

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Vegetarian haggis pizza wrap

vegetarian-haggis-wrap

The Meat Eater’s away and I pondered what to have for dinner. I had planned to have a tortilla pizza but it rained all afternoon and I didn’t fancy cycling in the rain to the farm shop to buy mushrooms. That meant the toppings on my tortilla pizza would consist only of cheese and onion. Bit tame, really.

Then I remembered I had a pack of Macsween’s Microwaveable Haggis in the fridge. Result.

Despite the name, you don’t have to microwave the haggis (although if you want to microwave it, it only takes 60 seconds); you can grill it or fry it or stuff peppers or mushrooms (other vegetables are available to stuff) with it, or you can do what I did and make a pizza wrap with it. (You can also not do what I did and forget to add rocket and chilli flakes.)

Macsween’s Vegetarian Haggis is vegan, so if you want a vegan version, just leave out the cheese or use vegan cheese.

vegetarian-haggis-wrap-open

Vegetarian haggis pizza wrap (serves 1)

1 tortilla wrap
1 portion of Macsween’s Microwaveable Haggis, crumbled
3 tbsp tinned chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp chopped onion
1 green chilli, sliced
30g cheese, grated

Spread the tortilla with the chopped tomatoes, layer on the rest of the ingredients, leaving the cheese until last.

Roll up into a wrap and bake in the oven at 180C for 10-15 minutes until hot and the wrap’s just turning golden.

Update: My friend Lynda has christened this the ‘Hapiwrap’ – how brilliant is that for a name!

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Truckle Cheese Co: Oak Smoked Cheddar

truckle-oak_smoked-cheddar

Truckle Cheese Co’s Oak Smoked Cheddar is naturally smoked over oakwood chips and made from milk produced on West Country farms.

I had some today in a sandwich, along with cucumber, tomato, sprouts and mayonnaise. The deep oak flavour of the cheese went beautifully with the fresh, crispness of the salad.

truckle-cheese-company-sandwich

Truckle Cheese Co have a wide range of cheese, not all are suitable for vegetarians but the ones that are are clearly marked on the website, including Vesuvius Vintage Cheddar with Chilli, and Creamy Blue Stilton (which I’ll be trying next).

A 200g truckle of Oak Smoked Cheddar costs £3.95 and is available from the Truckle Cheese Co website.

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Omelette cannelloni with spinach filling

I’ve made this a couple of times and I’ve obviously been in a hurry to eat it before photographing it, as it’s not on my blog already.

omelette-cannelloni-with-spinach-filling-2

I love cannelloni but gave up trying to stuff those tubes years ago and I find using fresh lasagne isn’t the same. This is much easier and although it doesn’t beat a real pasta cannelloni, it’s a gorgeous alternative.

The recipe is adapted from Rose Elliot’s Vegetarian Supercook. I used cheddar instead of Parmesan-style cheese and left out the nutmeg. It also only made 6 omelettes not 8 (although you could make thinner omelettes) and served it between the two of us, not the four the recipe states. Also, it took nowhere near 25 minutes in the oven, it was more like 15.

omelette-cannelloni-with-spinach-filling

Omelette cannelloni with spinach filling (serves 4)

750g spinach, washed
125g low-fat soft cream cheese
8 tbsp grated Parmesan-style cheese
Grated nutmeg
4 eggs
2 tbsp water
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper

  1. Put the spinach with just the water clinging to the leaves into a large saucepan, cover and cook for 6-7 minutes, or until tender. Drain well.
  2. Add the cream cheese to the spinach along with 4 tbsp of the Parmesan-style cheese. Mix well and season with salt, pepper and grated nutmeg. Set aside.
  3. Whisk the eggs with the water and salt and pepper to taste. Brush a frying pan (preferably non-stick) with a little of the olive oil and heat, then pour in enough of the egg – about 2 tbsp – to make a small omelette. Cook for a few seconds, until it is set, then lift out on to a plate. Continue in this way until you have about 8 small omelettes, piling them up on top of each other.
  4. Spoon a little of the spinach mixture on to the edge of one of the omelettes, roll it up and place in a shallow gratin dish. Fill the remaining omelettes in the same way, until all the spinach mixture is used, placing them snugly side by side in the dish. Sprinkle with the remaining Parmesan-style cheese and bake in a pre-heated oven, 190C/Gas Mark 5, for about 25 minutes, or until bubbling and golden brown on top.
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Black-eyed pea bake

black-eyed-pea-bake

I had a few dilemmas with this. Were black-eyed beans the same as black-eyed peas, as that’s all I could find in the supermarket? After a bit of a Google, I decided they were.

Then, the recipe called for 350g of dried peas/beans. Fine, I weighed out 350g of beans and left them to soak overnight. Oh, that’s a LOT of beans. Do I really need all of them? I didn’t think so and weighed out 350g of the soaked beans, freezing the rest.

While reading the method, it said to fry the onions and garlic and add the beans then cover with water and boil, then whizz up in a food processor. Won’t there be a load of water? Do I drain it first or what? Still, I didn’t need to worry about that, as the water got absorbed or evaporated or something, so all was fine there.

Rose Elliot, in her book New Complete Vegetarian, says this bake goes well with a spicy tomato sauce or a vegetarian gravy and, if you’re like me and not a make-your-own-gravy kind of girl, I can confirm that Bisto complements it beautifully.

I was mega-made-up with this dish. How nice can some puréed beans with breadcrumbs on top be, I thought? Flipping gorgeous!

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Black-eyed pea bake (serves 4)
Taken from Rose Elliot’s New Complete Vegetarian

350g dried black-eyed peas (soaked overnight)
2 large onions, sliced
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for greasing
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried marjoram
salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the topping
50g fresh breadcrumbs
50g grated cheese

  1. Drain and rinse the peas.
  2. Fry the onions and garlic in the oil for 10 minutes or until the onion is tender but not browned, then add the peas, herbs and water to cover.
  3. Simmer gently, until the peas are tender (about 25-40 minutes).
  4. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4.
  5. Purée the pea mixture in a food processor or with an electric hand blender. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
  6. Spoon the mixture into a greased, shallow ovenproof dish, sprinkle with the breadcrumbs and grated cheese and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes or until the top is golden and crunchy.
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Rose Elliot’s cheese and onion pie

This was more of an onion and cheese pie, than cheese and onion, as although there was a ton of cheese in it, it must have dissolved, as it didn’t come out very cheesy. Still, it tasted good, and it was quick, cheap and easy to make.

cheese-and-onion-pie

Cheese and onion pie (serves 6)
Adapted from Rose Elliot’s New Complete Vegetarian

1 tbsp oil
450g onions, sliced
1 packet of puff pastry
225g grated cheese
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
Beaten egg or milk, to glaze

Preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 7.
Fry the onions in the oil for about 5 minutes.
Divide the pastry in half.
Mix the onions with the cheese and seasoning, then spoon on top of the pastry. Moisten the edges of the pastry with cold water.
Use the rest of the pastry to cover the pie, pressing the edges together.
Brush with the beaten egg or milk if you want a shiny finish, then bake for 30-35 minutes or until the pastry is crisp and golden brown.

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Baked bean sandwich filling cheese toastie

baked-bean-sandwich-fillingI love gimmicks. I saw this Princes Baked Bean Sandwich Filling on the shelf in Sainsbury’s and as it was only 39p – despite The Meat Eater’s protestations – thought I’d give it a go.

It’s made of baked beans (you’d guessed that though, hadn’t you?), red peppers and red kidney beans and although the picture on the jar has fully formed beans on it, in real life, the beans and peppers are mushed up.

I made a baked bean sandwich filling and cheese toastie but found the baked bean filling sickly, although I did spread it on thickly, so maybe that’s why.

baked-bean-sandwich

A good gimmick, but not something I want to eat again.

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Cabbage and leek bake

If you pretend this isn’t smothered in cheese sauce and just focus on the cabbage and leek bit, this is a healthy side dish. Although, as it’s only a side dish, a bit of cheese is hardly going to sabotage any healthy eating thing you’ve got going on at the mo.

cabbage_and_leek_bake

I served it with Linda McCartney sausages and boiled potatoes and it got a rating of ‘very nice indeed’ from The Meat Eater.

Cabbage and leek bake (serves 4)
Taken from The Boxing Clever Cookbook

450g cabbage, chopped
175g leeks, sliced
Salt to taste

Sauce
25g butter or margarine
50g plain flour
1 pint milk
225g Cheddar cheese, grated
Salt and black pepper

  1. Place the cabbage and leeks in boiling water. Bring back to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes and drain well. Transfer to a buttered oven dish.
  2. Melt the butter or margarine in a pan, add flour and cook, stirring continuously for 1 minute. Slowly add milk, again stirring continuously until sauce is smooth and thick.
  3. Add cheese and stir until melted. Season to taste.
  4. Pour sauce over vegetables and bake in oven 180C/Gas 4 for 30 minutes.
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