Finding Feasts | Cooking Eating Storytelling

Kale and 3 Cheese Lasagna w/ Rich Tomato and Mushroom Sauce

Kale 3 Cheese Lasagna w/ Tomato Mushroom Sauce. My mum makes the best lasagna, it’s seriously good, and as with any great recipe that is made by all mum’s the world over, you can never make it as good as theirs. That’s why going back home is always so good.

This Kale 3 Cheese Lasagna w/ Tomato Mushroom Sauce is based on mum’s design and her cheese mixture, this is just the vegetarian version. It’s super delicious and soul warming.

I know, the words Blondie and vegetarianism are never seen together, but that was prior to doing Meat Free Week a couple of weeks ago. It was hubby’s decision to do it and as a family we embraced the idea. We had been talking about meat alot of late, not only about reducing our intake but being more conscious of where it was coming from. I had wanted to make meat the ‘special occasion’ meal, the dinner you saved up for and cooked with purpose and love, knowing the animal or fish had lived a good, rich and healthy life.

What surprised me most about that week was it actually took alot more effort and conscious thought to design meals for 7 full days of meat free living than it does to construct and meal with meat. The days were used to think of dinners and lunches that were full of flavour and filled the space left by meat. Sure, I could have done a week of salads and roasted veggies, but I really wanted to try try some other recipes. I don’t want to rely on rice and potatoes to fill the void.

What also surprised me or surprised us all was the fact we had planned to ‘celebrate’ day eight – the start of meat eating again – with my son’s favourite meal of burgers and chips from Grill’d. It was a very enjoyable dinner and a delicious way of re-starting our meat loving ways, but it wasn’t till the next Friday that meat was requested again… funny.

With several new recipes under my belt and with the need to buy quality, local meat our new life of conscious meat eating has begun – 3 to 4 days meat free and enjoying amazing places like Feather and Bone Providore here in Sydney to buy our meat from.

Happy eating, however you choose to do it – Blondie 🙂

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Roasted pumpkin, ricotta, parmesan and spinach rolls

FinSki's Roasted Pumpkin Ricotta Parmesan & Spinach Rolls — Click on image for recipe

So if I could sum up the last week of March in one photo it would be this…a classic scene out of Bridget Jones’s Diary, her sitting on the couch, drinking wine and belting out Celine Dion’s All By Myself. Yup, that was me and roasted pumpkin, ricotta, parmesan and spinach rolls is what saved me and well maybe a few LARGE glasses of wine!

No I hubby didn’t dump me and whilst I won’t go into the dirty details I will leave it to you the reader to scheme up stories but let’s just say that it was a crappy week all round at every corner and there was definitely plenty of wine consumed with these yummy savoury rolls.

I was hungry, deflated and had limited ingredients so I did what I knew best, raided the pantry and fridge, made a complete mess of the kitchen and baked! Approximately an hour and a half later I had savoury goodness popping out of my oven.

I love these rolls and try to have them in the freezer on standby. I buy my ricotta in bulk. (Blondie taught me this). It comes in this fantastic 1 kg bowl from Harris Farm Markets and made by Paesanella. If you don’t use it straight away you will generally get a life shell of about 2 weeks prior to opening it. Blondie and I will sometimes share it between the two of us too. Roasting the pumpkin gives the rolls depth of flavour and a certain kind of sweetness. Yum!

Great with a fresh green salad and perfect for that meat free night! Also guaranteed to assist where crappy weeks come to bother you as well!

Bella

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Wild Mushroom Tarte Tatin with Taleggio and Vino Cotto Drizzle

Wild Mushroom Tarte Tatin with Taleggio and Vino Cotto Drizzle… With Mother’s Day only a month away, I thought I would put up a recipe that would surely bowl her over, especially if you turn up with a bottle of bubbly to go along with it – it would certainly put a smile on my face!

I have used Pine Mushrooms aka Saffron mIlk Cap Mushrooms because the colour is so vibrant and they still retain a firm texture (and I have a ton from our last mushrooming venture!) but if you are having trouble getting a hold of them you could use a Swiss brown and button mushroom mix.

The Vino Cotto adds a gorgeous sweetness to the earthy mushrooms and the melted Taleggio is to die for. Each crispy bite is heaven!

This is such an adaptable dish for whatever the occasion is as you can make a large version to share around a table, or individual tarts that can be served with a little salad on the side as an entree or even as finger food, made in little muffin tins to pass around at parties – and everyone is going to love them!

Happy Mother’s Day! Blondie

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Tomato Salsa

FinSki's_Salsa 1 — Click on image for full recipe

I don’t have an fantastic story behind this tomato salsa recipe. I made tacos the other night for dinner (chicken and beef) and I wanted to make my own salsa. I’ve made fresh salsa before from ripe tomatoes but I couldn’t find any in the supermarket so making it from canned organic tomatoes was the next best option.

Like majority of recipes there are plenty of variations of this on other cooking sites and blogs so chances are you will have come across something very similar. Best of all it takes about 15 minutes to prepare and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist either to guess the basic ingredients that will go in, you’ll most likely have these sitting in the pantry.

This basic recipe asks for canned tomatoes, coriander, salt, pepper, sweet paprika, chilli, cumin and lime juice. I love my limes and I love my tomato salsa to pack a ‘zinggy’ punch so I used the juice of one full lime. This makes the tomato salsa come out a little runny but it worked a treat on my soft tacos with gooey cheese.

One of two things happened when I made this…either I was very,very hungry or it was extremely delicious, because it’s almost gone!

How do you make your tomato salsa?

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Gołąbki – Polish cabbage rolls

Gołąbki or Polish cabbage rolls is definitely an autumn comfort food dish and although autumn has just started here in Australia and it is still relatively warm I do crave a good hearty dish every few nights.

Mum mostly made gołąbki on a Sunday for obiad (lunch). I still remember how beautiful the kitchen would smell with the rich tomato sauce bubbling away slowly and warming up the whole house. My favourite bit would be soaking up the tomato sauce at the bottom of the bowl with a piece of rye bread, ensuring that I scraped every last bit!

Gołąbki, pronounced ‘go-wump-kie’ translates to little pigeons. I’ve absolutely no idea why this dish is called that. I have heard stories that back in the day the Poles would actually make the dish from real pigeons so maybe it’s because the rolled cabbage leaf resembles a pigeons body? Regardless of the story behind the name they are delicious and very versatile.

There are plenty of other Eastern European nations that have a variation of this dish and they all look equally yummy! The Finns for example call it kaalikääryleet, now try pronouncing that!

Gołąbki is a humble dish which is traditionally made from mince meat such as pork, beef or veal but you can alter the ingredients to suit your own taste. Last mother’s day I made two versions of this, one with meat and the other with rice, grains and mushrooms. I also made a miso stock to go with the veggie option! Both were equally good however nothing beats an original gołąbki recipe!

A scrumptious dish that will hit the spot on a cool autumn evening that is best enjoyed with a good Polish beer! Would love to know if you have ever tasted these?

Smacznego!

BellaLeave a comment

Warm Sticky Date Puddings w/ Butterscotch Sauce

Finding Feasts - Sticky Date Pudding_ (1) — Click image for recipe

A lesson learned… Please don’t try this at home!

It’s amazing how things can change from normal to absolute dire panic in a split second. This is what happened to me two weeks ago… Happily preparing spaghetti at about 6:30pm on a Sunday evening, I dropped a pot of boiling water on the floor. I had a loose top on, the saucepan’s handle was sticking out and the pot must have been off balance on the stove top. As I threw in some pasta, I spun around to get some more and that was it… That was the moment. That was exactly when Sunday night took a turn for the worse.

Frantic calls to the hospital, to my sister (a nurse) and to Bella (to take Seb who was in shock not quite knowing what was going on) and I was whisked away with feet and hands in a large bucket of water to the hospital, husband in tow. To say the pain was extraordinary is an understatement, it was just insane… several of doses of morphine was needed to get through that night!

Anyway, with mid to deep level burns (they no longer grade a burn in degrees) on my foot and burns to my knee and hand, I was told not to be on my feet for more than 15 minutes at a time. Cooking was left to hubby, which fortunately didn’t require much more than reheating as I had made 3 kg of spaghetti sauce and a big batch of Thai green curry paste the weekend prior. All sitting in the freezer, and unbeknownst to me at the time, ready for the two weeks off my feet… almost too funny how things work out.

So, now I’m getting back into the swing of things I wanted to cook something soul warming, something that will soothe and sate the cooking void I had just been in, and what’s better than a traditional Warm Stick Date Pudding with Butterscotch Sauce.

Please take care in the kitchen, an accident is really only a micro second away.

Blondie 🙂

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Coq au Chardonnay

Coq au Chardonnay… Autumn is officially here and with the change of season comes a change in cooking. Long, slow, labour intensive meals start rolling around in your mind. Maybe a moussaka with it’s silky bechamel sauce, seasoned lamb mince and salted and grilled eggplant slices or wild mushroom arancini with a well rounded risotto base using homemade stock, letting it cool and lovingly forming balls to fry up the next day… ahhh, the joy of cooking.

As opposed to the above paragraph this Coq au Chardonnay is a relatively quick dish because you are using chicken (you can’t let it cook too long or you loose all the texture of the meat) but enjoy the process of chopping your vegetables, browning the chicken pieces and letting all the flavours develop together.

Coq Au Chardonnay is not unlike the French coq au vin, which is traditionally done with a red wine, but this version is a little lighter, maybe a little more autumn than the heavier red wine dish that has it’s place on my winter table.

Enjoy the cook 🙂

Blondie

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