Mexican Cheese & Bean Lasagne

Mexican Cheese & Bean Lasagne

1 tbsp garlic oil
1 onion, peeled and chopped
1 red pepper, de-seeded and chopped
2 green bird's-eye chillies, chopped  with seeds
1 tsp sea salt flakes or 1/2 tsp pouring salt
2 tbsp coriander stalks, chopped  very finely
2 x 400g cans chopped  tomatoes, plus 400ml water swilled from empty cans
1 tbsp tomato tomato ketchup

  For the filling:

2 x 400g cans black beans, drained and rinsed
Fajita seasoning mix to taste
2 x 250g cans (225g drained weight each) sweetcorn
250g mature goat's Cheddar, grated , or cheese of your choice
8 soft tortillas

Preheat the oven to 200°C / gas mark 6, slipping in a baking tray at the same time.

To make the sauce, heat the oil in a pan on the stove and fry the onion, pepper and chilli. Add the salt and cook gently for 15 minutes and, once soft, add the chopped  coriander stalks.

Add the canned tomatoes, then swill the cans out with water and add this too. Spoon in the ketchup and let things come to a simmer, leaving the sauce (or salsa, in keeping with the Mexican mojo) to cook while you get on with preparing the filling - about ten minutes.

To make the filling, mix the drained beans and sweetcorn in a bowl add fajita seasoning mix to taste.  Add most of the grated  cheese, reserving some to sprinkle on the top at the end, and mix together.

Start to assemble the lasagne by spooning about a third of the salsa into the bottom of your ovenproof dish and smearing it about, then layer on two tortillas so that they cover the sauce overlapping slightly, like a Venn diagram.

Add a third of the beans and cheese mixture, covering the tortillas, and then about a quarter of the remaining salsa and another two tortillas.

Repeat with another third of beans and cheese, and some more salsa before layering on another two tortillas. Finally, add the last layer of beans and cheese, nearly all of the remaining salsa and cover with the last two tortillas. Spread the very last bit of salsa over the tortillas and sprinkle with the remaining cheese.

Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, and let it rest for a good 10-15 minutes before slicing like a pizza, and eat with some avocado salsa.

 

Based on a Nigella Lawson recipe with tweaks by Rosemary P

There be Dragon Fruit...

I'm partial to Dragon Fruit when I can find it in the shops here - I developed a taste for this strange fruit while visiting Singapore. This is the purple variety - a white fleshed one can also be bought. I was advised by a local who served us in Singapore that you eat it sprinkled with salt. I did try that option when we got back to the hotel and have to say it does seem to enhance the flavour. No stranger than putting sugar on tomatoes I suppose?...
I've also tried the fruit dried and sliced and available in some food stores in the US. A healthy snack!

Anzac v2...

Took another stab at making these. The first couple of batches turned out fine but were more a soft, chewy flapjack than the crunchy biscuits I'm more familiar with.
As my research had turned up the suggestion that cooking them for longer, at a lower temperature, produced a crisper biscuit, this was the next stage. I'd also read a suggestion that forming the biscuit mix into small balls (about the size of a walnut) and placing them on the baking tray, rather than making flatter round shapes, produced a better end result.

So, using the same recipe below, I lowered the oven temperature to Gas Mark 2 (~150ºc) and increased the cooking time to 20 minutes.

These tweaks have done the trick - more crunch, slightly thicker, and more to my liking.

10/10

ANZAC biscuits...

One of the few things I tend to buy in bulk, when I find them on the shelves of stores, are Unibic Anzac biscuits. For obvious reasons, they only appear around about the latter quarter of the year, so I stock up when I find them.

I love the taste of these biscuits and the crunch too. Frustrated at the restricted supply, I set out to try and make my own. 
The result from using the Anzac biscuit recipe on the BBC Good Food website was good, but they turned out as a chewy bicscuit, more akin to a flapjack than the hard crunchy biscuit produced by Unibic.

I have found another recipe, which uses a lower oven temperature and longer baking time - once the current stock in the biscuit tin has been depleted, which won't be long, I will be experimenting with Anzac v2...

Another "white" pizza - bit of meat on it this time!

"White" pizza with seafood

Following a short discussion with a friend, I attempted to cook a variation of the recipe for a White Pizza with Clams as featured on the eatingwell.com recipe website.
This was the first time that I had used the double baked method of producing a pizza base. I used a variation of ingredients to the eatingwell recipe, on one side tuna and anchovies and capers and on the other side I used tuna, squid pieces and smoked mussels with some mushrooms.
Cooking the pizza base for 8 to 10 minutes initially, with no topping, produced a nice crisp base onto which the olive oil and garlic mixture was poured and spread. The toppings were then added and the pizza was returned to the oven for a further 8 to 10 minutes.

Thanks to Jeremy H for the suggestion.

New gin in the cabinet...

Added a new gin to the list - Caorunn Scottish Gin. 

Caorunn gin
"Caorunn is more than a gin. It is a perfectly balanced, super-premium small batch Scottish Gin, Infused with hand-picked botanicals, inspired by Celtic tradition.

Created from the Celtic landscape, Caorunn Gin delivers a taste that sets us apart.
Caorunn Gin is uniquely served with a freshly cut red apple to enhance its invigorating, clean and crisp taste.
    One part rowan berry
    One part heather
    One part bog myrtle
    One part dandelion
    One part coul blush apple..."

Okonomiyaki - "Japanese pizza"

Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き) literally means “grilled as you like it” in Japanese. I saw this being made on a UK food show featuring The Hairy Bikers during a visit to Japan.
Looked like my kind of food so had a go at making it.
I used the recipe from norecipes.com and while it lacked many of the more exotic ingredients such as the katsuobushi or nagaimo I think it turned out reasonably well.
With no Japanese mayo I just used Hellmans and I had read that okonomiyaki sauce is very similar to Worcestershire sauce so just used that in its place.

Monta Japanese Noodle House - Las Vegas

So good we went back twice!!!!

Monta Ramen - What is MONTA's TONKOTSU Ramen?

Monta Ramen serves "KURUME" style Tonkotsu Ramen - broth made from selected pork bones and the unique soy sauce imported from Japan.

The origin of KURUME-style ramen is Fukuoka in Kyushu region - served with thick and rich pork based broth with thin, unrisen noodles. Kurume ramen is considered the original Tonkotsu ramen and had great impact on ramen culture throughout Japan.