Meanwhile...

Here's a nice Ceasar Salad I had last week at Småstad, a nice little restaurant near my friends Lena and Nico. Everything on the menu sounded good - and this was confirmed by my friends as they had eaten pretty much everything on it. Per went for a burger that was served with a chili-aioli, and both Lena and Nico had pasta. Everyone ended up happy, and very, very full.

I've been to another conference from Friday to Sunday. Nothing spectacular foodwise (and that's putting it nicely) - most notable exception was a chocolate truffle served instead of dessert on Saturday night. It had a subtle banana flavor, and was really nice with coffee. Other than that, the food was pretty much what you can expect when there's a thousand people to serve.

Tomato soup is really hot

I don't have that much to report - this week has been very low food-wise. I've been really busy, and haven't really had time to cook anything exciting. And I'm leaving for another weekend conference tomorrow morning. Oh well.

On Monday, I made a really nice stew that has been serving me well as lunch for this week. It's cold and snowy outside, and stew is the way to go. It's very basic - chunks of meat, onions, garlic, tomatoes, carrots, spices, and I usually would add potatoes, but this time I opted for the package of risoni that sat in the back of my cupboard instead. It turned out very well, and the risoni soaked up a lot of liquid turning the whole thing from a soup into a proper stew. Of course, as with most good stews, it took a good three hours to cook.

I have one notable exception this week, and it was a rather good tomato soup that I made from Jamie's Dinners. It used up all of my over-ripe plum tomatoes (about 800 g), and had carrot, onions, stock and spices in it. Near the end, when the tomatoes (peeled!) had been properly cooked for about half an hour, you bashed them with an immersion blender (or a regular blender) and this is when my accident occurred. In many soup recipes, the writers take care to point out that the liquid is very hot; so don't burn yourself. Right. There's a very good reason for the warning. In this case, I was dumb enough to rest my handheld blender in the pot, standing upright as it is fairly sturdy. I then attempted to grind some chili into the pot, clumsily knocking over the blender, and ending up splashing hot soup on my hands and wrists. Ouch, ouch, ouch! Pain!

Being hungry, I rinsed my wrists for a couple of minutes with cold water, finished the soup with a mixture of egg yolks, balsamic vinegar and light cream, and sat down to eat. I whined all night, but the soup was tasty. (Will post picture later.)

Conference

I was at a work conference Friday and Saturday. As I didn’t cook, I thought I’d write a few notes on the food. The conference was held at Skogshem & Wijk, which is actually two different places. I’ve been to Skogshem before, but this one was held at Wijk. On their webpage, it’s said that the two chefs compete, resulting in fantastic food at both facilities. Well. I’d have to say that Skogshem is definitely the winner, then. Because this food sure was no prize. It wasn’t awful – but Skogshem was a lot better.

Dinner on Friday night started with a very classic Swedish appetizer, toast Skagen. This is, as the name implies, a toast topped with Skagen-salad, which is a creamy mix of mayonnaise and shrimp, flavoured with dill and lemon. It can be extremely dull. This one, however, was quite nice. The bread, a small triangle, was toasted in butter and had a very satisfying crunch, and the Skagen-salad was creamy and flavourful. All well thus far.

For the main course, they served tornedou – a thick fillet of beef, grilled. Grilled to death, I might add. It had no pink whatsoever, and was very tough. This came with a baked potato, or rather half a giant baked potatoes. No complaints about that one, except the sheer size of it. For veggies, there was a spoonful of roasted beets, wonderfully moist and flavourful – but way too little. And there was some kind of orange sauce – not tasting very much of anything, just providing some inadequate moisture for the dry meat.


Here's a picture from my morning walk.

Dessert – oh, they had a buffet. That is pretty cool. I sampled – large samples, I must admit – tiramisu (sucked – it was made with sponge cake rather than with biscuits, and was dry, dry, dry), chocolate mousse (heavenly – but weirdly served on a sponge base. Which I didn’t eat.), banoffie pie (very excited as I have never had this before. Good, but the pie crust was rather nasty – dry. I ate the filling, happily) and two cookies. One was a chocolate chip biscotti, and while it was fine, I wish they had served coffee with it! The other was a peanut cookie, and that was great. It was very tender, and tasted very much of peanuts. Yum.

Breakfast buffet was good, very nice homemade bread and a good assortment of spreads, fruits and other nice stuff. We were also served very yummy fresh cinnamon buns for coffee at 10, and those were awesome. Notice them missing in the picture on top. For lunch, I wasn’t very hungry and that was just as well. The options were a sad-looking lasagne, an oven-baked white fish covered with tomato slices, and a vegetarian paella. That is, saffron rice with peas. Um, no thanks. I had the fish, which was boring (dry! What *is* it with this kitchen and dryness?) but served with a delicious sauce.

Gorgonzola Risotto with peas, mushrooms and broad beans - IMBB #11

It’s that time again – Is My Blog Burning? is here. The current edition is hosted by Cathy at My Little Kitchen and the theme? Beans. Beans?!? But, I don’t like beans! Any beans! Or at least, so I thought. I really detest most of the food in this category, I’m sad to say. Most beans are mealy and I can’t stand that texture. However. Not all beans are like that. Just most. When in Spain, I’ve discovered the most lovely little “Habas baby” in the frozen food section. They’re fava beans, or broad beans as they’re sometimes called. Here in Sweden, they’re called bondbönor, peasant beans. That doesn’t help though, because you can’t find them here. Or at least I can’t. I guess they’re available fresh for about two weeks in the summer, but you can’t find them dried or frozen. (Although I *did* find some canned ones, just today! Will try!)

So, I asked my dad to bring some frozen ones back from Spain with him. He did. They’re happily residing in my freezer, coming out for special occasions. And what would be a special occasion if not IMBB #11? Also, I happened to have my sister and her fiancé Peter over for dinner, and it was a perfect opportunity to cook. Seeing that I had recently acquired a bunch of new cookbooks I decided to use one of them – Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Heaven – and cook a risotto. I adapted the recipe slightly, drastically cutting down on the butter actually, and adding mushrooms but otherwise stuck pretty close to it.



Gorgonzola Risotto with peas, mushrooms and broad beans
Serves 4 – with enough leftovers for at least one lunch
400 g Arborio rice
1 liter good vegetable stock
25 g of butter (Ramsay suggested 100 g)
olive oil
1 onion, chopped
300 g button mushrooms, halved or quartered depending on size
150 g cooked small green peas
150 g cooked broad beans/fava beans
50 g parmesan cheese, grated
75 g gorgonzola cheese, diced
2 tbsp dry white wine
salt, pepper

Melt the butter and a little bit of olive oil in a large pan. Cook the onion until soft. Add the rice, and stir well. Add the mushrooms. Add some of the stock, and working as with any risotto, stir well and keep adding stock as the liquid absorbs into the rice. It takes at least 15 minutes, probably a little bit more. Keep tasting it – the rice should be soft but not mushy. Add the wine, the peas, the beans and the parmesan. Take off the heat, and add the gorgonzola. Season with salt and white pepper, and serve to your happy and well-deserving company.

Now, I’m looking forward to reading all your bean recipes, and hopefully finding a few things I won’t be too scared to try myself!

My blog is moving

New address!
When I decided to start a blog, I had a real hard time finding a good name for it. I settled on Where's My Dinner, but I never really liked that much. Today, I've switched to Anne's Food, which is much more descriptive of what this is really about. New address too - so please update your bookmarks. You can now find this blog at http://annesfood.blogspot.com


Sorry for any confusion caused.

Dinner thanks to Donna

We had decided on chicken for dinner last night. I thought I'd do my normal, boring, no-special-flavoring roast chicken, but then as I was reading my blogroll, I came across this wonderful post by Donna of There's a Chef in my Kitchen. It's for French Chicken in Vinegar sauce, and the moment I saw it I knew I had to make it.

Very, very big success. It was really good, a perfect mix of flavors to accompany the succulent meat. I made four medium chicken thighs, and followed the proportions for the sauce - excellent results. I think I'll up the vinegar and brown sugar a little bit next time, I'd like a little fuller flavor, but it was great as it was too. Definitely a recipe to keep!

We made rice to go with it. Per is not a polenta fan, and I didn't feel like fussing about with it just for me. However, I also made a corn pudding. I've made one before, from Nigella Bites, and that one is fabulous - but it's also loaded with heavy cream and not something for everyday eating. So, I checked around for various recipes, and finally settled on this recipe, called Grandma Lele's Corn Pudding. I followed the directions, except that I skipped the Ritz crackers and I substituted creamed corn (sadly, it can't be found here) with one can of corn whizzed in the food processor with a spoonful of creme fraiche. It came out nicely - more like a thick oven-baked pancake with corn rather than the corn pudding I knew from Nigella, but really tasty. And low-fat!

New cookbooks

Like so many other food bloggers, I, too, am obsessed with cookbooks. I have an entire bookcase full of them, though I haven't counted them lately. In the upperhand left corner are my favorites - all of my Nigella books, and all the ones by Jamie Oliver. Not that I don't cherish my more rare books, too, but these ones are, to me, reliable and fun.

That corner is about to get even more full. I've recently bought several new books. I keep a running wishlist, and Per decided to gift me with two lovely, lovely books from it for New Year's! He got me Real Greek Food by Theodore Kryiakou, and Kitchen Heaven by Gordon Ramsay. Ramsay's tv-show Kitchen Hell aired here last fall, and I rather enjoyed it. I don't find him especially charming, but fun in the same genre as Anthony Bourdain, or The Angry Chef. I haven't had time to read Real Greek Food properly yet, but I've paged through it and it looks wonderful. Kitchen Heaven is great too, and already full of little post-it tags for recipes I want to try.

Jill Dupleix is another nice food writer. I have Very Simple Food and have been enjoying it a lot, and I recently found the prequel Simple Food on Ebay. I got it in the mail yesterday, and yum! It's really packed with fast and easy recipes, perfect for the days when you want something better than just boiled macaroni and sausage (yes, we really do eat that. Quite often, too.) but you're hungry and it just can't take much time or effort.

My fourth new book was a real find. I have a pretty good bookstore right by my job, and they often have English cookbooks in addition to the translated ones. I'm there often, greedingly pawing their goods, and adding things constantly to my wishlist. One that I've been eyeing often is Loving and Cooking with Reckless Abandon by Kevin Gould - it's a little bit different, and it's very cute. He's inspired by Dalai Lama, and the cooking - divine. I haven't bought it, because it's been fairly expensive and not *that* great, but when I ventured into the bookshop on Sunday, they had a large table with clearance items.. behold - there was the book! I immediately snatched it up, and it's now resting happily on my coffee table, ready to be read and cherished.

Falafel

I don't often eat purely vegetarian. There are a few exceptions, and falafel is one. This is a fairly common fast food in Sweden, served at the same places that have kebab. (And kebab in Sweden, for the record, is what's called Döner Kebab in other places. More about kebab here.) The origin is middle-eastern, and you can learn more about it from Wikipedia. I never eat it in fast-food places though - it's usually served with hummus, which I don't like, and it's also not as good when it's been kept warm for a while. No, freshly cooked is the key here.

I can't really say that I make my own falafel, at least not from scratch. This is one of fairly few foods that I rather have from a box. There are excellent mixes to be found in exciting, small, exotic stores, and I much rather get one of those than start by mixing my own chickpeas. Why improve on perfection? Anyway. I get the mix, and then you just mix it with a little bit of water, let it rest for fifteen minutes, and the it's ready to be rolled into little flattened balls and fried in oil. I use an old cast-iron pot for frying, it works perfectly. The falafel is ready when it's reached a light golden brown color.

If you *do* want recipes for actual falafel from scratch, here are some:
http://www.theepicentre.com/Recipes/mfalafel.html
http://www.cooking.com/recipes/static/recipe4858.htm

And here is a very cool little falafel game!

We ate this with warm pita bread, sliced red onions, lettuce, tomatoes and a most awesome raita-tzatziki that I will call... raitziki. (Tzatziki would be the same recipe, but minus the sugar and the coriander. Those, in my opinion, are rather in a raita, but then they wouldn't be accompanied by garlic.) Here you go!

Raitziki
1 cup or so (that's 250 ml) of greek or turkish yogurt
1 medium cucumber, coarsely grated and the water squeezed out
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 large bunch of fresh coriander, chopped
1 pinch of sugar
salt
white pepper

Mix. Enjoy. That's it!

Paper Chef round-up

Isn't it amazing how you can do so many different things with roughly the same ingredients? I certainly think so. As avid readers know, I participated in this month's version of Paper Chef. The full round-up can be found at Tomatilla - thanks Owen, for holding this fun event! The winner was Jennifer from The Domestic Goddess, and her entry does sound incredibly yummy!

I hope to add some more pictures to my posts soon. I bought a new digital camera, a tiny little thing: Olympus Mju Mini, or Stylus Verve as it's known on the other side of the Atlantic. It's like a tiny baby brother to my own Olympus 8080WZ, but it's really neat. Like so many other cameras, it has pre-set modes that you can use to take your pictures - and this one has one named "culinary"! Is that cool or what? I can't wait to try it out!

Potato pancakes

This is not fancy. At all. It is, however, heaven. I love it. I don’t make it all that often – it really smokes up my kitchen – but when I do, it’s a very special treat. The recipe comes from a little book called “Bitchin in the Kitchen – the PMS Survival Cookbook”
written by Jennifer Evans Gardner and Fritzi Horstman.

A lovely little book, actually. It has measurements of one, two, three or four pigs for how unhealthy the recipe is. And it gives suggestions for alternatives – if you don’t feel like cooking the whole meal, just get chocolate. It also has handy tips for how men should treat their pms-ing significant others. It’s cute. Stereotypical, sure, but cute.
And more importantly, it has good recipes. The potato pancakes is what’s really stuck with me – and it’s not much of a recipe. Indeed, I don’t remember the exact measurements they use, but this is what I do:

Serves me – very hungry:
2-3 potatoes, half coarsely grated, half finely grated
1 onion, finely grated
1 egg
salt
pepper

Grate the potatoes, and make sure you get as much water out of them as possible. Squeeze the shreds to get it all out. Put in a bowl, and toss with the rest of the ingredients. Fry in large spoonfuls, making them all crispy and lovely, and eat, immediately, standing at the kitchen counter.

Parmesan Fish Fillets

I’m determined to cook more from my cookbooks this year, and one of my newer ones is Jamie’s Dinners by Jamie Oliver. He has a recipe for parmesan fish that’s truly a winner – you must try this!

Serves two.
2 white fish fillets
1 egg, lightly beaten
flour, mixed with salt and pepper
two large handfuls of finely shredded parmesan

Roll the fish in the flour mix. Dip it into the egg, and press into the parmesan. Fry on medium heat in olive oil until golden. That’s it.

Jamie suggests a salad with watercress, avocado and lemon juice. I used various sprouts instead of the water cress, since I love sprouts with avocado. It was nice as a small evening meal, but for something a bit more filling, I’d do riced potatoes (or mash – but Per pretty much hates mash and won’t eat it) and possibly a lemon sauce.

Paper Chef January

I can’t say I was going to participate in Paper Chef, when it was first announced. Neat idea, but since I had never watched Iron Chef… I didn’t really get the feel of it. However, as it happens, Swedish television just aired two shows of Iron Chef (one featuring crab, and the other one, where Marcus Samuelson was the challenger, featured turkey) and I really enjoyed it. A bit corny of course, showy – and a lot of fun.

So. I still didn’t give Paper Chef much of a thought, but I was surfing around, and came upon the list of ingredients for this edition.

It felt very, very do-able. Chicken? Sure! Lemon? Sure! Potatoes? You bet! Savoy cabbage? Oh… I guess so. I immediately thought about fried chicken, fries and coleslaw. So that’s what I made. Sort of.



Oven-fried garlic chicken parmesan
I cut two chicken breasts into strips. I dipped them in some garlic butter (melted butter, crushed garlic) and then rolled them in a mix of finely grated parmesan, breadcrumbs, lots of salt, and some ground chili flakes. Then, into the oven, 200 degrees C
(about 400 F) for 40 minutes. This turned out to be a bit too long – I think I’ll try it on a slightly lower heat next time, but since I had to do the potatoes at this temperature… Well. The garlic didn’t come across a lot – next time, I think I’ll do a garlic dipping sauce, too. The parmesan gave a lot of flavor, and so did the ground chili.

Potato wedges
I used 4 medium potatoes. Without peeling them, I cut each into 8 thin wedges. I parboiled them in plenty of salted water for seven minutes, and then tossed with some oil (a mix of sunflower and rapeseed – wouldn’t use olive for this) and a lot of salt. Into the oven at the same temperature at the chicken, 200 degrees C (about 400 F) for 45-60 minutes depending on your taste. They need flipping and turning a bit, so keep checking them every fifteen minutes.

Savoy Slaw with lemon and Turkish yogurt
I used half a head of savoy, finely shredded, and one finely grated carrot. To this, I added 3 large spoonfuls of creamy Turkish yogurt (gorgeous stuff – thick and rich), the juice of half a lemon, and a splash of raspberry balsamic vinegar. Some freshly ground white pepper and – heaven. It’s delicious! The raspberry vinegar gives it the perfect fruity touch, while the creaminess of the yogurt blends beautifully with the tangy lemon. The savoy cabbage, not being as crunchy as regular cabbage, has more of a chewy texture and fits in very well with the other flavors. The carrot gives it just a hint of sweetness. I thought about adding a tart Granny Smith apple to it, too, but that would make a bit too much slaw for just the two of us.

Ah. All in all, a very satisfying meal. The chicken was yummy, and certainly healthier than regular deep-fried chicken. It had a lot of flavor, and it was wonderful with freshly squeezed lemon on top. I’m glad I participated in this edition of Paper Chef – and I look forward to the next! Thanks Owen, for inventing it!

Tosca!

Today is Sugar High Friday again, the fourth edition. This time, it's hosted by Viv of Seattle Bon Vivant, and the theme: nuts!

I was thrilled to hear that. I love nuts. Off a dessert menu, I always go for the nuts. In baking, I love to include them. Nuts. Yum. All kinds of nuts, please!

I have a special recipe that I want to share with you today. It's one that I make a lot, as it's my dad's favorite. The recipe comes from my grandmother's old cookbook (aptly named "the big cookbook". It's indeed, big.) that she got for christmas 1953. It's called a Tosca cake, and it's basically a fairly heavy sponge with a caramel nut topping. I make this for my dad on many occasions - for Father's Day, for christmas, for his birthday, to take out on the boat... It's his fave. Last time I made it was in November, to celebrate that he had had his teeth re-done. He had a very long and involved procedure, and was unable to chew hard things - like nuts - for half a year. What better than a nut-filled cake to celebrate, then?

I was going to make one today, too. And I was going to take a picture. That didn't quite work out the way I had planned. Instead, I went off to friends for dinner, and had a wonderfully delicious dessert that I must get the recipe for. But it didn't involve nuts, so enough about that for now. Here's MY recipe - which is not exactly the same as in grandmother's cookbook, as I like a lot more topping than the original recipe called for. Also, the original just uses flaked almonds on the top. I like a mix of flaked almonds, chopped almonds and hazelnuts.

Tosca cake
Sponge base:
2 eggs
125 g sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
100 g flour
2 Tbsp heavy cream
100-125 g butter

Topping:
50 g butter
50 g flaked almonds
100 g coarsely chopped almonds
100 g coarsely chopped hazelnuts
100 g sugar
2 Tbsp flour
2 Tbsp heavy cream or milk

Start with the base. Heat an oven to 175 degrees. (350F) Butter and flour a suitable baking form, I use a normal 9-inch springform. Melt the butter. Beat the eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the baking powder and the flour. (Preferrably, use a sieve.) Add the cream, and the slightly cooled melted butter, and mix carefully but gently. Pour in the prepared pan, and bake for about 30 minutes. It should have some color, but still be a bit wobbly.

Meanwhile, make the topping. It's easy. Melt the butter. Add all the nuts, the cream (or milk - that works too), the flour and the sugar. Bring to a boil, and remove from heat. Spread the topping over the cake while still in its pan, and put back in the oven until the topping has turned a gorgeous light golden color. This takes 15 minutes or so. Also check that the cake is done, by inserting a cake tester, it should come out clean.

Let cool on a rack, remove from pan, enjoy with coffee or a glass of fresh lemonade.

Surprisingly good food on Viking Line

I’ve been meaning to post a short review of Viking Line Food Garden, as we went on a mini-cruise right before Christmas. The boat is fairly new, and called Cinderella. These cruises aren't exactly classy, but it seemed like a fun mini-break from holiday preparations, and besides, we had a free trip. We left Stockholm on Sunday evening, at 6 pm, and returned back the next day at 3.30 pm. We had a traditional Christmas smorgasbord for lunch on Monday, but on Sunday night, we had a hankering for more advanced cuisine, and thus went to one of the restaurants on board. The food was, surprisingly, absolutely excellent! And that really should not be so surprising to me anymore, as the food on the cruise ship to Tallinn (where we went a few years ago) was just as good. I suppose the restaurants on the ships really do hire some excellent chefs. At least this one must have.

For starters, I had a lardo-wrapped terrine with pheasant, deer and reindeer served with rosemary crutons, sundried berries and a truffle-scented honey. Lardo is conserved pork fat – that doesn’t sound incredibly appealing, but it’s actually very tasty. You can read more about it here. It gave a pleasant sensation paired with the very lean meats of the terrine, which truly was a little work of art. The sundried berries were wonderfully flavourful and chewy, and the rosemary crutons were a nice pairing. There was also quite a bit of rosemary in the terrine, maybe a tad too much for the other delicate flavours. It mixed very well with the honey, that was drizzled onto the plate. It could have had a slightly more distinct truffle flavour – but other than that, perfect.

Per had a beef carpaccio with olive oil, parmesan, cracked black pepper and a mushroom cappuccino. The mushroom in question was karljohansvamp, which is equivalent to porcini. It was a very tasty little foaming soup, and the carpaccio was great. I much preferred my own terrine though.

For the main course, we agonized over the menu – there were so many yummy choices! Per ordered deer, which came with a calvados sauce, a chutney from apple and walnuts, and a great little potato terrine flavoured with Vasterbotten-cheese. (A very sharp and flavourful cheese from northern Sweden.) I decided on roast breast of duck, served with the same potato terrine, some glazed parsnips and scorzonera. It had a yummy sauce, flavoured with a lot of fresh ginger and star anise. Mmm! I’m salivating just thinking about it!

I wish I could have taken pictures, because the presentation was beautiful, but alas, my digital camera is much too large to haul around. I will – must! – get a smaller one this year that’s more portable.

A near disaster - saved by the microwave

First, I should tell you about a near-disaster that happened last night. I was preparing lamb chops, according to a recipe from Jamie's Dinners. I had my couscous nicely resting, everything chopped up, the pan was hot and sizzling... and as I opened my packet of chops, they were smelly and obviously gone bad.

This is not a good thing when it's late and you're very, very hungry. Per, being experienced, quickly offered to run to the store for more. Not a great idea, I thought, so he came up with a good alternative - we had some pork chops in the freezer. Frozen, obviously. Thank goodness for the microwave. The meal ended up really nicely. I had to remake the couscous as that had clumped together beyond recognition, but other than that, all was well. It was very un-involved - we fried the chops, fried some onions chopped up with chili and fresh thyme, and had couscous (for posterity - my couscous always comes out perfect if I use 200 g of couscous, 250 ml of boiling water - combine, and let stand under plastic wrap for ten minutes.) with tomatoes and flat-leaf parsley. It tasted great. The would-be disaster fizzled and died.

The kittens are now out and about in the whole apartment. We had a pen for them, but yesterday they started jumping out. As they are not very prone to ever jumping back in, we did the best thing and removed one of the sides of the pen altogether. It's fun to see them - they're so active now! - but I'm a little worried that they're getting too much space at once. I want them to be able to remember important things - like where the litter box is - and I'm not completely sure of that. Also, I'm having trouble getting them to eat properly. Cat food? Not so much. Two of them accept canned food, neither eats dry kibbles for now. They all eat minced meat, and not surprisingly, they all also happily gobbled up my fillet of beef. Picture is of Glinda Gräddost (Gräddost is Swedish for Cream Cheese - as it happens, they're all named after cheese) who will be staying with us as our future breeding queen.

Amazing Lasagna

First meal of the year for me was a lasagna. I felt like cooking from a recipe rather than from my own jumbled thoughts (I have a cold - I've had a slight fever for a week now, and am rather dizzy) so I decided to try the lasagna from Jamie Oliver's latest cookbook, Jamie's Dinners. What I ended up doing wasn't exactly the same as his - he suggested a layer of Butternut Squash, I substituted with button mushrooms instead - but I ended up with the best lasagna I've had. I also augmented some quantities, and generally made some changes.

Here's what I did:

Meat sauce:
140 g bacon, chopped
a fat pinch of cinnamon
2 small onions, finely chopped
2-3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 medium carrots, finely chopped
dried herbs - I used sage, oregano, basil and thyme, a large pinch of each
2 tablespoons of olive oil
500 g minced meat (I used a mix of pork and beef, for best flavor)
2 400 g tins of whole tomatoes
300 ml red wine

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (350 F). Fry the bacon with the cinnamon. (This smells incredible!) Add the garlic, onions, carrots and the olive oil. Blend well. Add the herbs. Add the meat, fry for a couple of minutes, and add the tomatoes and the wine. Bring to a boil, cover with wet greaseproof paper and a lid, and place in the preheated oven for two hours. (Yes, you read that right.) You can also cook it on the stove of course, at a low heat, for about the same length of time. This makes more sauce than you need - perfect since I needed a couple of lunches for next week. I just boiled some pasta to go with it.

Mushroom layer:
500 g button mushrooms, halved if they're small, quartered if they're larger
big bunch fresh thyme
olive oil

Fry the mushrooms in the oil, add the thyme. Simple as that.

White sauce:
500 ml creme fraiche, full fat
1 tablespoon of salt (Jamie suggests using anchovies for the salty flavor. *shudder*)
2 handfuls of grated parmesan cheese
a little bit of milk

Also:
250 g mozzarella
more parmesan, grated
200 g fresh lasagna sheets

Assemble the lasagna by first lightly greasing a casserole dish with some olive oil, and then add the first layer of lasagna sheets. Add a layer of meat sauce, then white sauce, and then another layer of sheets. I then added the mushrooms, and covered in white sauce. Lasagna sheets, and repeat with one more layer of meat sauce and white sauce. Finish with a final layer of lasagna sheets, and cover it with the rest of the white sauce. Tear up the mozzarella and place on top, and add the rest of the grated parmesan. Cook in 200 degrees C (400 F) for about half an hour, watching closely so the top doesn't burn.