Boring Lasagna? No way!

Ok I just have to throw out there, that I am a terribly picky eater. I seriously have an issue with textures, and if something feels weird in my mouth, I just can't eat it. I find that my cooking is generally not filled with tons of different or exotic things, but rather filled with flavor through the spices I put in. My husband has some similar dislikes as I do concerning food, so he appreciates the way I cook.

Most of the cooking I do is a trial and error deal. I say "Hey Heather, what are you going to cook tonight? How about *insert any dish here*? Well I don't know how to make it really, but I'll just wing it!". And then I do. And I am more often than not pleasantly surprised.

I never learned how to cook lasagna really. My amazing step mother made it, and I loved it, but the picky eater in me didn't fully appreciate a lot of the things that was cooked into it. So when I grew up and decided I wanted to make it, I pretty much just dumbed it down a whole lot.

I don't know if I mentioned this in my enchilada post, but here in Iceland it's difficult to find a lot of ingredients, like ricotta cheese. I know that this is commonly used in lasagna, but I have never actually used it. And if it is sold here in Iceland, I haven't seen it. So I had to adjust accordingly. Here is my simple easy peasy lasagna that takes less than an hour, and it's going in your mouth.


Ingredients:
2 cans of tomato sauce
1-2 bags of mozzarella cheese
2 eggs (or 1 if you only have 1 small container of cottage cheese)
2 small containers of cottage cheese, small curds (or 1 larger one) (I forgot to buy 2)
package of lasagna noodles (I used spinach ones this time, and the ones that don't need to be precooked!)
italian spices (and a few of your other favorite spices)




Preparation:

Preheat your oven to 200 (what, is that 425 for you in the US?)

First I start by taking the egg(s) and cottage cheese and putting it in to a food processor or blender or whatever you have on hand, and puree it to pretty much a liquid. I also add a ton of my seasonings into this.





Then I take my cheese, noodles, sauce, and cottage cheese puree and prepare to do the layering. This is the order I layer in:

Noodles - Puree - Sauce - Cheese - Noodles

Until I get around 5 layers. In this evenings dinner, I only had 3, since I didn't buy enough cottage cheese, but it's so much yummier with more. I end by after putting cheese on, I add some more sauce all over, and cover that again with cheese, and a dash of black pepper.



Place it in the oven for 20-30 minutes, depending on if you like your cheese crispy (we do!) and let set for a short while before serving. Yummy.




As you can see, this is a simple plain ol' cheese lasagna, but we absolutely love it. We usually have a cottage cheese at the shop with garlic in it, which is the best, but we didn't find it this time. If you are looking for something quick and yummy, this is great.

I realize that both of my recipes involve a lot of tomato sauce and cheese. I don't always just cook with those, but for some reason we find ourselves eating a lot of them anyways. So yummy, I guess. I have to also send a shout-out to my friend Stephanie from over at Healthy and Homemade for inspiring to pay more attention to what I am making. She's got some really great (much better than mine) recipes you should check out.

Enchiladas a la Iceland

An interesting fact about Iceland is that it is really difficult sometimes to find ingredients to make things that I'm used to from back home. And example of this is enchilada sauce. And I love chicken enchiladas. So I ended up coming up with my own recipe, and it variates a bit from traditional enchiladas, but is still one of mine and Jonas' favorite dishes. So I thought I'd share the recipe with you. I created this on my own, so I'm sorry if some of it is not the clearest.

Please also excuse the terrible lighting of my photos. I find our kitchen lighting to be rather dark.

First off, here are the ingredients you will need:

8 flour tortillas
1 jar of taco sauce
1 can of tomato sauce
1 cube of chicken bouillon
1 small can of tomato paste
1 bag of cheese
1 can (or homemade of course) of refried beans
1 can of corn
1 package of cooked and shredded chicken *note, you can always cook your own chicken breasts and shred them yourself, I just found the perfect chicken in our shops!
1 package of burrito seasoning
some water to thin out your sauce *to however thickness you prefer!
cayenne powder
some water to simmer your chicken in seasonings in *you can also use the water from this to thin out your sauce!




First off, I start by putting the chicken in a skillet, pouring 1/3 of the burrito seasonings into it along with some water, on medium heat with a lid.


While this is simmering, I take the taco sauce and puree it, while adding the tomato paste, sauce, bouillon cube, and 1/3 of the burrito seasonings together in a small pot. I add the puree to the sauce as well. I put cayenne pepper in to my own spicy taste, you can choose to add it or not. I put it on medium heat.


While waiting for these to cook, I preheat the oven on to 170C which I believe is 350 or something similar for the US.

I then take the tortillas, sprinkle a few drops of water on them, and put them in the microwave for 10-15 seconds to soften them up, to make rolling easier.

I open my cans of corn, and beans, and prepare for rolling!



I then drain the water out of the chicken (you can then drain it directly into the sauce, or into the sink) and set it up near my corn, beans, and tortillas. I leave the sauce over the heat and keep it simmering. However, I do take a scoop of sauce and put it at the bottom of the casserole dish!

My method for rolling my enchiladas goes as follows:
1 scoop of beans
1 big scoop of chicken
1 small scoop of corn
top off with cheese, and roll up and put in the dish

Here is what it generally looks like before I roll it up!


and here they are getting laid out in the dish.

After I roll all 8 enchiladas, I find that I still have plenty of chicken left over. I usually then cover the tops with tons of sauce, really soaking them up, toss the rest of the chicken all over, and douse it with cheese. It generally looks like this before I put it into the oven:



I leave it in the oven for approx. 15 - 20 minutes, or until the cheese is turning brown (Jonas and I like the cheese to be a little crispy!)

Here is what it looks like when we take it out:


and dished out:



And man is it yummy.
So while this is by no means a traditional enchilada, it is still yummy, something different, and has the hint of Mexican flavor that I miss so much! I really hope that you don't have a hard time reading this, and that you find it as delicious as we do here in Iceland. Every time my husband eats this, he tells me "It's been too long since you've made this! You have to make it more often!". So I suppose that's a good sign!

If you do end up making this, let me know how it went for you!

Cooking and such

Someday I hope that I am able to build my kitchen so that it flows perfectly with the way that I cook. I love cooking. I love baking. I love when people sit around a table filled with the food that I make and talk and laugh and love what they are eating. I believe that deep down, I would love to be the retro housewife who donned the apron and cooked away the day. But in reality, it will probably happen a bit differently.

Even though I love cooking, I am definitely by no means even remotely close to being the type of chef that our mothers are. You know how we often make comments like "My mom makes the best *insert type of food here*!". I hope someday to get there.

Anyways, in the evenings in our house, when Noah is asleep, is when I find myself making odd things for Jonas and I to eat. I never use recipes, and always just throw stuff together and see how it turns out. Jonas is a great sport, and eats just about anything I make for him. And I just toss things like potatoes, green beans, cream of chicken soup, cheese, and chicken in a casserole dish for 20 minutes at 170C and see what happens. It's delicious of course.

This post is mostly just some mumbo jumbo about my love of creating random foods.

Tonight we had bagels turned into pizza, and man was it delicious.

Have you ever made up new recipes like this? Care to share them with me?