Thursday's roast

A small thing made this dinner blogworthy. I will come to that small thing later.

We'd enjoyed fish and chips with my mother-in-law on Wednesday night and I was due out for a hen night meal on Friday so Thursday needed to be a healthy day. The most healthy thing would probably have been a salad, but I didn't fancy that. What I fancied was something that would use up my bargain aubergine that was looking like it wouldn't last much longer. And I didn't fancy another moussaka. So what I decided on was roasted vegetables with lentils. Augmented with some cheese, thus making a highly healthy dinner slightly less healthy, but with the added bonus of cheesy tastiness and calcium.

I selected the vegetables while heating a little olive oil in a big dish in the oven. As well as the aubergine, there was a golden courgette from our garden (it is supposed to be golden) and I decided to use a red pepper too. I could have added some carrot and potato but didn't want to break the theme (which I suppose was loosely Mediterranean). In the time it took to chop all the vegetables the oven had reached temperature (hottish) and so the roasting process started.

Many of my friends frown at me when I extol the tastiness of lentils, but they really can be delicious. Tonight I would be doing some simple braised lentils. I started off by gently “sweating” (sorry, horrible word) an onion, a couple of sticks of celery and a couple of carrots (all chopped fairly small). I didn't measure the lentils, probably about 100g (but I'm not good at estimating weight), enough to come up about half way in a normal size sieve. The lentils go in the sieve to be rinsed thoroughly. I once had a bit of grit in my lentils so at least by rinsing them the risk is reduced to clean grit. The lentils then go in the pan with the onion, celery and carrot and I added enough water (from a boiled kettle) to just cover everything. As is my preference I added some yeast extract (from a squeezy pot that Matt bought – here is not the right forum to go into the pros and cons of yeast extract in squeezy pots versus the traditional jar) and a spoonful of vegetable stock powder. Then all I did was to leave it to simmer on the hob and hope that it would be ready at the same time as the roasted vegetables.

The vegetables looked to be coming on nicely, but needed some seasoning. (Watch out, the small thing is coming up soon.) I added salt and pepper and sent Matt out to the garden to choose some herbs. He chose some oregano (at least I think it is oregano, it might be marjoram, but oregano and marjoram might actually be the same thing). Matt duly washed the herb (we have some unreliable neighbourhood cats) and threw it in on top of the vegetables in the oven.

This was all going on in the background while I topped and tailed some green beans that my mum had sent us home with from her garden. I was disturbed from my top and tailing reverie by a cry of “Quick get some tongs!”. It transpired that Matt's herb washing had failed to dislodge (or even identify the presence of) a caterpillar. Being the animal lover that he is Matt was frantic to save said creature. I extracted the dish from the oven, Matt found the tongs and extracted the caterpillar from the dish. Being the animal lover that he is that was not sufficient for Matt so while I returned to my beans he took the caterpillar to the park.

I wanted tomato to feature somewhere in this dinner – it would probably be ok added to either the lentils or the oven vegetables. If I only had tinned tomatoes it would have been a no brainer to add these to the lentil pan, but I had some lovely cherry tomatoes and decided that I'd put a few of these (minus caterpillars) in the oven. So it would be a kind of oven roasted ratatouille.

Everything was sort of looking ready so I took a chance and put the green beans in to cook. I also added a splash of balsamic vinegar to the lentils, it adds just a little sharpness otherwise they can be very rich. All that was left for me to do was to chop the feta (almost any strong / salty cheese would probably be fine but we had two blocks of feta for some reason) and beckon Matt to serve it all up (I am useless at serving food).

As usual Matt made a beautiful job of serving the food, and as usual this combination tasted delicious. There was no trace of caterpillar, which was a good job for a vegetarian dinner.

Wednesday's moussaka

I had a bit of time to make tea as Matt was off on a rescue mission to his grandad's. I had it in mind to make a moussaka because I'd bought a couple of cheap aubergines at my favourite cut price supermarket the day before. Usually the only thing I do with aubergine is curry so the extra time available would be a good opportunity to do something a bit different.

Lots of recipe books tell you that you're supposed to do some sort of fancy thing with aubergines that involves salting them but I have never done this before and didn't intend to start now. So I just sliced them and put them in the griddle pan to pre-cook.

In the meantime I got on with the main sauce. I was working totally recipe-free (I have made moussaka before so did vaguely know what I was doing) and my main challenge was going to be qauntities. In terms of proportions I knew what I was aiming for so started off with an onion (well actually one and a half onions because I had half of one left over from something or other last week) and a couple of sticks of celery. Next were some some mushrooms that were starting to look a bit wrinkly.

That all started to cook down and I started to contemplate my protein content. It was unconventional but I had most of a tin of baked beans left over and decided to put those in. The tomato sauce would probably be sufficient liquid for the whole thing. I planned to augment the beans with some vegetarian mince but when it came to it I found that we only had a tiny amount in the freezer, so augmented further with some vegetarian chicken style pieces. I seasoned with some veg stock, black pepper and a good dollop of yeast extract.

So far everything was going smoothly (if a little unconventionally) so now it was onto the white sauce. I suppose the white sauce for a moussaka has some sort of special name but I'm not sure what that is. I started off with a good dollop of butter substitute and about the same of flour in smallish saucepan and cooked these for a little while. I believe this is called making a roux. Next I added milk and then I left this on a low heat to thicken, whisking occasionally. At least that was the plan.

The sauce resolutely refused to thicken. I whisked a bit more. It still resolutely refused to thicken. I left it for a bit longer. It still resolutely refused to thicken. I turned the heat up. It still resolutely refused to thicken. I lost patience and chucked in a spoonful or so of cornflour. I knew as soon as I'd done this that it was the wrong move. Cornflour can be a very useful thing but it can also be a very disastrous thing. On this occasion it was disastrous. I should have learnt from previous mistakes and made a paste with the cornflour before adding but as I said I had lost patience by this point. The cornflour immediately formed lots of lumps in the sauce, which despite vigorous whisking resolutely refused to disperse.

At this point I should probably have cut my losses and started again, but I couldn't bring myself to do this. So I put the sauce through a sieve to catch the lumps and changed strategies. I would thicken the sauce by adding thicker things – cheese and crème fraiche – and try the microwave – rather than the hob – for heating purposes. This seemed to be somewhat successful.

I took a break from the sauce and returned to the aubergine and beany stuff; having chosen an ovenproof dish of what I had deemed to be an appropriate capacity I layered these up, finishing with a layer of aubergine. Clearly I had underestimated the required capacity because the dish was filled right up to the top, leaving barely any space for the sauce. So I got a fish slice and squished the contents of the dish down as much as I could.

Back to the sauce which had now slightly cooled and I whisked in an egg. This makes it rise a little bit which is kind of cool. I carefully spooned as much of the sauce as possible over the moussaka, which wasn't very much of the sauce. Rather than waste the rest of the sauce I decided to add another egg and try to make some sort of soufflé things. Never having made soufflé before this was exceedingly risky. I was now quite tired so rather than faff around looking for the most appropriate container to make soufflé in I divvied it up into some fairy cake cases. I had no idea about temperature so put everything in the oven at 180°C and would keep a close eye on it all.

After about half an hour everything was ready, this happily coincided with Matt's (partially successful) return from his rescue mission. We enjoyed our moussaka with a side of broccoli. I think it's unconventionality made it even tastier. I didn't partake of the soufflé things (I don't like the taste of egg) but Matt assures me that they were nice (if a little bland). It was certainly entertaining to watch him munch them from their paper cases, and maybe I'll even try an actual soufflé some time.