The Italian Job!

Last night I decided to cook a fancy meal, so what if it's mid-week! The theme was Italian. The antipasti starters consisted of asparagus spears with a lemon dressing, a selection of olives, sundried tomatoes, red wine and garlic marinated mushrooms and ciabatta with  olive oil and balsamic.


For the main there was a 'meaty' lasagne made with Sainsbury's frozen veggie mince, onion, garlic, red pepper and carrot cooked with Italian herbs and red wine. I made the sauce from the Deerly Beloved Bakery zine lasagne recipe. Wow! It was delicious and so easy to make. It's mainly made from cashews, silken tofu, nooch which you blend in a food processor. So no messing with flour and making a roux. It was delicious and I will definitely be using it again. On the side we had mustard garlic bread which is like normal garlic bread but with some dijon mustard stirred into the vitalite and garlic mix.


I forgot to take a picture of dessert. I made pana cotta for the first time and it was amazingly easy. I mixed 3 small cartons of Alpro chocolate soya milk with 200ml of coconut milk in a pan and sprinkled with 4 tablespoons of agar flakes (flakes not powder - quantities differ depending on which you use). Then I heated the mix until it was simmering. After 5 minutes I took it off the heat and stirred in a teaspoon of vanilla extract and poured it into ramekins (it filled 5) and put it in the fridge to set. This was then served with some of these apricots in a spiced amaretto syrup that I got for Christmas. The meal was rounded off with coffee and a shot of grappa. Bellissimo!

Comments

  1. Joey24 May 2012 at 22:04

    Sounds like an ideal meal to me. I'm so happy the asparagus season has started properly in England - short but definitely sweet. I never thought of veganising panna cotta either - drooooool

    ReplyDelete
  2. All Consuming29 May 2012 at 22:57

    Wow that all sounds absolutely gorgeous. I'll be looking into the lasagne, I have my own recipe, but it'd be nice to lose the white sauce faff :) x

    ReplyDelete
  3. Deerly Beloved Bakery10 June 2012 at 17:51

    So glad you like my lasagne white sauce! So much easier to make isn't it! And thanks so much for adding a link X

    ReplyDelete

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