Rustic Goat Cheese Lasagne

If you would just look at the view from my study into the garden and over the vineyard next door you'd be jealous: brilliant sunshine, blue sky, the first daffodil is blooming - it looks just like Provence is supposed to look this time of the year. What you don't see however is that our "beloved" Mistral, the icy wind from the north is slapping nature and us around. Our fireplace is working overtime, no one feels like going outside unless we absolutely have to. Which for me meant getting fresh vegetables to try out some new winter warming recipes.

 

For the filling of this melt in your mouth delicious Rustic Goat Cheese Lasagne (serves 6) you need:
1big red onion, sliced
2 zucchini, diced,
1 red and 1 yellow bell pepper, diced
2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
4 herby, spicy sausages (think chipolata, salsiccia)
1 can chooped tomatoes
1 soft, mild goat cheese
2 cups bechamel sauce
8 lasagne sheets - I use ready made Barilla sheets that don't need precooking
 

Put to the side 1 cup of the halved cherry tomaotes. Mix all the other sliced and diced veg with a bit of olive oil and some freshly ground black pepper and let roast in the oven (180 C/ 350 F) for 30 minutes. Meanwhile skin the sausages and break up the filling, then fry over medium heat until cooked through. Degrease over some layers of paper towels. Mix the sausage meat into the roasted vegetables and add the can of chopped tomatoes. Either prepare or use a ready made bechamel sauce.
In an ovenproof dish start with one layer of the vegetable/sausage filling, cover with lasagne sheets, evenly distribute one layer of bechamel sauce and crumble some goat cheese on top. Repeat this layering process once more, ending with pasta sheets generously covered with bechamel sauce onto which you now crumble all the rest of the goat cheese and decorate with the halved cherry tomatoes.
Bake at 180C/ 350 F for 30 minutes.

Cookbook Challenge Book # 1 - Recipe # 1

Zucchini Rolls

 

Good thing I dug out the vegetable cookbook I showed you in my last post - here is one recipe I have already decided will be a keeper, perfect to serve as an appetizer: Zucchini rolls filled with a mixture of fresh goat cheese, finely chopped black (pitted) olives, fresh basil, pepper, salt and a pinch of paprika plus a few tbsp of your very best olive oil. Just fry the very finely cut zucchini slices for two or so minutes each side, then leave to degrease on some paper towels for a minute. Spread the filling onto the slices and secure with a toothpick. Serve warm or at room temperature.

And this is how the recipe looked like in the book. You know what?  I think mine look tastier.

 

How to keep a Veggie happy

Les Petits Farcis are a typical Southern French summer dish - small vegetables such a peppers, zucchini, aubergines or onions stuffed with a meat farce (if in a hurry, even sausage meat will do) and then oven baked in a tomatoey sauce. I recently found a recipe giving a vegetarian twist to this summer staple and have finally found time to try it out. To sum it up: as far as my favorite guinea pig and I are concerned it is a keeper!
And since my brother last week called me to find him some vegetarian recipes to keep his significant other happy: Roland, here you go!

To feed 4 you need:
5 small red peppers and 4 small round zucchini
4 spring onions
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
400g fresh goat cheese
50 g freshly grated parmesan
olive oil
a generous bunch of flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
salt and freshly ground pepper

Wash and dry all vegetables then cut a little "hat" off each. Clean the peppers and, with a melon baller scoop out the flesh of the zucchini which you then chop to medium consistency. Finely dice one of the red peppers, chop the spring onions. Mix the chopped up zucchini flesh and the red pepper cubes with the crushed garlic cloves and the chopped up spring onions.
Bring a big pot of water to the boil and simmer the vegetable shells for 3 to 4 minutes. Take out with a slotted spoon and drain on a double layer of paper towels.
With a fork mix the chopped parsley into the fresh goat cheese.
Heat a tbsp of olive oil in a pan and gently fry the zucchini flesh, pepper, garlic and spring onion mix until all moisture has evaporated, taking care not to brown the mix. Season to taste with pepper and salt, then take off the heat and let the mixture cool down.
Preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F
Mix the goat cheese into the vegetable farce then fill the vegetable shells. Evenly devide the parmesan on top of the filling veg, put the "hats" on and bake for 35 minutes. Bon apétit!

Banon: Rotten Cheese but Sausage Heaven for Bookworms

Banon is a small village situated on the “Route de la Lavande”, the Lavender trail in the mountains of the Haute Provence. Banon is famous for its goat cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves and tied with a raffia ribbon that was awarded AOC (Appelation Origine Controllé) status in 2003. And it is famous for “Le Bleuet”, a bookshop you'd be happy to find in a town like Aix-en-Provence or Avignon. “Le Bleuet” is a bookshop with personality, any serious book lover's dream – extremely well stocked (also with books in English and German), the salespeople are knowledgeable and charming and there are little corners that invite you to sit down and properly look at a book before buying it. Bookworm heaven!

The wonderful Le Bleuet bookshop

So when I heard that Banon was about to hold its annual cheese festival and “Le Bleuet” would have some authors lined up for a book signing that same day and that my favorite Provence author Pierre Magnan who writes detective stories that play in the villages around Banon would be there - well I made sure to get up early that Sunday morning!

When the French do a village fête, they do it properly – we were greeted by marching bands, made to try I don't know how many variations of goat cheese and wines, ate deliciously roasted sucking pig and I even got to meet Pierre Magnan who signed his new book for me! What a lovely gentleman!

Pierre Magnan

One thing though dear Banon cheese producers you really should not do: use the festive spirit of this lovely festival to flog off your old cheeses. We were well and truly ripped off – the famous Banon AOC's we were sold (and we bought six to bring home to friends and family) were all old and inedible. So much for fancy wrapping, from now on I'll only buy cheese I can see first.

What you see is what you get: Brindille sausages

Seeing what you bought was no problem at Maurice Melchio's Charcuterie: he makes handmade “brindille” sausages that are very thin and very long and utterly delicious. Don't you just love his shop? And the delighted faces of his customers?

Happy customers in sausage heaven

Fennel Salad with Goat droppings

Bought some beautiful fennel bulbs at our local farmer's market yesterday without any definite plans of what to do with them. Today's sunshine inspired me and I used them in a recipe that I usually do in summer. All you need is an organic lemon, some good olive oil, pepper fresh from the mill, some flatleaf parsley and "crottin de chèvre" which literally translates as "goat  droppings".

Fennel bulbs from our Farmer's Market

Crottins de Chèvre

These are small round and semi hard goat cheeses and I wonder why they are called by this not really appetizing name because they taste great! Anyhow, fennel and "droppings" make a delicious summery salad. Just quarter the fennel bulbs, cut out the hard core at the bottom and discard, then very finely slice the fennel. Squeeze the lemon juice over the fennel, season with a few rounds of black pepper and a generous splash of olive oil. Grate the goat cheese and mix into the fennel. Finely chop the flat leaf parsley and mix into the salad.

  

Fennel and Goat Cheese Salad