Spinach Ricotta Cannelloni & Miso Tofu

I finally got my hands onto Ricotta cheese!

I haven't done much cooking lately because the bf was away and then we had visits, so I finally got a chance to do something.

I finally checked on the ricotta cheese price and decided to buy some to try this recipe. I have tried it in several vegetarian restaurants and was always curious to make them.So I grabbed the cheese, some spinach, an egg, mixed and seasoned it:

The challenge on filling the cannelloni came when I tried to do it with a spoon. It wouldn't go in as I expected and had some air bubbles inside the pasta. To fight that, I grabbed a freezing bag what wasn't gonna be used ever again due to sealing problems, filled it with the spinach-ricotta mix, cut a small hole on one of the corners and squeezed this inside the cannelloni. It became a lot faster and fun! I was hoping the mix would never end and I'd keep filling the pasta :D

I would recommend using also tomato sauce on top of the cannelloni, I found it kind of boring after the 4th bite or so. It had a very soft taste and i missed some surprise in the middle.This is something you can make a lot you can freeze it in individual portions for when you want to bake it. I made 2 layers of cannelloni but they always stick and I couldn't take them out without ruining the presentation. You can just prepare it in one layer with individual portions, that way it'll look very pretty even after on the plate.

Also, this week my mum bought some hard tofu for me.I was raised eating hard tofu but recently I had 1 year of eating fresh made tofu so I was very surprised by the hardness of the tofu. I'm not really sure how they process it nor the original name of this type of tofu but the store names it "Tofu cheese".

I wanted to mix the soft taste of tofu with something strong so I'd have a mild flavour, so I went with miso. I found a recipe in here and followed it, except for the rice vinegar, I couldn't get any.

The miso marinade was too strong and I ended up having to remove some of the paste on top of the tofu when I reheat it.

It was a very pleasant day in the kitchen and I even organized a shopping list with articles I can only get at a small chinese supermarket. I hope they still have those fried tofu skins (aburaage)!

Burger Cooking

Remember those burgers I made and froze? Already made use of some of them:

The left one is mine, the right one his. This was about the second or third time I cooked for myself but ended up not eating this time.

Both types of burger tasted heavenly!And looked quite good too.

Of course the meat ones got a bit too small, I hadn't tasted a juicy meat burger in a long long time, tender meat, onion flavour... I'll try making them a bit bigger next time!

I am never ever going to buy hamburgers again after making these. They consume some time but the taste and to know what's in there compensates for the time used.

Until then, I'll try not to devour these while my sweet is away :P

Hamburgers & Chickpea burgers

Another crazy idea for the weekend experiments:

I kept on complaining about the huge hamburgers that take too long to cook on the inside and they don't fit well in the frying pan! So I decided to fix it, as always, if I can't get it the way I like, I'll make it myself.

This was quite the challenge because I had never made anything close to these and cooking a batch of things scares me a bit because if one goes wrong, all of that will. I spent some time giving it some thought and my aunt, who is a vegetarian, suggested I made chickpea burgers too because she wanted to eat some of my food without meat in it.

Again, I have to thank JustHungry for the hamburger recipe. I changed it a bit since I fear the use of flour on hamburgers. I hope they still come out okay without it.

For the chickpea burgers I replaced the meat and milk, for ground chickpeas and soy milk. All the rest is the same. Oh, take a look at my homemade breadcrumbs xD

I just finished freezing and bagging them but I haven't cooked them because we had something else for dinner. It is a very entertaining process and I ended up making a lot of hamburgers without realizing. I made 33 meat burgers and 23 chickpea burgers. I hope it saves me more time than usual to make lunches ^^

Beet root Cannelloni

I saw this recipe on a magazine and tried it out. Usually I try, weekly, to have at least 1 vegetarian/without meat or fish meal since I can get tired of fish and meat overtime, so it's a little "experience day" where meat and fish are not allowed in the pot.

I had a lot of fun assembling this one, tho I didn't take pictures at bf's lunch because I couldn't wake up z_z too sleepy. I did take some to mine but if you don't stuff the tupperware while the cannellonis are hot, it will look very ugly and messy like this:

I put some extra cheese on it, since i ate at home. Didn't really care much for the looks but for the taste.

Here's some pictures I took while making them (which look a lot tastier than that thing!)

This is the mix I filled cannelloni with:

- Diced onion

- Diced garlic

- Cottage cheese (from cow milk)

- Diced beet root (gives the nice pink colour to the cheese)

- 2 ts grated lemon peel

In the original recipe it said one whole lemon's grated peel, but i came to doubt that when I grated half a lemon, so I put 2 tea spoons and tasted to check. If I had used more than a quarter lemon's peel I probably wouldn't be able to eat it.

So, here they are stuffed and pinkish!

Let's take a closer look:

After this, I put white sauce on top of them to cover slightly and some cheese on top to gratin.

That's all for today! Happy cooking!

Spinach Quiche

This took very little time to assemble, i just cut the quiche slices and wash up some tomatoes, cucumber and carrot and slice/arrange them.

The whole quiche

sideways 

It's a pity it doesn't last much in the house. Me and my bf keep sneaking into the kitchen to grab a slice until it's over!