Berries Birthday Dinner

After a mindblowing birthday dinner at Depot on Saturday night (post to come on B&S) I decided to cook my own official birthday dinner on Monday night. There were cries of “No let us cook you dinner” and “we’ll go out! The last thing you want to do on your birthday is cook” but you see that’s where they were wrong. Spending Monday afternoon on my own in the kitchen with hours to whip up whatever I wanted was the best birthday present I could have asked for.

After a magnificent lunch at Jeds with my bestie, devouring perhaps my new favourite café lunch (Eggs Kurosawa) I grabbed my box of Monday organic vegetables from Pete’s and got started on what I like to call. . .

Berries Birthday (Pasta-less) Roast Vegetable Lasagne

Serves 6

I say pasta-less because it had no pasta of course. The pasta intention was there but after failing to find any spelt or wholemeal pasta lasagne sheets I decided to abandon them all together and it turned out to be one of those rare culinary mishap masterpieces

(If I do say so myself)!

This dish is ridiculously straight forward it’s just a tad time consuming. The trickiest bit is getting all of your vegies prepped and roasted for layering. Then it’s just a matter of popping it in the oven!

Ingredients

2 Medium Aubergines (Eggplants)

2 Medium Zucchinis

Half a medium Japanese Pumpkin

2 Red Capsicums

3 Field mushrooms or 1 cup of button mushrooms

120g goats cheese

Grated parmesan cheese

Olive oil for brushing

Tomato sauce

2 punnets of cherry tomatoes

½ cup of tomato passata

½ clove of garlic (optional)

Balsamic vinegar

Olive oil

Pesto

1 clove of garlic

3 handfuls of basil

½ handful of mint leaves

1 handful of finely grated parmesan cheese

Handful of toasted walnuts

Lemon to taste

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Method

Preheat oven to 200°C

Each of the vegies needs to be roasted in the oven. If you have a ridiculously small oven that has either a very high temp or a very low temp like mine then you need to be an intuitive and patient cook. If you have the luxury of having a nice, big, fancy oven then intuition is handy but less necessary. I’ll walk you through each vegetable and how they need to be roasted. What order you roast them in doesn’t matter, they’ll be reheated when layered in the dish.

Roast Capsicum.

Brush the two whole capsicums with Olive oil and place on try in oven until they soften and skins start to blacken. Approximately 30 minutes. Wait for capsicums to cool and then peel off the skin. Cut them into quarters making sure to discard the stem and seeds.

Roasted Zucchinis.

Cut in half and the slice lengthways (or if you’re a particularly skilled slicer then just cut lengthways) brush with oil and place on try in oven for 15 minutes, making sure to turn halfway.

Whole Roasted Aubergine.

To avoid using copious amounts of oil to keep the aubergines moist and soft, I like to wrap them in foil. The moisture gets trapped inside and steams them as they roast. To make life a little easier I slice them lengthways first and then put them back together to resemble a whole aubergine and then wrap tightly in the foil. These will take about an hour but check them after 45 minutes you don’t want them to turn to mush.

Roasted Pumpkin

Cut pumpkin into thick chunky slices leaving the skin on. Brush with oil and roast in oven for 25 minutes or until soft, making sure to turn half way.

Mushrooms

These are the only vegies that aren’t roasted in this dish but I guess if you wanted to you could douse them in olive oil and pop the whole field mushrooms in the oven until soft.

I just pan fried them for a few minutes  to break down the meatiness of them.

Cherry tomato sauce

This is my favourite pasta sauce. I make it at least twice a week and have it on everything from spelt pasta shells, to half a steamed aubergine. Sometimes I throw some fennel and sardines in, and other times I pack it with button mushrooms and kale. So delicious and incredibly easy!

Slice cherry tomatoes in half and drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Place in oven for 20 minutes or until tomatoes soften and start to collapse slightly.

Remove from oven and add to a saucepan with chopped garlic. Smash tomatoes up with wooden spoon until they begin to make a sauce. Add passata if you need to thicken or increase the quantity of sauce.

My Special Pesto Recipe

I got a Mortar and Pestle for my birthday so I really wanted to incorporate it in to my birthday dinner, but feel free to use store bought pesto or omit it from the recipe completely. It did add a little something something though.

Pound garlic, mint leaves and basil leaves in mortar and pestle until a paste forms. Add toasted walnuts and pound until they incorporate into the paste. Transfer to a bowl and stir in half the parmesan cheese. Slowly add olive oil until desired consistency is reached. Add salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste.

Okay now its time for layering. There is absolutely no rhyme or reason to this do whatever works best for you. Remember that you’ll be cutting it into individual serves and you’ll want everybody to get the same amount of veg. Plus if you do nice even layers it looks pretty spectacular when you cut it. Here’s what I did!

Line the bottom of a baking dish with half of the sliced eggplant.

Layer sliced zucchini evenly on top.

Spread some of the cherry tomato sauce on top and sprinkle with half of the goat’s cheese.

Layer sliced pumpkin mashing it as you go so it spreads across the baking dish in an even layer.

Place capsicum slices on top followed by sliced mushrooms and another layer of goat’s cheese.

Place final layer of eggplant and cover with the remaining cherry tomato sauce. Dollop pesto in the middle of where you imagine each serve to be and then sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese.

Cover with foil and place in oven for 30 minutes. In the last 10 minutes remove foil.

Serve with whatever you fancy. I served it with a rocket, fennel, pea and green bean salad (and TV remote).

But it would be amazing with a crusty loaf of bread straight out of the oven to soak up all the sauce.

This was the amazing lunch I enjoyed at Jeds. How freaking cute is the wasabi caterpillar?