Forest mushroom lasagne

I wanted to make a different sort of vegetarian lasagne than usually and started planning for this dish. I normally make tomato sauce based lasagnes, but this one has garlic and mushroom infused cream as the sauce. I used vegan oat cream, which is quite light. However tomatoes are not fully missing in this recipe, but they play a much smaller role.

The main mushroom taste here comes from funnel chanterelles that are very intense in their taste. These are part of the batch that The VegHog's father has picked in Finland and dried.

This recipe makes either one large dish lasagne or four small ones. Sometimes I quite like making small individual dishes.

Lasagne sheets

200g double Gloucester cheese grated

250g green beans

250g white cup mushrooms

25g dried funnel chanterelle mushrooms

2 shallots

3 garlic cloves

1tsp vegetable stock powder

100g small tomatoes

500ml oat cream (a vegan cream substitute made of oats)

Nettle salt (normal or herb salt will also do)

Ground black pepper

Fresh sage leaves

Olive oil

First of all prepare the sauce. Soak the dried funnel chanterelles in water with vegetable stock powder for about 30 minutes. Drain the mushrooms, but also save the water.

Peel the tomatoes by making small cuts on them and dipping them into boiling water for a few seconds. Then it should be easy to remove the skins. Crush the skinned tomatoes.

Chop the shallots and lightly fry them in olive oil. Then add the chopped garlic and the funnel chanterelles and fry them also for a couple of minutes. Add the oat cream and let lightly simmer for about 30 minutes to infuse the cream. Add some of the mushroom soaking water for more intense mushroom taste. Later add the crushed tomatoes into the sauce and season it with salt, pepper and sage.

While the sauce is simmering cut the green beans into short pieces of couple of centimeters each and steam them for a few minutes until they are almost soft.

Chop the white cup mushrooms into slices and grate the cheese. Layer the mushrooms, green beans, cheese, lasagne sheets and the mushroom sauce into an oven dish on several layers. Cover the lasagne with grated cheese and bake it at 180C for about 45 minutes.

Serve the lasagne with a side salad and garlic and basil oil ciabatta. Make the ciabatta when your lasagne is almost baked. Cut a ciabatta bread into slices and spread a pureed garlic, basil and olive oil mix on them. Then bake until crispy.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog

Creamy funnel chanterelle and smoky cheese sauce with fiorelli

The VegHog is too fond of pasta and needs to share this creation with you even though there already have been quite a few pasta related stories.

For this pasta dish I'm using very special funnel chanterelles. Some time ago The VegHog received a large bag of dried funnel chanterelles from its father, who had collected them in the Finnish forests. That slightly suspicious packet miraculously made its way from Finland to England. This batch will keep The VegHog going for a long time this winter.

Please remember not to collect mushrooms in nature unless you know them very well! You can easily get different varieties of mushrooms in shops and markets.

Funnel chanterelles are excellent mushrooms for cooking because of their fine taste. They taste so intense that normally you don't have to use many of them to make a flavoursome dish.

Ingredients

A cup of dried funnel chanterelles

Fiorelli pasta

1 Onion

1-2 Cloves of garlic

Cream

Smoky cheese

Vegetable stock

White wine

Olive oil

Basil

Salt

Pepper

Make it so!

Soak the mushrooms in water for about 30 minutes. While the mushrooms are soaking, chop the onion, garlic and fresh basil and grate the cheese. I used Finnish creamy smoky cheese that I happened to have at home but also smoked cheddar should work nicely in this sauce. The funnel chanterelles are slightly smoky as well, so they make a good and strong combination.

Start frying the onions and garlic. Remove the soaking water from the mushrooms but save it and add it to the vegetable stock.

Chop the mushrooms small with a hand mixer and add them to the pan. When everything has been fried for some time, pour a little bit of white wine in. And when the wine has evaporated, add the vegetable stock to the pan and let the sauce reduce. Then add the cream and let it reduce again. You can also make a cream-free version. Finally add the grated smoky cheese into the sauce and stir.

Cook the pasta in salt water. Season the sauce with basil, salt and pepper. Mix the pasta with the sauce before serving and garnish the dish with smoky cheese and fresh basil.

Creamy version 

Creamless version

Creamy version with different pasta

Enjoy!

Your VegHog