Quick Low-fat Mushroom Lasagne with White Wine and Lemon Ricotta

Coming up with ways to use left-over wine is one of my favourite dilemmas. “Left-over” wine? Yes.

Regardless of how it’s neglected, I’ll always take the opportunity to enrich a meal with it. In this case, it was white wine and I decided to make a low-fat mushroom lasagne with it.

When making ‘skinny’ meals, I work extra hard to ensure they’re full of flavour. Why make healthy-eating torture? The wine would add depth and flavour to the mushrooms; and the low-calorie ‘creamy’ partner would be a low-fat ricotta. For lift and complexity, I also added lemon zest to the ricotta.

As usual, I researched the net for mushroom ricotta lasagne recipes, before deciding on how I would shape my own recipe. I based my initial structure on the BBC’s GoodFood Quick Mushroom & Lasagne recipe:

My key changes to the recipe were:

• Adding white wine to the mushrooms
• Adding lemon rind to the ricotta
• Sautéeing the onions and mushrooms in a tablespoon of butter, for a hint of traditional comfort

Quick Low-fat Mushroom Lasagne with White Wine and Lemon Ricotta

1 T butter

3 garlic cloves, crushed

1 small onion, diced

250g white button mushrooms, sliced

250mL white wine

pepper to taste

100g baby spinach

500g light ricotta cheese

grated rind of one lemon

6 fresh lasagne sheets

50g grated parmesan

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200˚C /180˚C fan bake.
2. Prepare a 19cm x 28cm baking dish with cooking spray.
3. Melt butter in a large frying pan and sauté garlic and onion until onion is soft.
4. Add mushrooms and cook until soft.
5. Add white wine and cook until liquid has reduced to a small sauce. Season with cracked pepper.
6. Add spinach and cook until just wilted.
7. In a medium-sized bowl, combine ricotta and lemon rind.
8. Line the baking dish with two sheets of lasagne, followed by the mushroom mixture. Add another layer of lasagne, then the ricotta. Sprinkle half of the parmesan over the ricotta. Finish with a final layer of lasagne, followed by the remaining parmesan.
9. Bake for 35 minutes, until the top is golden and the lasagne is cooked through.

Spresso Love: Coffee Hazelnut Meringue Cakes

For a change, I took the scenic route to last weekend’s party. Through the bush, like Little Red Riding Hood.

Given the journey ahead, my dinner contribution needed to be roadworthy. I took this opportunity to create hazelnut meringue /pavlova cakes: cake bases with crispy cloud toppings.

Despite the brilliance of this concept, I’ve only seen meringue /pavlova cakes at a couple of cafes – and they’ve been of a macaroon texture, rather than a cake texture. What’s more, the recipes I’ve seen have only been for large chocolate hazelnut cakes.

Hence, “the plan” for my own hazelnut meringue cakes:

• A cake base mixture split into 12 muffin tins, using the hazelnut cake recipe from pastrystudio.blogspot.
• A pavolva /meringue topping, based on the chocolate meringue recipe from taste.com.au.

For the cake bases, I omitted the orange zest and substituted the milk for a latte. And for the toppings I omitted the chocolate. (Although chocolate and hazelnut is a favourite Italian pairing, I left out the chocolate to reveal the subtle flavour of the hazelnuts).

Of importance to note, is the optimum baking time of fifteen minutes (approx), when using silicon heart-shaped moulds. A helpful point to remember: the meringue toppings obscure the cake bases, so it’s difficult to check the cakes for ‘done-ness’ with the usual touch or prick test!

Barely a few moments out of the oven and into the mouths of my tasting panel, feedback emerged: “Amazing texture” … “You could sell these in a café”.

Phew. A safe journey completed. With no wolves in sight.