Faux Lasagne

Anyone following my blogs will know I've been undergoing a lot of dental work at the moment. I'm dealing with a major and irrational phobia of dentists and we have no dental coverage. So that means we're paying for this torture out of our pockets and heaven helps us when my husband goes! After spending so many hours in the dentist's chair last week, I really only wanted soft foods. Honestly, when the freezing wore off the dental work itself didn't hurt just my jaw from keeping my mouth open so long and the multiple injection sites! Saturday, I was tired, irritable and still in discomfort that wasn't being helped by knowing I had another appointment on Monday so I decided to do a fly by meal.

Faux Lasagne

This dish started out as a faux lasagne or quick lasagne whatever you want to call it. I simply stood in front of my canning shelf to see what looked good. The roasted tomato sauce (method in archives) kind of popped out as did the mini lasagne noodles. The noodles are from Italy, made from durum wheat semolina and are about the size of broad egg noodles except with ruffled edges. Sorry, I don't read Italian but I find I like the Italian pastas better for texture. With two ingredients in hand I looked in the larger deep freezer and found a package of pre-cooked ground beef with mushrooms. One look into the refrigerator gave me my final ingredients, four kinds of cheese which meant I had a chance to play with the food shredder attachment for the KitcheAid® and have a bit of fun just creating. I didn't measure for the cheese but rather grated until it looked like enough. The cheeses were: colby, extra aged sharp cheddar, cheddar and fresh mozzarella.

Method: I cooked 1/2 package of the noodles while the meat was defrosting in the microwave and I grated the cheeses. Once the noodles were cooked, I drained those and poured into a large mixing bowl, poured on the sauce and cheese then stirred well. The mixture was poured into a large baking dish and baked at 350ºF until the cheese was well melted and bubbly.

Wensleydale Cheese with Cranberries

Around Christmas, I saw cheese with cranberries or blueberries on a flyer. Since we are playing with cheeses, I really wanted to try this cheese. Well, with our new grand baby two days before Christmas and not being home much, the idea of cheese went on the back burner. However, one of my purchases after my last dental appointment was Wensleydale Cheese with Cranberries. This is an English semi-hard cheese studded with cranberries and coated with a deep burgundy wax.

This is a wonderful snacking cheese! The flavour of the cranberries meld nicely with the slight tang of the cheese. I think this would be a nice appetizer cheese served by itself or perhaps a very light tasting cracker. At any rate, this is a definite cheese to try.