Veggie lasagna (spinach, mushrooms and peppers)

I make several types of vegetarian lasagna depending on what I have in the fridge that needs using up. This time we had some mushrooms that were starting to go a bit funny and half a bag of spinach. I supplemented these with some tomatoes and roasted red peppers. We'd run out of regular olive oil so I ended up using basil flavoured olive oil and from that came the idea of adding lots of basil. Just remember that basil should be added just before the end of cooking so it retains its flavour.

• 250g mushrooms, sliced (the usual button mushrooms)
• garlic (I wasn't bothered crushing some so I used 2 tps garlic granules so I'd say use 4 cloves-ish)
• 200g spinach
• 1 large roasted red pepper, diced (from a jar)
• 200g (i.e. one tub) cream cheese
• about 1 tbsp dried basil (if you have/can get your hands on fresh stuff use that coz it's way more flavourful though usually the opposite is true of dried herbs)
• A packet of lasagna sheets (how many you'll use will depend on the size of your tray (I made 4 layers using 3 sheets for each)
• 2 balls of mozzarella, slices
• 2 tomatoes, slice
• some parmesan 

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees Celsius. Fry the mushrooms in some olive oil until just cooked add the spinach and red pepper, season with a bit of pepper. Give it a stir so the spinach wilts then add the cream cheese and basil. 

Start layering in your chosen baking dish (I like the pyrex ones so you can see the food inside). Start with some  fairly liquidy bits from the sauce (to ensure the pasta doesn't stick) then pasta, then sauce, then pasta and so on until you run out of sauce. Finish with a layer of pasta. Top with the mozzarella then the tomatoes and sprinkle with some parmesan. 

Bake for about 30 mins. If you're feeling fancy serve it topped with rocket.

Red pepper, tomato and paprika soup

This soup tastes like chorizo! You can get a massive jar of roasted red peppers in Lidl (Aldi has a little jar of bits of roasted red pepper) and they are quite big. You can roast/grill some peppers yourself but that takes time and effort. If the red peppers from your jar are a bit on the small side put in another one coz the ones I used were massive.

Makes about 2 litres of soup (1.5 L when blending then I watered it down to 2).

• 1 onion, chopped
• a handful of chopped celery (I keep a bag of chopped celery in the freezer) or about 3 stalks
• 2 large carrots chopped,
• 5 garlic cloves, sliced
• 3 heaped tsp paprika
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 3 roasted red peppers from a jar, chopped
• 2 tins of chopped tomatoes
• a couple of stock cubes (not essential but add flavour)

Sweat the onions, carrots and celery (I added the celery first to defrost while chopping the carrots, added the carrots, chopped the onions and added them so the ingredients that needed more cooking were in for longer) together for about 5 mins. Add the garlic and cook for a further couple of mins (do not burn the garlic!) then stir in the paprika (off the heat coz it can burn very easily) and add the rest of the ingredients and a splash of water. Simmer for about 30 mins (use the carrots to judge when everything is cooked) then season to taste and blend. I'd say you could leave it chunky if you want. After blending you can add some water to make it the right consistency.