For the Vegetarian Garfield

23rd December 2011 - Donna's Vegetarian Lasagna

As the year comes to an end, so too does my cooking challenge, so I decided to keep up the momentum and cook dinner for Mum and Dad. That’s a massive exaggeration. Dad sent me a message saying “you cooking for us tomorrow night? Send me a list and I’ll go to the shops” so I looked through my book and found something to cook.

It was a risky move, deciding on Donna’s Vegetarian Lasagna. As soon as I told Mum what it was, it was clear she wasn’t thrilled, but I pushed on anyway. Dad had indeed done all the shopping for me so as soon as I got home I got straight into it. Everything needed roasting so I did the pine nuts first and just put them in the oven while it was heating up. After about ten minutes I took them out and they weren’t even warm. I called Dad over as I was a bit confused as to why his oven wasn’t heating up and he pointed out to me that I’d in fact only put the light on in the oven and not actually turned it on. Rookie mistake. I did eventually get them sorted out, I put the pumpkin in the Webber to roast and the eggplant in the oven. The best part, was the capsicum. The recipe said to grill it to burn the skin and then peel the skin off. Instead of doing this, Dad got the blow torch out and I got to blast the shit out of them. It was brilliant.

Once everything was roasted, I made my béchamel sauce (no mistakes even though this is meant to be the hardest part!), layered it up and chucked it in the oven. It looked really good and I was pretty excited about it.

It was in there for about 45 minutes all up. I made a little salad to go with it and put some bread on the table and we were good to go!

Since some of my friends are slackers and promised to do reviews that they never did, I’d lined Dad up to be my supplementary reviewer. I’m still going to get all 12 reviews, it’s just not technically one a month anymore – not my fault. Anyway, Dad was pretty keen to play his part and Mum said she’d write a bit too (as long as I didn’t take a picture of her). 

Luckily, they were loving my meal sick! Mum said she hated the idea of a vegetarian meal, but she was waxing lyrical about how good it was. From the first mouthful Dad was very impressed! He didn’t even bother with the salad or the bread. They just raved about it non-stop. Pretty sure I was the Golden Child  for at least a good half hour!

Dad was more than keen to not let me down with the review, so as Mum and I began packing up the table, he had his laptop out and was typing out the review. It was done before we’d even packaged up the lasagne (into individual portions) for freezing!

I was pretty impressed with myself – how could I not be - and headed out to look at the Christmas lights. Quite a night.

Tips: Some of the pieces of eggplant got a bit burnt – they weren’t good for the lasagne but tasted amazing as little chips!

Music: A playlist of Christmas Songs


I'll upload the recipe when I can figure out how!