Roasted Vegetable Crepe Cake

Let’s talk about crepes again, shall we? My love affair for crepes continues—and this roasted vegetable crepe “cake” is just one of the various recipes I’m sure I’ll be posting on the blog. This is actually quite a similar recipe and process to the roasted vegetable tortilla stack, another great vegetarian option for dinner. The versatility of this kind of recipe is something to be appreciated, since you can use any blend of vegetables to your liking… and let’s be honest, anything held together primarily by cheese has got to be good. Right? Right. It’s certainly my cooking philosophy!

You’ll need to have made a batch or two of crepes before making this cake, and they will all need to be roughly the same size and shape. When making your crepes, consider what size they’d need to be to fit comfortably into a round baking dish, too—they should fit snugly, without too much of a gap and without having to curl up too much on the sides. You could probably bake this free-standing if you had to, but I certainly recommend spending the $10 on a simple springform pan since it’ll make your life a lot easier!

On another note, I’m sad (and you probably are too, right?) that I haven’t been posting more recently. Life has just been busy—darn life!—and combined with Easter holidays, time seems to be whipping by without me getting a chance to write things up. Horrible! But hopefully I’ll be back posting more regularly again now that things have calmed down a bit. There’s a bit of good news too—our new roommate is gluten intolerant, so you coeliacs will be getting a whole lot more attention! Turns out that cooking gluten free isn’t as hard as I thought it would be; you just have to be mindful of ingredients that might have wheat products in them that you might not realize (like soy sauce, or stock powder, who knew, right?). Anyway—on with the recipe!

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Edited: April 26th, 2011

Steamed Moroccan Vegetables

Do I have an obsession with anything “Moroccan”? Sort of. Stick Moroccan in front of any kind of food and I’m going to be excited to try it. After my friends Alaina and Ashton (yes, one of the original Cheeses and her hubby) had a Moroccan-themed dinner party at their apartment to showcase their tajine and new recipes (from… you guessed it, Morocco!) I was so impressed by the combinations of unique spices and flavours—I mean, what North American would even consider putting cinnamon with meat? It blew my mind and my tastebuds and I’ve been gobbling up Moroccan recipes ever since.

This recipe is an alteration from Martha Stewart, so I can hardly claim any sort of authenticity. But darn, these baking paper-wrapped parcels of veggies are good! If you actually own a tajine, this recipe could be easily adapted.

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Edited: February 7th, 2011

Roasted Vegetable Tortilla Stack

Tortilla stacks are a wonderful dinner, in my opinion, and are such a versatile dish once you get used to the basics. My mum often made a “Mexican” version of this, which had refried beans, onions, salsa, and sometimes ground beef in it. This particular recipe I discovered in a cookbook my friend Ramsay brought with him to Australia (check it out at the bottom of the post, you know a cookbook is good when it gets schlepped to the other side of the world!), and is a bit of a twist on the recipe my mum used often.

I would say that this is a cheap, healthy dish that works great for leftovers, except that every time we serve this up it never seems to make it to the leftover stage! Everyone just gobbles it right up. Oh well, I guess I can’t really complain, can I? It takes a bit of love and care to make, but is well worth the effort.

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Edited: June 16th, 2010

Homemade Tomato Pasta Sauce

I began making this tomato sauce in my second year of university, when I started having to cook for myself all the time (a happy day, truthfully—no more dining hall meal plan!). I could make this sauce and have a quick pasta dinner before getting back to whatever studying (procrastinating) I had to do. And, there was plenty leftover that I could divide between the fridge and freezer for future meals.

I think that this recipe was originally based on something I found in a Canadian Living cookbook, but I’ve well and truly adapted it to my own tastebuds. Storebought tomato sauce does the trick when you’re in a real hurry or if you’re just going to bake it into a tortilla stack or lasagna, but is pretty bland otherwise (and more expensive than making this sauce considering the quantity it makes!). Be sure to tweak this recipe to your liking until it’s absolutely mouthwatering!

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Edited: June 3rd, 2010