Experiments and failures

It's all been a bit stressful for the last few days. I'd planned to make a strudel on Thursday using filo pastry. I've never made a strudel before or used filo pastry. That was my first mistake. My second was trying to make something new when I didn't have much time and my daughter was a bit poorly, hadn't slept enough and was irritable.

The strudel was ok, but it looked a bit funny and because I was running out of time (and have a rubbish oven where things only seem to cook on the top shelf) I turned the heat up. This meant the pototoes (what was I thinking? Roast potatoes midweek!) and the strudel weren't cooked as evenly as they should be. Still Steve said it was lovely (unprompted by me - honest). Well it was a load of veggie mince and onions wrapped in pastry and Steve likes anything mince based.

Here's my recipe if you want to try it. if you do I hope you're more succesful than me. I'll be using puff pastry next time.

Lots of onions - cut in half and then into wedges
A bit of olive oil
A handful and a half of frozen veggie mince
A handful of red lentils
A few glugs of boiling water
A squeeze of tomato paste
A desertspoon full  of yeast extract
A packet of justroll filo pastry
Melted butter (actually I used margarine as that's what I had).

1. Fry off the onions, till browned.
2. Pour over the water, add the  lentils, mince, tomato paste and yeast extract.
3. Simmer until the lentils are cooked (keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't burn, add more water if necessary or better still follow the instructions for the quantities of water for the weight of lentils on the packet).
4. Grease a baking tray and lay the filo pastry on top.
5. Brush with melted butter and layer up the filo - repeat until all the layers have been assembled.
6. Put the mince in the middle and roll up.
7. Brush with more butter and bake for 30 minutes (in a decent oven) at c. 200 degrees gas mark 6.

Friday's menu went out the window as we all got more tired and more irritable and an afternoon nap for everyone was in order. This meant that instead of making nut savoury with veg I made spaghetti bolognaise, which was quick and comforting.