Cottage Cooking Club is in the final stretch of cooking through Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage Veg, a vegetarian cookbook filled with new ideas for eating your vegetables.

I had more hits than misses this month. I tried out three of the choices offered by the group’s leader Andrea, The Kitchen Lioness.  Here are my reviews.

The Apple and Blue Cheese Toasties caught my eye as something to enjoy for a quick lunch alongside a bowl of soup.  I always fall for grilled cheese, in any form.  Toasties, which are melted under the broiler, are a great alternative to breaking out the frying pan.

I went all the way and baked my own no-knead whole wheat bread to use for the rustic country bread base.  The topping was a mixture of grated apple, crumbled blue cheese and a touch of mayonnaise to bind it together.  I love apple and cheese together, but to be honest, I found the blue cheese a bit too sharp.  I made these a second time with grated cheddar cheese instead of blue which was a more appealing combination for my taste buds.  I usually have all the ingredients on hand for the cheddar version, so I’ll definitely make these toasties again.

The Squash and Fennel Lasagna was also a hit.  I typically make tomato-sauce-based lasagna, but have enjoyed white-sauce-based versions in the past.  I love when a recipe offers a takeaway tip or technique that I can add to my arsenal to use in other dishes.  Here I learned to steep the aromatics (onion, celery, bay leaf, and peppercorns) in the milk and then strain them out before making the béchamel.  The flavors infused the milk and hence the sauce for an extra depth that surprised me.  This lasagna has one layer of roasted butternut squash cubes and one layer of a mixture of sliced fennel and crumbled goat cheese.  I ended up using a little less sauce over each layer and adding a final layer of lasagna noodles on top of the fennel-goat cheese layer, then crowning it with the remaining sauce and the Parmesan cheese.  I served the lasagna with a green salad to round out the meal.  I always feel like white lasagna is a “dressier” version of the dish, so one that company would enjoy.  This will appear on my table again too.

The final recipe I tried this month were the DIY Pot Noodles.  These were fun to put together and beautiful to look at.  A canning jar is filled with quick-cooking noodles and a colorful assortment of vegetables (grated carrots, shredded lettuce, sliced scallions, a handful of frozen peas) and aromatics (veggie bouillon cube, grated garlic and ginger, a pinch of brown sugar).  To pull it all together, fill the canning jar with boiling water and wait for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.  This is long enough to soften the noodles and vegetables.  The final touch is a splash of soy sauce and fresh lime juice .  Now, enjoy a delicious “bowl” of “instant” soup.  This recipe offers a formula to play around.  The combinations are endless.

I need to solve one challenge. When I put this together right before adding the water, it was a magical bowl of hot soup.  I would love to be able to assemble these jars the night before for a quick meal, at work or at home.  When I tried making them ahead and keeping them ready in the fridge overnight, pouring the boiling water into the jar didn’t have the quite same effect.  The contents didn’t soften completely, and the soup was lukewarm.  Any suggestions for perfect this for the lunchbox?

So, another month of delicious recipes down, and a couple more left to come.  As always, I’m looking forward to the recipe reviews of the other Cottage Cooking Club bloggers, which you can read here.

Due to copyright considerations, I don’t share the recipes here, but you can find them in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s cookbook River Cottage Veg.