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| If you don't like this, I don't like you |
With the nights drawing in and the cold weather howling
outside my window every morning I have decided to do something wild and spend
more time at home. Over the last 12 months most weekends have been spent
jumping on expensive trains to visit loved ones around the country. While I
have enjoyed every minute of these visits, my winter plan was to spend more
time enjoying my home, taking in some music, having lots of baths, writing and
of course cooking.
This Friday night was a rare gem, my housemate and I were
miraculously at the same place at the same time on a weekend and we also had a
lovely visitor. No better time to cook my extra special vegetable lasagne.
In our household growing up we didn’t eat a lot of minced
meat, my dad couldn’t really stomach it and my mum followed suit so rather than
fry minced beef for our lasagnes and and chillis we either used vegetables,
and later on in my childhood, Quorn.
Quorn is a marvellous thing when added to hearty meals,
adding bulk and if you ask me actually tasting nicer than mince (I hate the
look, sound and smell of minced beef cooking). So in my endless quest for the
perfect vegetable lasagne I have finely tuned and crafted the ingredients until
I have found the ultimate combination of taste, texture and nutritional value
(ish, ignore the cheese).
The inclusion of the soft jarred peppers in oil is a 2012
revelation as a result of doing my weekly shop at Sainsbury’s. Sainsbury’s own
jarred peppers are wonderful, slightly charred and sitting in a delicious,
delicately flavoured oil that I like to keep and add to other dishes. I
personally can’t have a vegetarian lasagne without a courgette or two and I
couldn’t explain to you why. The jury is out about how to chop them and it
depends on my mood. Sometimes I want a fine dice, sometimes I want them a
little more chunky, other times I go for circular cuts to fully absorb the
flavour. Tonight I’m feeling circular. I don’t usually use aubergine (or eggplant to the
foreigners), tonight I feel like it. I’m probably going to layer it with the
pasta after separately chargrilling it, maybe slopping it about afterwards with
some olive oil and basil. We’ll see how we go.
I’ve experimented with different kinds of pastas, blindly
believing that fresh is best I recently used fresh sheets to find that they
disappointingly shrivelled up when I added them to the hot sauce, like they
were ashamed of their long durum wheat yellow bodies (it’s Friday afternoon,
it’s getting a bit abstract). So now I’m of the mind-set of screw you fresh
pasta and I’m back to good quality dried stuff, sometimes I go for the green,
today its traditional.
The cheese sauce is quite possibly the glue that holds the
whole wonderful construction together; I obtained this wonderful recipe from my
mother who can’t half make a mean cheese sauce. I understand that I’m supposed
to be making a béchamel but who cares, I’m adding cheese. I’m also sprinkling
the top with cheese and blobs of mozzarella. Lighten up, it’s Friday.
Finally to top it all off a lovely glass of red wine at room
temperature. Pinotage should do it tonight. Ah. What a week. Oh and I appreciate
I haven’t updated you on the running training for a while. Yeah..it’s going um....well....
Cheerio
HYKAEI BEST vegetable
lasagne for a cold Friday night with friends
(Serves 6 or 4 hungry people)
Quorn mince (one bag)
2 onions or 3, whatever
Some garlic, diced, sliced, jarred. Whatever you have the
energy to do with it
A couple of big jars of passata and a tin of tomatoes
(preferably organic)
Some soft peppers in oil (I like Sainsbury’s own)
Olive oil
1-2 Courgettes and maybe a nice looking aubergine
A ball of mozzarella
Some fresh basil
Either dried or fresh lasagne sheets. I used fresh the other
day and they weirdly shrivelled when I put them on the hot sauce so maybe go
with some good quality dry ones
For the sauce
A block of good cheddar (just some nice mature/extra mature-
nothing too extreme otherwise it will be overpowering)
Milk
Butter (real butter please not margarine). I like the French
stuff
A little flour
Method
Firstly chop your onions up to a relatively fine dice, they
should at least not be huge. Get a bit of olive oil going and fry until tender,
adding some garlic until your kitchen starts to smell like mamas kitchen (I
also appreciate the irony that Italians don’t EVER use garlic and onions at the
same time). At this point add your veg, if you chopped the aubergine into small
chunks add this now, you’ll probably need more oil, these things drink oil like
Jamie Oliver on a slow day. Also add your courgettes ensuring that you have the
heat high enough to get some colour on them all. Now it’s time to add the
Quorn, ah magical, from freeze dried to mince in 0.2 seconds. Done.
Now you need to start adding your tomato based things to the
mixture, either chop your peppers up or just throw them in whole adding a bit
of the oil as well for good measure (not too much). Pour in your passata and
tomatoes, a bit of water if you like and even some tomato puree if you want to
go tomato crazy. Leave this to bubble away like a tomato sauce nightclub for a
little while, use your instincts, if it starts thickening and looks awesome,
it’s nearly done. Tear up some basil and add some seasoning, sometimes I add
sugar sometimes not, always a bit of pepper, maybe salt. See what you think.
You can EVEN throw a bit of your glass of wine in for depth of flavour.
If you are layering your aubergine like me then use this
moment to fry in batches and set aside.
Right sauce DONE, set aside.
Now you are on to your cheese sauce, you need to watch this
because it will cook quite quickly and then you will frantically need to
construct your masterpiece (two people are better than one). First of all you
need to make a roux. I never have exact measurements for this, just throw in a
good old dollop of butter, a fair slice from your beautiful French stuff. When
it starts to melt add a couple of heaped tablespoons of flour. I never add
enough at this stage so don’t listen to me, add more. Stir until it makes a
paste and now you need to add your milk whilst whisking, you can add some
nutmeg at this stage if you want to be traditional. I never do, that stuff
gives you hallucinations. Again this is a judgement call, it should be
relatively thick now and this is your moment to throw in handfuls of salty
amazing cheddar until the sauce can barely take no more.
Now to construct, layer sauce with pasta, a smidge of sauce,
eggplant and repeat until you slather the top with cheese sauce. Dot with torn
mozzarella and basil and sprinkle with the remaining grated cheese (stop eating
it). The key is to make sure all of the pasta is covered by liquid or it won’t
cook.
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| Time to select a wine, gutsy Pinotage wins! |
Put it in a hot oven, make yourself a simple green salad,
cut some bread and dunk it in olive oil, and pour yourself a glass of red.
I saw you eating that leftover cheese sauce!
