Veggie lasagna

Lasanga, bane of food photographers!

Lasagna, so beloved by both Garfield and me, is classic comfort food so given that it's a miserable soggy Monday with no job leads I'm going to put one together. Added to which I did promise Mr Tom Harris of Stafford, a very old friend of mine, the recipe when I visited him for tea and Cornish pasties the other day.

As I've been making this for quite a while I do actually for once have something of an idea of the quantities involved but as I still haven't found the kitchen scales I can't actually give them to you. This probably isn't so bad as a lot will depend on the size of your lasanga dish. The one I use at the moment is actually meant to be some sort of roasting dish but it's rectangular shape is almost ideal for lasanga.

For this recipe I've tried to put the actual instructions in italics with the rest being my ramblings.

Some of the ingredients do a roll call around the dish

Ingredients

• Good glug of olive oil for frying
• Medium onion, finely chopped
• Couple of bulbs of garlic, or one large bulb, crushed or finely sliced
• A few mushrooms, sliced
• Medium courgette, quartered and sliced into quarter inch chunks: they've got to go into layers so not too big!
  
• Half an aubergine/ one small aubergine/ three very small aubergines (which I got from an Asian grocer this time round). Cut into quarter inch chunks.
• Half a yellow pepper and half an orange pepper again in a quarter inch chunk. Obviously any old colour of pepper will do if these prove to be expensive or unavailable, it's mostly a matter of colours here. When I get a yellow variety of courgette I'll use a green pepper.
• Half a packet of Quorn mince or similar.
• Two tins of chopped tomatoes (400 gram tins)
• Red wine to cover half an inch/ 1.5cm ish of the bottom of the tom tins.
• 67 grams of tomato purée. That'd be a third of a 200 gram tube funnily enough ;)
  
• Half a teaspoon of sugar
• Freshly ground black pepper to taste
• Handful of stoned black olives, roughly chopped
• Oregano and basil

• About 25 grams of butter or marg
• Three heaped dessert spoons of flour (25 grams, same as the butter)
• 450 ml of milk

• Lasanga sheets
• Grated cheddar to cover

Gently fry the onion for a couple of minutes until it starts to soften. Add the garlic and continue frying for another couple of minutes. When it comes to the garlic I have two different methods. I either use a garlic crush or place it on the chopping board under the blade of a good broad knife then use the heal of my hand to smash it after which a quick thin slicing will ready it for cooking. If you want to capture all the juice put the garlic on a bed of salt for the latter technique... I don't, particularly for this recipe, but some people do.

Chop chop

Add the vegetables and sweat the mix down for a while by putting it on the lowest heat and covering it. Stir occasionally and do something else in the meantime, such as writing a blog. Around ten minutes should do it: check the state of the mushrooms, you want them to look reduced but still fresh and having given up their juice. Sweating like this allows the flavour of the vegetables to be a bit more concentrated. It's pretty important for the onion and garlic, less so for the rest but it does make for a smoother texture and better flavour in my opinion.

Once the vegetables have been sweated add the Quorn mince (or other meat substitute) then the tinned tomatoes. Use the wine to rinse out the last of the juice from the cans, add that, the tomato purée , sugar and fresh black pepper.

A few words here... of course you don't have to use Quorn mince, there are plenty of other mince substitutes out there. Unicorn Groceries in Chorlton have a very nice tofu mince that's ideal (use a whole pack) but they're shut on a Monday so I went for the Quorn. Be aware that some other mince substitutes will require you to add more liquid, so read the packet first. Some just say add water but in that case I'd be tempted to use wine instead. Your call. Oh, and the tiny bit of sugar is in there just to bring out the sweetness of the tomatoes.

We're going to cover it and simmer it for a while now. 45 minutes should do the job although if you're pressed for time you can do it for less. Ten minutes before the end add the black olives and dried herbs, five minutes from the end add fresh herbs. This time I'm adding about two heaped teaspoons worth of oregano and some fresh basil I've been growing.

When it comes to the olives for goodness sake don't use those bloody waxy ones you get so often in the UK. See if you've somewhere who will sell you good value wrinkly ones. In Manchester Unicorn are great for this, elsewhere if you have a Middle Eastern deli you should be able to pick up something similar although you might need to stone them yourself. You want them salty and full of taste! If you can't get something like this just forget it and add a bit of salt to the sauce instead.

Towards the end of your simmer it's time to make your bechamel sauce. Now's a good time to put your oven on btw, you want gas mark 4 or 5 (around 350F to 375F or 180 to 190C apparently). Just a caveat on the milk here first: I use soya milk, it's a hang over from when I was a vegan many many years ago (in a galaxy far far away) but it shouldn't make too much difference. We're making enough to cover the top of the lasanga, as I don't actually put it in every layer, so you might want to check how much you'll need by filling the bottom of your lasanga dish to about a quarter of an inch of milk.

First we're going to make a roux. Heat the butter or margarine in a heavy bottomed pan on the lowest heat until it's just foaming then take it off the heat and add the flour. Whisk the mix together then return to the heat and add the milk in a bit at time, whisking as you do. Whisk whisk whisk! The more milk you add the less important the whisking is but if you don't whisk properly it'll go lumpy. Once all the milk is in and nicely whisked you want to gently bring it to a simmer then turn the heat off. When the sauce is ready just turn off the heat and put a lid of the top which will slow down the formation of a skin on it (don't worry though, meh, bit of skin, so what?). I understand that when making a traditional bechamel sauce you'd preheat the milk but come on, that's just adding another pan to the washing up! Sod that.

We're ready to put the lasanga together. Spoon a good layer of the bolognaise style sauce into the bottom of the lasanga dish then add a layer of the lasange sheets. Repeat until you've used up all your sauce and have a layer of pasta on the top (for me, this is three layers of sauce and three layers of pasta) then add the bechamel sauce and finally top it with grated cheddar. Don't use pre-grated cheddar, please. It's really really bloody lazy. Buy a block, about 100 grams worth (4 oz) and grate it yourself. It's not difficult, it's cheaper and you get to choose your own cheese. And don't get me started on pre-sliced carrots... grr... and relax.

Pop it in the preheated oven for 35 minutes or so until your cheese has gone golden brown. Serve with a glass of red wine.

If you need to reheat some the next day and don't have a microwave, put a few holes in the lasanga and dribble a little milk in, cover it with foil then gently heat in the oven until warm. Damned if I know how long that takes, I always seem to bodge it but at least it helps it remain moist and unburnt!