Food ‘n Drink

So you want a good, tasty lasagne? Lasagne is easy with the right ingredients however the wrong type of pasta or cheese can make a major difference in my opinion.

So first off you need some bolognaise meat. I use my own Bolognaise Recipe and usually pad it out with some extra vegetables such as courgette, asparagus, diced onion and peppers.

You need:
Dried Lasagne sheets. I’ve found that dried Egg Pasta sheets are best. Make sure you can cook them without presoaking (Tescos Authentic Italien Egg Lasagne Sheets are good)
300g Mature Cheddar Cheese grated - Cathedral City is best, but use a low fat cheese if you’re on a diet.
Milk
Butter
Flour
Bolognaise

Method
Create your Bolognaise as per normal. It doesn’t have to be fresh. I often cook enough Bolognaise to freeze some, so a defrosted box of bolognaise is just as good, just get rid of any water that’s accummulated during freezing.

Take a pyrex dish, square or rectangle is the easiest. Depending on how much you wish to make depends on how big your dish should be. I used to use a glass cake dish which did for two people. First sprinkle a little of the cheese on the bottom of the dish, then put in a layer of bolognaise. Then put enough lasagne sheets or parts of sheets (snapping them into perfect squares is the hard part!) to cover the bolognaise. Put down another layer of bolognaise and again cover with lasagne. Do this until you’re either 1-2cm from the top of the bowl or you’ve run out of bolognaise. Remember the meat layer can be thick or thin depending on how much pasta you want to put into it.

Then take the remaining cheese (about 250g) and, using the flour, butter and milk, make a cheese sauce by melting the butter in a pan on low heat, stir in the flour until completely mixed with the butter. Add the milk and heat, stirring constantly, then add the cheese and continue to stir constantly until slightly thick.

Then put this into a preheated oven at 180 deg C for 30-35 minutes. After 20 minutes sprinkle any left over grated cheese on top.

I tend to serve this with a little salad of lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes along with a fresh baguette cut into chunks and buttered. Goes well with wine too!

Variations
For a creamier taste, add some sour cream to your bolognaise. You may need to use some extra tomato puree to compensate this.

For GI Diets - Use Sainsbury’s low fat cheese at 3% fat. Once it’s cooked in a sauce you cannot taste the difference. Add plenty of vegetables to it too.

For Atkins, swap the lasagne sheets for a vegetable such as aubergine (eggplant) to make a beef Moussaka, or use slices of bacon medallions (the top meaty bit) or another vegetable.