Recipe: Creamy Lasagne

Creamy Lasagne
So, I had to make a lasagne last week and this is what I came up with. My family liked it, so I thought I'd share it with everyone. :)

This recipe makes a large Lasagne of 27x27x5cm, feeds 6-8.

Ingredients
Red Sauce

• Oil for frying
• 2 small, or 1 large onion (I used red onion, but you can use whichever onion you prefer)
•  680g of turkey breast mince
•  2 beef stock cubes
• 500g (1 pack) passata
• 2 large field mushrooms
• 2 small roasted red peppers
• 1 courgette
• 3 crushed cloves/(tspns) garlic (paste) – keep 1 helping separate
• 1 tspn oregano
•  A dash of chilli paste
•  2 tblspns of sweet sherry

White Sauce

I like this shop variety creamy lasagne sauce, of which I purchased 1180g. Yes, I know it's cheating, but I really like it.

However, if you want to make your own, it's just a matter of making a white sauce with butter, flour and milk. Sorry, I have no idea about quantities, except that it's about 1:1 butter to flour.

Lasagne Compilation

• ~15 Lasagne Sheets - the exact number depends on the shape of your lasagne dish
• 75g Mozzarella (grated)
• 75g Cheddar (grated)

Equipment

• Frying pan and fish slice
• 1 large lasagne dish 27x27x5cm, or several small ones
• Knife and chopping board
• Small bowl for setting aside ingredients
• Measuring jug and small measures
• Spoon
• Mandolin (for slicing the courgette), but you can use a knife if you don’t have one

Preparation
Red Sauce

• Chop the mushroom in bite size pieces and fry on a low heat in a little oil with 2 cloves/tsps of garlic until mushrooms begin to soften, then put in a bowl and leave to the side.

• While the mushroom is cooking, chop the onion finely and then, in the same unwashed pan that you cooked the mushrooms in, fry over a low heat until soft and translucent

• Return the mushrooms to the pan and cook for 2 mins

• Add the turkey mince and cook on medium to high heat until it all goes beige, i.e. it’s cooked through

• Add the stock cubes to approx. 100ml of cold water and dissolve, then add this to the pan, stirring in and cooking through for a couple of minutes.

• Chop the red peppers finely. Now you can go about roasting red peppers if you want, but I found a great cheat, buying them in a jar in brine.

• Add the oregano, remaining garlic, chopped red pepper, passata, a dash of chilli paste to your taste, and the sherry

• Cook on a medium to high heat for about ten minutes and then taste: add more of the herbs or spices as you see fit.
• Leave the sauce to reduce on a low heat, and meanwhile, slice the courgette finely and fry in a little oil until it begins to colour (this may sound like a faff, and if you’re like me and only have a little second frying pan, you might have to do it in batches, but OMG, it adds flavour)

• Add the courgette to the red sauce and cook for a minute or two

Compiling the Lasagne

• Start by covering the bottom of the dish with lasagne sheets (break one up to fill in the gaps that will undoubtedly be left), I used 4 and a half sheets

• Put in a layer of half the red sauce about 1cm thick to cover the pasta sheets

• Put on a layer of white sauce to cover the red, this should be about ⅓ of the white sauce

• Repeat steps 1 to 3, this should use up all your red sauce.

• Put on a final layer of lasagne sheets, I used 6 on this layer, because
• My lasagne dish gets slightly bigger towards the top
• I filled in the gaps more thoroughly on the last layer, because I like a bit of extra pasta in the top layer

• Add a final layer of white sauce covering the entire top

• Sprinkle with the two cheeses

N.B. My family loves creamy lasagne, so this is heavy on the white sauce. If you prefer it tangier, then just reduce the amount of white sauce, perhaps leave out the second layer of white sauce and just put it over the final layer of pasta.

Cooking
Bake the lasagne in a pre-heated oven (160°C Fan) for 30-40mins, until the top is golden and the lasagne is bubbling.

And finally...
This is a very large lasagne, it will feed 6-8 people depending on what you are serving it with, but it also freezes well. I wait until the lasagne has gone cold and then divide it into portions to suit family size, put it into takeaway containers and then freeze. Just defrost and reheat in the oven, or microwave and it is great (I personally love twice baked lasagne :))

So, I hope you enjoy this recipe. Let me know how it turns out it you make it.