Italian weekend
Had a relaxed weekend with some spare hours to spend messing around in the kitchen trying out one of the thousands of recipes cut out from various magazines and newspapers littered around the house. This one was from a little article on 'real' lasagne in the Evening Standard or Metro. It's relatively labour intensive but delicious. The recipe suggests making your own pasta dough but I cheated with some fresh lasagne sheets leftover in the freezer.
First I made up a basic ragu using onion, garlic and some chilli flakes sweated in some olive oil and adding a tin of chopped tomatoes, thyme and a table spoon of sun dried tomato paste (found lurking in the back of the fridge). I left this bubbling for about 30 minutes or so to get nice and thick. Whilst this was simmering away I wilted about 900g spinach by pouring over boiling water and then squeezed out as much water as I could before chopping and mixing with some grated nutmeg, a handful of grated parmesan and a beaten egg and forming into small balls and frying gently in a little olive oil.
Setting the spinach balls to one side, I sliced an aubergine fairly thinly, dusted the slices in seasoned flour, dipped them in beaten egg and fried them until golden.
To assemble, I placed about a third of the ragu in a shallow baking dish, covered this with the pasta sheets, a handful of good grated melting cheese (I used Gruyere), a handful of grated Parmesan, a layer of aubergine, a layer of raw chestnut mushrooms and then repeated, finishing with a final layer of ragu, spinach balls and another dusting of Parmesan.
After 30 minutes in the oven at 200 degrees it looked like this..........
................and was gone within ten minutes!!!
First I made up a basic ragu using onion, garlic and some chilli flakes sweated in some olive oil and adding a tin of chopped tomatoes, thyme and a table spoon of sun dried tomato paste (found lurking in the back of the fridge). I left this bubbling for about 30 minutes or so to get nice and thick. Whilst this was simmering away I wilted about 900g spinach by pouring over boiling water and then squeezed out as much water as I could before chopping and mixing with some grated nutmeg, a handful of grated parmesan and a beaten egg and forming into small balls and frying gently in a little olive oil.
Setting the spinach balls to one side, I sliced an aubergine fairly thinly, dusted the slices in seasoned flour, dipped them in beaten egg and fried them until golden.
To assemble, I placed about a third of the ragu in a shallow baking dish, covered this with the pasta sheets, a handful of good grated melting cheese (I used Gruyere), a handful of grated Parmesan, a layer of aubergine, a layer of raw chestnut mushrooms and then repeated, finishing with a final layer of ragu, spinach balls and another dusting of Parmesan.
After 30 minutes in the oven at 200 degrees it looked like this..........
................and was gone within ten minutes!!!
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