I have cooked a lot of lasagnes in my time - though I was never tempted to try the apple crumble lasagne I saw in one of my Nan's Woman's Days one time, that's too far even for me ! - but when I brought this to the table a few Sundays ago and Tom and I took our first few mouthfuls neither of us spoke for a minute or so. Finally Tom said "this is the best lasagne ever!"
When I think of all the elaborate preparation of the separate layers that often went into making one over the years, this one was so easy. In fact, I chucked everything in the food processor! It was purely an experiment and it worked!
Basically, I pulverised a load of vegetables in that needed using up, including a stack of mushrooms that were starting to give off an old sock smell. Tom doesn't like the texture of mushrooms so whenever I've wanted to use them in a dish I had started chopping them in the food processor to get the pieces really, really small. I put the mushrooms in the food processor, and then looked at the other veggies I was going to chop up and thought why don't I just chuck the whole lot in and see what happens? It created a perfectly chopped mince-like mixture, perfect for a lasagne filling! I then put it in a pan for a few minutes to absorb the excess water from the vegetables.
The only thing that would have made this lasagne even more perfect would have been a bit of my old favourite Tofutti better-than-cream-cheese in among the layers. I may do that next time!
Mushroom and kale lasagne
Serves 6
You will need:
250g mushrooms
100g kale (or half of a large bag)
1 onion, quartered
2 carrots, chopped roughly
2 sticks of celery, chopped roughly
1 medium courgette, chopped roughly
2 cloves garlic, peeled
4-5 tablespoons basil pesto (or other pesto of your choice)
1 x 250g box lasagne sheets (or tortilla wraps, see note below!)
1 x 680g bottle tomato passata
120g grated cheese (or dairy free alternative - we like super melting Cheezly mozzarella style)
Preheat the oven to 200 C.
Place the mushrooms, kale, onion, carrots, celery, courgette, garlic and pesto in a food processor. Blitz until you have a mince-like mixture.
You can use any vegetables you like that need using up - this is just what happened to be in my fridge! You could also add other flavourings like sun-dried tomatoes, olives or capers if you have them handy.
Season the mixture with salt and pepper. You can add more pesto too if you think it needs it. Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium heat and add the mixture to it and saute briefly, just to warm through and cook off any excess liquid. Set aside.
In a large baking dish, assemble your lasagne. I did it like this:
Tomato passata
1 layer of lasagne sheets
Vegetable "mince" mixture
Tomato passata
A bit of cheese
1 layer of lasagne sheets
Vegetable "mince" mixture
Tomato passata
A bit of cheese
1 layer of lasagne sheets
Remaining passata and cheese
I actually ran out of lasagne sheets on the top layer and used half a tortilla wrap instead, to make up the shortfall! Observe:
You really couldn't tell the difference in the finished product!
Cover the lasagne with foil and bake in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and return to the oven for another 10-15 minutes until the top is browned and bubbling.
Serve with a salad and glass of gutsy red!
It's hard to believe that this was only a few weeks ago - lasagne and red wine weather! It certainly isn't now (not that I'm complaining!) I'll have to share some salad recipes and things more suitable for summer soon :)