Lasagne

Gluten free.

I'm not actually intending on giving a recipe for lasagne as such but I suppose I will probably end up basically typing one up anyway. Suffice to say that if you can make a bolognaise sauce and a white (or bechamel) sauce you can make a lasagne. Start with these:

We've had a week of family drama which has translated to me falling back on the tried and true easy meals that I've been trying to avoid. Such is life. I'm hoping to get back on board tomorrow.

Back to lasagne. This is a dish I don't often cook. For a start it is very difficult to make it dairy free and until very recently my son couldn't eat any dairy. The other thing about it is that it's pretty time consuming because first you have to make the bolognaise sauce and the white sauce and then assemble the thing and bake it. Years ago I used to make lasagne probably once every week or 2 because it was my husband's favourite dish (apparently he now prefers curry). For some reason my mother-in-law always rang either on the night we were having lasagne or the next day so I think that she thought we lived on the stuff.
Lasagne, and indeed bolognaise are very useful dishes for hiding vegetables in. I grate carrot and zucchini into mine and this one also had a tin of corn because my 2yo requested it.

So the basics are as follows. First make yourself a bolognaise sauce. Mine tends to contain:
1 large onion, diced
1tsp crushed garlic
about 3 rashers of bacon diced
500g of beef mince
1 carrot, grated
1 zucchini, grated
2x 400g tins diced tomato
1tsp beef stock powder (massel is a good safe brand) or 1 stock cube, crumbled
some herbs

and my method is basically to brown the things that need browning (onion, garlic, bacon, mince, mushrooms if I happen to have any to add etc) and then add everything else and let the whole lot simmer away until I think it is cooked. This is a very wet sauce. You can thicken it with cornflour (dissolve it in water first to avoid lumps) but I leave it as is because I think the pasta sheets need the extra liquid.

Then you need a white sauce. You can get as fancy as you like with this. All I do is pour as much milk as I think I'll need into a non-stick saucepan (makes clean up easier), heat it on the stove, dissolve a couple of tablespoons of cornflour in some more milk and stir that through the heated milk, whisking it to prevent lumps forming. If it doesn't seem to be thickening after a couple of minutes or seems at risk of burning without thickening I dissolve some more cornflour in some more milk and add it, stirring well and usually that will do the trick.
I add wholegrain mustard and grated cheese to that to make a really nice cheese sauce to serve with corned beef or make cauliflower cheese. For lasagne I use it plain. Perhaps one day I will try to make it properly.


The method is simple. Some people like their lasagne to have 1 layer of each ingredient. Around here we will take as many layers as we can get into the dish. Alternately lay down your bolognaise, pasta sheets, white sauce and cheese as many times as you like or can fit. Bake for the time recommended on the box of pasta sheets. I leave the final layer of cheese off until about 15 minutes before the end of the cooking time, then spread it liberally over the top and return the lasagne to the oven. This way you end up with a nicely melted and slightly browned cheese layer rather than a burned one.

It's not exactly a beautifully presented meal but it is appreciated.