'Rapid' Lasagne

One of the dishes on our regular rotation is Rapid Ragout. My family adore this, so I am happy to bring it out once a week or so. Just another cherished recipe from Nigella Express. I decided this week to give it a little extra lurve. The ragout itself only takes a half hour, so it makes the concept of lasagne entirely 'do-able' even if short on time. Because of the quick and simple sauce, whipping up a regular bechamel was not much more work, and using some fresh lasagne sheets and a generous grating of cheese meant a special Saturday night feast with plenty of leftovers to boot. I do add a little extra water to the sauce to allow for the fact the lasagne sheets will suck it up. I'd suggest doubling the water from a half a cup to one cup. I also think using red lentils rather than green is best here, but it probably isn't worth worrying about.

I adore lasagne, and struggled for years to get it really right. True, it's difficult to mess up lasagne in some respects. All the components are so delicious even a bad one can be more than tolerable. My first attempt in my teens though, while delicious was hardly a success. Having never seen lasagne made before, I really should have paid attention to the recipe on the back of the dried pasta box. It's just that I love cheese you see, so when the recipe called for 300g of mozzarella I thought this just didn't look like enough. I think I used almost a kilo of cheese. The result was delicious, but most normal people could only manage a couple of fork-fulls before the richness of the cheese overcame them! I still love cheese, but am a little more modest in quantity - at least compared to my very first attempt.

Before starting the sauces, preheat the oven to 180C.

I use white pepper in this bechamel, not because it doesn't show up in the sauce which is the usual reason given. I like it's flavour in white sauce better than the black - but freshly ground white pepper leaves black specks in the sauce almost as much as black pepper would. In any case, I always thought it's a little too OTT to worry about a spice 'tainting' a sauce when you're cooking at home - besides the nutmeg does this anyway.

If you like a rich sauce, reduce the milk to 700ml and after it's been combined with the butter and flour add 50ml of cream, or leave the milk as is, but beat in an egg yolk after you've removed the sauce from the heat.

Basic Bechamel

60g butter
60g flour
750ml milk
salt, freshly ground white pepper and freshly ground nutmeg (all to taste)

Melt the butter in a large pan and when it's just about melted and starting to foam add the flour and whisk well. While this is happening, I heat the milk in a Pyrex jug, setting the microwave on high for about 2 minutes or so. Anyway, continue whisking for a minute and then gradually add the hot milk, whisking all the while until all the milk is added*. Bring to the boil, still whisking, and reduce heat whisking every now and then, and adding the seasonings and nutmeg to taste. When it's boiled for a few minutes remove from the heat.

To assemble the lasagne you will need about 400g to 500g fresh pasta sheets. I never have the right amount, but I'd rather have some leftover than not enough. I used a large Le Creuset baking dish for this. Butter the dish and then spread about 1/3 of a cup of the bechamel over the base. Cover the sauce with sheets, tearing them to fit the dish. Spread over 1/3 of the meat sauce, put another layer of pasta, another layer of bechamel, pasta, meat sauce, pasta, meat sauce, pasta and the remaining bechamel. Top with mozzarella. I use about 400g of cheese grated coursly over the top. You can of course use less pasta layers, but we like a lot of pasta relative to sauce here. As I mentioned earlier, it's hard to botch lasagne.

Put the heavy dish of lasagne in the oven and bake for about 30 to 45 minutes. Seems to depend a little on the brand of fresh pasta. Some take longer to cook, and this is the only important thing - undercooked lasagne sheets not so good.

Then, and this is the hard part, once your lasagne is golden and cooked (and feel free to cover it if you think the cheese is going to brown too much) remove from the oven and you simply have to walk away! Don't try to cut into a lasagne straight out of the oven. It wont work. You need to give it a chance to set. At least ten minutes, but in truth this can sit happily for a half hour and it'll still be so hot you need to blow on your forkful before eating, but much easier to cut into neat TV commercial standard rectangles.

*I find a good flexible balloon whisk works best. You need something that can get into the edges of the pan so that none of the sauce collects and scalds.

Tip: The standard bechamel, is 20g butter, 20g flour to every 250ml (1 cup) milk.



Could you go for some lasagne now too? I hate the way the leftovers call to me! Even room temperature lasagne is good lasagne. Now, post-lasagne, three of my family are slouched on the couch watching Aladdin, the fourth is 'dancing' to it (he's 11 months he loves to jig on the spot) so one is working off their dinner, but the rest are doing what most of us want to do after a delightful carb-hit!