Vegetable Lasagne
The real beauty of a vegetable lasagne is that you can adapt it to the vegetables you have to hand along with some store cupboard staples. So it is actually a dish that you can make for a crowd at relatively short notice. Here is a video (left) of me, Sally, giving ideas on the layers you can cook up to replace the traditional meat one.
Prep: 30mins
Cook: 1h10 mins
Serves 6
Scroll down to see below, one option for a layer based on aubergines and tomatoes.
OTHER LAYERS
250g lasagne sheets – no need to pre-cook
Béchamel sauce (500ml milk, 50g butter, 50g plain flour plus nutmeg and seasoning). Or if you don’t want to make a sauce, you can replace it with some dollops of crème fraîche or go simple and use only grated cheese such as cheddar (150g) and parmesan (75g) or mozzarella and parmesan.
Roast vegetables – roast any vegetables you have in abundance such as red onions, peppers, courgettes, mushrooms with some olive oil, thyme and whole garlic cloves (optional), at 200°C for about 20-30 minutes while your aubergines are steaming. One baking dish full will give you 2 layers. Scatter between other layers for another set of textures and flavours.
Accompany with Prince de George 7
INGREDIENTS
Aubergine tomato layer (from Jamie Oliver’s recipe):
3 aubergines
3 cloves of garlic
Fresh thyme, leaves picked off the sprigs
2 x 400g tins of plum tomatoes
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Dried red chilli (optional)
Fresh basil, roughly chopped
Olive oil
Salt & Pepper
Steam the whole aubergines in a colander over a pan of simmering water for 30 minutes, then halve, scoop out and roughly chop the flesh.
Heat the oil and cook the garlic, adding the fresh thyme and aubergine plus a touch of chilli if you fancy spicing it up a bit. Cook for about 10 mins.
Add the tinned tomatoes with their juice and a dash of balsamic vinegar plus some fresh basil if you have some to hand and then simmer for about 10 mins (or a bit longer if needed) until the sauce has reduced.
Season with salt and black pepper.
METHOD
Assemble the layers and bake for around 30-35 minutes at 200°C until golden and bubbling. If you have used dried lasagne sheets, pop in a fork to ensure it is well cooked.
Then serve with a glass (or why not a bottle?) of Prince de George 7. Yumm.
