When you can't do anything useful, make lasagne

I like making lasagne.  It's such a project -- the sauce to be simmered, then béchamel made, the whole thing assembled and then cooked again -- that it always feels satisfactory, like I've achieved something.  And in these sad and troubled times, that is a feeling to be treasured.

I recently saw this recipe for pasta with mushroom ragu on Serious Eats and was intrigued by the possibility of using the food processor to create a sort of vegetable mince for pasta sauce -- or, more precisely, the idea of (in Kerry Saretsky's own words) using it to 'blitz' vegetables 'to a rubble'.  I use my food processor all the time to make curry pastes, dips etc, but not so much as a chopping device; my knife skills aren't bad and I can produce a pretty reasonable 'medium dice' out of carrots, onions and celery which is good enough for most purposes.  But the picture associated with this recipe didn't show anything recognisable as little carrot cubes, just a rich, textured sauce.  Blitzed to a rubble indeed.  So this idea lurked in the back of my mind for a few days -- much as, I realised today, there were carrots, onion, celery and mushrooms lurking in the vegetable crisper! 

For dedicated meat-eaters, a vegetarian pasta sauce often isn't the most appealing choice.  Turn it into lasagne, though, and the extra infusion of cheesy baked goodness somehow renders it much more acceptable.  So when I asked Lee what he wanted for dinner and he suggested pasta, my upping the ante to lasagne seemed like an ideal compromise.  (Note: Lee is not home yet and therefore has yet to discover that it is vegetarian lasagne or actually taste it.  Nevertheless I am hopeful that it will not be found wanting...  He cannot be expecting meaty lasagne as there was no minced beef in the house!)

In the whirl of lasagne excitement, perhaps the absence of meat will go unnoticed?

There was, as well as the other vegetables, half a butternut squash in the fridge -- knd of like carrots, right?  There was also a bunch of baby spinach (both of the above left over from a roasted squash, spinach, goats cheese and pine nut salad I made on the weekend), and since I've had reasonable success with spinach in lasagne before, I decided that could go in too.  We have had a block of orange cheese in the fridge since September (left over from Fresher's Week events, don't ask) and I always like to have a wedge of Parmigiano in the fridge, so that was the cheese element sorted, and I may or may not have sneakily anticipated the potential for a lasagne-making situation and bought a pint of milk on the way home, for the béchamel sauce.  Everything was set for Operation Lasagne With Blitzed Vegetable Rubble!  I chopped the onion myself, by way of comparison, and used the food processor for the rest of the vegetables. 

Did it work?  Reader, I would marry my food processor if I could.  It worked like a dream to create a beautiful, finely textured 'rubble' -- not a paste as I had feared, nor an uneven mix of large awkward carroty parts and small shaved carroty bits.  Once added to the pan and cooked, this produced a sauce with a heft and consistency not too dissimilar to a beef-mince-based bolognese, but with a much lighter mouth texture due to the vegetables.  Perfect for all your lasagne-making needs!

So, the lasagne is in the oven as I write. It smells tomatoey, savoury and cheesy in all the right ways; the orange cheese is aesthetically bit odd but should taste fine (at this kind of cheese level, orange probably just means food colouring more than any specific flavour such as Double Gloucester).  And I feel like I've actually done something useful for the evening.  We'll see what Lee thinks...

Blitzed Vegetable Lasagne

Vegetable ragu

• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 4 small carrots, roughly chopped (~1cm pieces)
• 2 sticks celery, roughly chopped
• 300g mushrooms, roughly chopped
• ½ a butternut squash, peeled, de-seeded and roughly chopped
• ½ cup wine
• 800g tinned tomatoes
• 100g tomato paste
• 3 tsp oregano
• 1-2 tsp ground black pepper (to taste)
• 1-2 tsp salt (to taste)

Heat large heavy-based pan over medium heat.  Add a drizzle of olive oil and when hot, sauté onion until translucent.  Meanwhile 'blitz' carrots and celery in food processor until finely chopped ‘rubble’ results; add to pan and continue to cook.  Do the same with mushrooms (in 2 batches if necessary) and squash.  Add wine and allow to bubble; add tomatoes, tomato paste, herbs and seasonings and simmer for about 20 min or until vegetables are cooked.  In the meantime, make béchamel sauce.

Béchamel sauce

• 25 g butter
• 1 heaped tbsp flour
• 500ml milk
• small chunk (30g) parmesan cheese, shredded
• white pepper and salt

Heat butter in small saucepan over medium heat until just melted.  Off the heat, add flour all at once and whisk in quickly to form a smooth paste.  Continue to cook for a few minutes to make sure well combined.  Add milk a tablespoon or so at a time to begin with, whisking until fully incorporated between each addition, until the mix is quite liquid and there is no chance of lumps, then add remaining milk.  Return to heat and cook, whisking occasionally, until sauce thickens and bubbles.  Boil for a few minutes, whisking, then remove from heat, whisk in cheese and season with pepper and salt to taste.

To assemble

• 1 box (500g) lasagne sheets (I didn’t use quite the whole box)
• several handfuls fresh spinach (because I had some to use up)
• 100g shredded cheese (I used a bit more Parmesan for flavour as well as some of the orange cheese)

Lightly coat the bottom of a large (mine is probably about 30 x 60 cm) baking dish with a few spoonfuls of the ragu sauce; layer lasagne sheets, ragu, béchamel and spinach as desired and as dictated by the dimensions of your baking dish, finishing with a thin layer of ragu topped with béchamel then sprinkled with cheese.  (My layers went: ragu, lasagne, ragu, béchamel, spinach, lasagne, ragu, lasagne, then topped with remaining ragu and béchamel followed by cheese.)

Bake in oven at 180C for 40 minutes or until lasagne sheets are cooked and top is nicely browned and bubbling.

Lee's reaction?  Apparently: acceptable!

 

Addie's Thai, Earl's Court, London

A delicious smell assails me as I walk in the door -- sharp lime and fragrant fish sauce with hints of fresh garlic and pungent Thai herbs. I inhale a few deep, appreciative sniffs as I enter the low-lit, welcoming atmosphere of Addie's Thai.

 Despite it being a mere 2 hour train journey from Manchester, I don't get to London all that often, and when I do it's usually just for the day, just for work and with no time to muck about visiting my favourite galleries or eating spots. This week, I'm here  on an overnight stay for work, killing two birds with one stone. For whatever reason, the bird organising my hotel has booked me into a place quite a way across town from its nest(a). This would be more annoying were it not for the fact that it gives me the opportunity to try a new and well- written-about Thai restaurant!

Reviews of Addie's on Urbanspoon are good and I'm encouraged by various bloggers and reviews describing it as some of the best, and fairly authentic, Thai in London.  While I happen to think that in Manchester we have one of the best Thai restaurants anywhere in the form of Try Thai (fortuitously also just round the corner from my house!) it's worth seeing what the competition has to offer.

Addie's is located just a block or so up the road from Earls Court Station, and despite (or perhaps because of?) reports that earlier incarnations were hard to find, is now well signposted from the street. I'm made to feel instantly welcome both by the general atmosphere and by the smiley, friendly staff, who show me unhesitatingly to the requested 'table for one, please'.

 Service is swift -- almost alarmingly so when it comes to receiving food! I estimate it's less than 5 minutes from the time I place my order to my tom yam goong landing on the table -- followed, before I've had time for more than a couple of spoonfuls, by the other dishes. I'm initially surprised -- do they think I'll have finished my soup so quickly? -- but then recall that in a typical Thai meal, soup is served not as a starter but as part of the whole spread, to be consumed alongside the other dishes.

It's hard to go too far wrong with tom yam, and Addie's version is no exception to the rule. While perhaps not quite living up to the promise created by my initial smell-based impressions, it delivered the requisite hit of punchy flavours along with 2 decent-sized juicy, bouncy, tail-on prawns.

The other dishes shine far more, however, especially the som tam. This salad of shredded green papaya, carrot, green beans and cherry tomatoes in a spicy-sour dressing with crunchy peanuts is one of my favourite things, done well (we won't speak of those occasional travesties made with apple rather than papaya, overly sweet and with no chilli in evidence). There are several varieties to choose from, starting with the basic 'dried prawns', passing through the intrigue of raw prawns en route to the priciest option of deep-fried soft-shell crab. I ask the waitress what she recommends and she indicates the basic option, but when I ask about the 'dried prawn and salted crab' version and whether that refers to fermented preserved crab pieces (one of the traditional possibilities for som tam in Thailand but rare outside it -- palates unaccustomed to SE Asian food seem often to balk at fermented seafood, I've no idea why), she looks pleased and nods yes, so I opt for that.

My other choice is a recommendation from one of the reviews: the 'pla pad prik sod', deep-fried cod with morning glory and a chilli-garlic sauce. I was somewhat tempted to go for a pad thai or curry instead, other staples that are often benchmarks of quality for judging a new Thai restaurant, but didn't quite feel in the mood for either. Plus, eating a whole coconut curry on one's own is ineffably sad, and a recipe for heartburn besides.

In any case, I'm very pleased with my choice of cod when it arrives: large crisp-fried pieces of fish tossed in a salty, savoury sauce amongst tender, flavoursome greens and sliced chillies.  The som tam is bursting with zingy flavour and plenty of crunch from the shredded papaya and beans, fresh juicy tomato and a mouthwateringly sour-sweet dressing, with the fermented crab adding a real hit of funky, salty flavour. I decide some sticky rice is needed to soak up all this deliciousness -- it too appears with magical speed.


A word of warning to the somewhat faint-of-tongue: the chilli indications on the menu should be taken with some seriousness! While I don't consider myself a rabid hothead, I do like a fair bit of kick to my food and am usually the one amongst my friends who can be found doggedly but blissfully scarfing down the sliced chillies from a stir-fry, spooning up the last incendiary mouthfuls of a hot chilli sauce or sprinkling Tabasco on my food with gay abandon.  The som tam was marked at 2 (out of a maximum 3) chillies for heat rating, but I soon found myself in that sweaty, slightly delirious, tear-inducing, endorphin-producing state that marks the verge of good chilli-eating. Any hotter and it would have become more pain than pleasure; as it was, this was the kind of masochillistic experience that I was rather glad to be enjoying as a solo diner...

My only other caveat about Addie's is that the portion sizes aren't huge. I am a self-confessed glutton and have on occasion surprised friends with my eating capacity; that does also have to be understood in the context of me being a not-too-tall female of no more than medium build -- in other words, I eat lots for my size but plenty of my male friends still eat more than I do!  I thought that in ordering a soup, salad and main I was probably setting myself up for an 'eyes bigger than stomach' fall, the more so once sticky rice appeared on the agenda. Instead I found myself pleasantly but not uncomfortably full after meticulously consuming every last shred of tangy papaya and shard of crispy fish (too good to waste!)  I could have been satisfied with less; as it was, I had the opportunity to try more dishes without feeling guilty about wasting any leftovers, but big eaters may want to think about ordering more than the usual main + side per person.  That said, the prices were fairly reasonable: a large glass of wine plus all that food came to about £30.

Was Addie's the best Thai I've had in London? Admittedly that's not much of an accolade given my limited previous experience, but I'm still happy to say a definite yes and to hazard a guess that it might be quite some time before I find one better! Bonus points for lovely staff and service - unobtrusive but efficient, and gave no indication of hurry even when I'd finished my food and was sipping the last of my wine, despite a posse of customers waiting for tables (I hurried myself a little, once I noticed). But was it better than Manchester's finest? I have to say, Try Thai still has my vote -- the freshness and intensity of the flavours I've experienced there has yet to be matched by any other UK restaurant. We really are lucky to have it up north! I'm going to award Addie's a well-deserved and in no way dishonourable second place.

Just as well I suppose, or I'd have to be finding excuses to trot down to London for my weekly fix...

Addie's Thai
121 Earl's Court Rd
SW5 9RL