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!