I made this lasagne because I really like spinach and wanted to focus on that flavour alone. It is a very easy recipe: you don't even need to make a bechamel sauce. I left the bechamel sauce out because I wanted this to be a relatively light dish, compared with the stodgy bechamel lasagnes you can buy ready-made. And on top of this, it's very quick! If you're multitasking you can have the lasagne in the oven within 15 minutes, and then it only needs about 25 minutes to finish cooking.
Ingredients
4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon
500g (frozen) chopped spinach
200g ricotta
1 big ball of mozzarella
1 clove of garlic
1 medium onion
200g dried (egg) lasagne sheets
nutmeg
olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Parboil the lasagne sheets by first bringing water to the boil, adding the sheets and then letting them cook for about 5 minutes. Drain and add some olive oil to separate the sheets. Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a frying pan large enough for all of the spinach. Chop the onion and garlic finely and slice the bacon into inch-long bits. Add to the pan and wait for the onions to soften and the bacon to brown a little. Add the spinach and stir continuously, until either the spinach has wilted (if you're using fresh spinach) or melted (if you're using frozen spinach). Season well with the nutmeg, salt and pepper. Then keep on a high heat until all the excess water in the spinach has evaporated and you're left with quite a dry mixture. Now assemble the lasagne: use some olive oil to grease an oven-proof lasagne dish. First put in a layer of spinach, then a layer of lasagne sheets (covering the spinach completely), then a thin layer of ricotta (spread nicely using the back of a spoon). Repeat. The top layer should be spinach. Slice or rip pieces of the mozzarella ball to cover the dish. Put in a 200C oven for 20 minutes. Once the mozzarella has completely melted and the lasagne sheets are quite soft, turn on the grill of your oven and grill the lasagne for about 5 minutes. This will make the top layer nice and brown. Keep checking though, you don't want to burn the cheese!
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