My Lasagne. It takes a while I guess but is very easy and can be made over a day in advance and re-heated. Tastes better the day after making to be honest!

Ingredients

• 1 carrot
• 1 celery stick
• 1 onion
• 5 or 6 closed cup mushrooms
• 2 garlic cloves
• 250g lean beef mince
• 1 pack premium chopped tomatoes
• tablespoon tomato puree
• tablespoon basil puree
• 450ml milk
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons plain flour
• grated Cheddar cheese
• 6 sheets dried lasagne sheets
• Parmesan cheese

Things to note about this recipe:

1. Use a very lean pack of mince. Waitrose 10% or M&S Aberdeen Angus mince are good for this. It makes all the difference.
2. You can use whatever onions you want. Sometimes I use shallots, or a red one. Depends what is in the cupboard.
3. Premium pack of chopped tomatoes are infinitely nicer than a standard tin/packet.
4. Sometimes I use real basil, but normally I have Gourmet Garden Basil in a tube in the fridge.
 Sometimes I use both.
5. Making white sauce is nicer than using pre-bought. Very easy.
6. I usually use Cheddar.  It’s fine to add a hard Italian cheese too if you want – especially to the top.
7. I don’t really like to use wine in this recipe. Leaves more for drinking. hic.

So, peel and dice the carrot and dice the celery and onion. Put it all in a pan with some olive oil. Extra virgin is a waste for normal cooking so I always use normal olive oil. Cheaper too. Stir it for a few minutes until everything starts to soften. Add the crushed or finely chopped garlic. Give it a stir and add the diced mushroom. Stir a few more times until the mushroom looks like its cooking nicely.

Now add the mince. Break it apart with your spoon and make sure its not in lumps. Once it’s browned you are ready to move on. If you used a cheap mince, now is when you attempt to drain the fat out of the pan. Good luck.

Add the chopped tomatoes, tomato puree, basil and season with salt and pepper. Lots of pepper. You can add some old tomatoes if you have them going soft in the fridge. Just chop them up a bit and throw them in.

So that is all cooking and will take 20 minutes really. You want it to start to have absorbed a lot of the liquid so it is not too wet. Whilst this is reducing, make the béchamel.  Which is a fancy word for white sauce. Couple of tablespoons of butter in a pan and melt it down and then add about the same amount of flour. Stir over the heat with a wooden spoon until its a solid butterflour lump. Now you need to add the milk, but you need to add it very slowly in small batches. Every time you do so, stir it through until the milk is absorbed by the butter and flour. Doing it slowly and stirring all the time mean you get no lumps.

All ready? Ok time to put it in a lasagne dish! Divide the meat pan into two parts. Layer the bottom of the chosen (lasagne) dish with the first part of meat. Then use 3 lasagne sheets (or however many you need to cover the meat – I use dried Napolina sheets) to cover as much as you can. Use half the béchamel to cover the pasta. Then repeat with meat then pasta then béchamel and make sure you cover as much of the top with the sauce as possible leaving no holes. Top with the Cheddar cheese and then with the Parmesan if using that too, so it’s nicely covered and whack it in the oven at 200 degrees (gas mark 6) for about 30-40 minutes or until it looks cooked.
This as above would feed 3 people. So thats 2 of us for dinner and a portion for the freezer or a lunch the next day.