Eating Albion

Last Wednesday I met up with Toby, aka Gastropunk, to talk food, blogging and coding, and a very enjoyable evening it was too. His CSS skills might well be improving the layout of this very page soon.

Over a couple of pints of Spitfire, we chatted about this project, memorable restaurants, our attitude to food, favourite dishes, working at the Beeb, and other such things. We also touched on lasagne - one of my favourite dishes. It was a great, cheap, crowd-pleaser in my student days, and my mum would always make it for when I arrived home for the holidays, as it could sit in a warm oven and wait for the extra hour for my inevitably delayed train.

Last year, The Money Programme compared the true cost (in pence, flavour and health) of ready-meals - particularly lasagne - to home-made versions. The reporter followed a family who microwaved pasta meals for their two kids, which they took and ate in their rooms, and their own two lasagnes, eaten in front of the TV with a bottle of wine. The following week he asked them to make it from scratch, including shopping for the ingredients. Needless to say, with quite a lengthy preparation time, they didn’t sit down to eat till after 8.30pm, but their son did say it tasted nicer.

You’ve really got to want to make a lasagne, as you’re essentially making three different dishes. First the bolognese sauce, then the béchamel, then there’s the time taken to assemble it, then cook it again for a short while. Because of this, it’s not the sort of thing you’d be wise attempting from scratch at 7pm on a weeknight after struggling home on the Northern line. Well, you could, but it’d be rushed. No, like a nice long soak in the bath, I think making a good lasagne is all about taking the time to enjoy each stage. It’s a three-act comedy; a journey, the result only improving when time is a key ingredient.

So, coming back to my conversation with Toby. He confessed to liking a drier lasagne, with not much sauce, while I professed a love of a sloppy one. I’ve had lasagne in your average high street Italian that’s a sort of loose assemblage of the key ingredients - more a pile of loose leaves of pasta with alternate meat and cheese layers finished under a red-hot salamander. Anyway, home ones don’t turn out like that. They fill a large tray.

And why is it a British classic? Well, a few years ago this story surfaced concerning a recipe for Richard III’s court,  called Loseyns. Anyway, here’s how I do it, and if you’ve any other additions or tips for improvements, please do let me know.

1 stick of celery, 1 carrot, 1 onion, and 3 cloves of garlic, all finely chopped and sweated in a knob of butter and a glug of oil. Then add one pack (500g) of organic beef mince, and brown. Don’t just chuck it in, mind - break it up with your hand into strands and keep stirring once it’s in so that it doesn’t clump together. Once that’s nicely browned, add a tin of chopped tomatoes, 300ml of passata and some chopped basil. (As an aside, if you really want to make a proper old-fashioned (i.e pre-Columbian) Italian one, leave out the tomatoes and just use red wine and milk and cook it for a whole day!) The sauce can sit on the back burner at its lowest setting,  slowly getting darker and more… broody. It’ll happily sit there all afternoon until you need it, slowly hissing and bubbling like the crater of Mount Etna.

Sometime in the afternoon, do the béchamel. Dead easy. Very forgiving, is a béchamel, as long as you keep stirring. Melt the butter, add the flour in small amounts, and ensure the roux is cooked through. Add the warm milk, stirring all the time, and then put in some grated parmesan.

A word about the lasagne itself, or, as Americans call them, ‘lasagna noodles’. There are three types, but which one is authentic and does it matter? Well, the organic one is made in Italy, but I favour the opaque one because it swells up a lot more and takes the sauce better due to its rough texture.

Construction depends on how big your dish is, and the higher the better. I start with pasta, then meat, sauce, pasta, meat, sauce, pasta again, which is about all my lasagne dish can take. End with a final load of sauce, a few shreds of mozzarella, and a pair of basil leaves. You can keep it like this for a while, even overnight. Just pop it in the oven for 25 minutes until the top goes brown and tasty.

And that’s how I like it.