It’s the first of two Fridays this week, Australia, on account of tomorrow’s ANZAC Day public holiday. I’ve also woken up from a very restorative 10 hour sleep. It’s going to be a great day, I can just tell.
I don’t know what it’s like where you are but our part of the world greets the morning from under a thick blanket of fog. Running through it is like running through a continual full body spray of spring water. Fog usually makes me think of pea soup heaviness but this was quite invigorating and light.
I never got around to blogging on the weekend about a new Donna Hay lasagna recipe I tried. Unless you’re vegetarian, allergic to tomatoes or just despise lasagna, it would be negligent of me to not share it with you today. It’s just the recipe for the cooler weather and with a serve on board, you’ll just power through any prevailing fog that comes your way this winter.
 |
| Fresh rosemary leaves from the back garden. |
The recipe I used is from the Speedy Dinners section of the April / May 2012 issue of Donna Hay magazine. It’s official name is Beef, Chorizo and Rosemary Lasagna but it will be known henceforth in SSG Manor as Bananas Lasagna, After Rachel Zoe rather than the fruit.
‘The ingredients are for the meat sauce as simple but pack a huge punch in the flavour stakes. A couple of chorizo, 600g beef mince, 1/4 cup fresh rosemary leaves, a chopped onion and garlic.
Brown the onion, then add the garlic and chorizo. Cook for a few minutes before adding the mince and cooking it all though, another 5 minutes or so.
The recipe only requires a bottle of passata next but that wasn’t red enough or rich enough for me so I added some tomato paste and a half cup of drained and chopped sun dried tomatoes.
Which gave me a vivid sauce with a red to rival the Special K ‘K’. The final step was to add the rosemary leaves and salt and pepper. My sauce was rather thick and the lasagna dried out whilst in the oven. The next time I make this (possibly even this weekend), I will add some water to the sauce at this stage.
Lasagna is just as much about the cheese topping as it is about the meat sauce. There are three cheeses in this recipe. 500g ricotta, a cup of mozarella and half a cup of parmesan. There’s no way you’ll leave the table without your RDI of calcium.
To assemble the lasagna, line the base of your dish with fresh lasagna sheets and then top with all the meat sauce and finish with a final layer of pasta. Top it all with the ricotta.
Combine the parmesan and mozzarella and sprinkle over the ricotta. Bake for 30 – 35 minutes at 200C.
The recipe is meant to serve 4 but I got 8 serves out of mine. It’s very filling and quite rich, even when using reduced fat cheeses. The chorizo gives the meat sauce some spice and the fresh rosemary adds a pine flavour to the meat. Not to mention that fabulous scent.
You can serve it with cooked greens like I did on Sunday, But when I had some leftovers last night, I ended up having a bowl of salad greens instead. There’s something about the crunch of fresh salad with a hearty lasagna.