Daria's Spring Lasagne
Spring vegetables and herbs make for a beautifully verdant lasagne, which serves two generously.
INGREDIENTS
250g peas, fresh or frozen
5g (a small handful) fresh mint leaves
50ml + a generous splash (~1 tbsp) olive oil
8 sheets of lasagne pasta
3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
100g fresh spinach
5-10g (a large handful) fresh basil leaves
25g unsalted butter
25g plain flour
500ml whole milk
1 whole nutmeg
130g Cornish Yarg, including the nettle rind, roughly chopped into 1cm pieces
80g Sinodun Hill, roughly cut into 1-2cm chunks
Salt to taste
METHOD
1. To make the pea filling: In a food processor, add 125g of peas (half of the peas) along with all of the mint, a pinch of salt, and 50ml of olive oil. Blend these into a nearly smooth paste. Then add the remaining peas (125g) to the food processor and do two or three pulses. In the end, you’ll want the paste to have a texture that is irregular, almost crumbly, with some whole peas, rather than a fully pureed paste. This mixture will act in place of a ragu you'd find in a meat lasagne, so you might think of it as a minced beef texture.
2. Cook 8 sheets of lasagne for approximately 5 minutes in boiling water. You’ll want them to be undercooked, just before al dente, rather than fully cooked.
3. To make the green béchamel sauce: In a pan, sauté the chopped garlic with a generous splash of olive oil on medium heat. Once the garlic is fragrant and slightly softened, add the spinach to the pan and wilt it down. Gently stir on medium heat until some of the water released by the spinach has evaporated.
Put this mixture in a blender along with the fresh basil and blend until smooth. Keep this to the side momentarily.
Add the butter to the pan with the flour. Stir slowly until the butter melts and the mixture smells biscuit-y. Then, while continuing to stir, slowly drizzle in all of the milk, little by little. Grate in a bit of fresh nutmeg, and stir over medium heat until the sauce thickens. (To test the thickness, coat the back of a spoon with the sauce and draw a line through the sauce with your finger. It shouldn’t fill in.)
Now add this sauce to the blender with the green spinach and basil mixture, and blend until you have a smooth, velvet-y sauce. Add salt to taste.
4. To assemble: In a rectangular baking dish,* spoon a thin layer of the green béchamel sauce across bottom of the dish. Add a layer of pasta, some pea filling, chunks of both cheeses, and pour over some of the béchamel sauce. Repeat this layering two more times. Then top it with a layer of pasta, pour over a bit more béchamel sauce, and add the final chunks of cheese. *We used a baking dish that is approximately 24cm x 12 cm.
5. Bake for 45 minutes at 200°C. We recommend putting your dish on a baking tray in the oven, in case it bubbles over a bit. Let the lasagne set for 10 minutes once you take it out of the oven. Serve hot and enjoy!