This is for Nicola who has spent days moving into her new apartment, starting anew. she asked for the recipe, so I am attempting to write it down.
When I first started making lasagne, about 4 years ago, this is what I started with. Some things may be missing as it is coming from my head and a lttle piece of paper I took notes on while searching the web years ago.
One key to this dish is to pick at least 5 vegetables to use. For this dish I used
- 2 Japanese Eggplants (or one large eggplant/aubergine)
- 3 medium/small zucchini
- One medium sized onion
- Celeriac (the root of celery, or you could use celery)
- Peppers- I used one red bell pepper, one green and one red Turkish pepper which are long and about 5 cm wide at the top.
- Mushrooms- about 1 cup=250 ml, chopped
- A mixture of grated cheeses- salty feta’ish goat, plus a plain cheese all mixed, about 400 ml.
- Spinach pesto
- Béchamel sauce
Preheat oven to 180 C
Clean and take some of the skin off of the eggplant/aubergine and zucchini (squash works too). Slice them long ways about 1 cm thick. Place on a baking sheet which has been generously greased with olive oil. Sprinkle salt on top. Bake for about 20 minutes, turn over, salt and bake another 20. They should be lightly browned and soft.
Chop up roasted vegetables. Add to bowl of pan cooked vegetables.
Make béchamel sauce and add spinach pesto to the béchamel sauce.
Assemble lasagne- béchamel sauce, noodles, béchamel sauce, ½ of vegetable mixture, cheese, noodles, béchamel sauce, rest of vegetable mixture, cheese, noodles, béchamel sauce cheese. Cover with foil.