Ugly vegetarian lasagne

Why is it that the best recipes always happen when you’re just wallying about in the kitchen? We basically made this up as we went along and it was a huge group effort with all of us doing bits and pieces. Hence, the general piles of crap all over my kitchen and lack of decent photos, sorry about this. Next time we make it, I’ll pay more attention and take nicer pics, I promise. Still, it was absolutely delicious and definitely our best vegetarian lasagne so far, so it’s well worth sharing, and who cares about posh photos anyway when the food is this good? I could have waited and cut a perfect slice and added a sprig of basil, but hey, this is real life and there was no way we were waiting that long. It might have been named ugly vegetarian lasagne a la ugly super easy vegetable curry, but on this occasion it’s more my fault than the food’s. Don’t blame the lasagne, blame the cook.

Vegetarian lasagne

For the cheesy leek sauce

Butter and oil
1 large white onion, finely chopped
2 leeks, split, chopped and rinsed
1 tbsp butter
1 heaped tbsp plain flour
300ml (ish) milk
Grated cheddar (about 2 large handfuls)
Salt and pepper to taste

For the veggie ragu

Butter and oil
1 large white onion, finely chopped
Glass of red wine
1 punnet mushrooms, finely chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
Stalks from a small bunch of basil, chopped
1 or 2 carrots finely chopped
1/2 sweet potato, finely chopped
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 stock cube
Chopped basil leaves
Salt and pepper to taste

1 pack lasagne sheets

To finish:

1 handful grated cheddar
Breadcrumbs (I keep a stash in the freezer)

Leeks can be horrible and gritty, so I tend to cut off the bottom, take off the outer leaves, split them lengthways, then chop them into slices and give them a rinse. So heat a slug of oil and a tablespoon or so of butter and fry the chopped onions and leeks down very gently until they’re really soft and almost creamy. Add a dash of water if they start to stick.

Then make the bechamel: melt the butter in a saucepan, then mix in the flour. Stir over a low heat with a wooden spoon and watch it until it gets a bit paler and bubbly, then gradually whisk in the milk. Keep whisking until it’s thickened, then turn the heat off before you stir in the cheese. Stir the whole thing through the cooked leek mixture. Season to taste and set this aside.

For the vegetable ragu, melt the butter in a pan, add in the oil, then cook the chopped onion down until soft and translucent. Add a big slug of red wine - about a glass should do it - then bubble that down, stirring until around until it more or less cooks away (you get a lovely, winey facial sauna here) then add the mushrooms (chopped as finely as you can) plus crushed garlic, the basil stalks, carrots and sweet potato. When all that lot has slowly cooked down and is quite dry add a tin of chopped tomatoes then about another half a tin of boiling water with a vegetable stock cube. Turn the heat down and leave it to simmer for around 20 minutes until it’s kind of looking like the correct texture and it’s not too sloppy (by the way, this veggie ragu is SO useful - pour over spinach and ricotta cannelloni, stir through plain cooked pasta, serve with spaghetti and veggie meatballs…).

When you’re ready to assemble, heat the oven to gas 6/200C. Grab a big lasagne dish and get layering. Think of it in these terms: you need three layers of the ragu and lasagne sheets, but four of the cheesy leek sauce because you want to finish with that, so:

Start with about a third of the ragu and spread it in a thin layer across the bottom of the dish, then spoon over about a quarter of the cheesy leek sauce, then patch together a layer of lasagne.

Repeat those layers twice more (ragu, cheesy leek sauce, lasagne), then finish with a final layer of the cheesy sauce, and sprinkle with a little extra cheese. I keep a stash of breadcrumbs in the freezer (even better, try and wrestle leftover garlic bread from their mitts and whizz this - it’s divine sprinkled over anything) but you can scatter over some panko breadcrumbs, or just leave it out.

Bake for about 45 minutes at 180C/gas 4 until deliciously golden and bubbly. Now step away for at least 10 minutes before serving, which is what we didn’t do and why it was a big sloppy mess (it’s even better the next day).