Summer Lasagne with courgettes and green pesto - vegetarian

Today I want to tempt you with a tasty, quick & easy recipe, perfect for Summer and suitable for vegetarians. It's one of my most appreciated recipes, last time I've made it was for Easter and I received lots of compliments and requests for the actual recipe. It should be ready in 60-80 minutes ;)

Ingredients:

500 gr. lasagne sheets

1 l. Bechamel sauce 

(100 gr. butter, 100 gr. flour, 1 l. milk, salt and nutmeg)

5 medium courgettes

1/2 onion

60 gr. Grana Padano cheese

(in the pics you'll see cheddar because last time I made lasagne I forgot to buy Parmesan cheese)

250 ml. Pesto Sauce 

(1 bag of pine nuts, 2 bunches of basil leaves, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper)

How to make Bechamel Sauce 

Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the flour, mix butter and flour with a whisk and cook for two minutes or until slightly brown. Add the milk heated in advance (never cold from the fridge!) little at a time, whisk until it's absorbed and then add some more, continue until the milk is all absorbed, whisking continuously. Let it cook and thicken for some minutes.

How to make Pesto Sauce

Put the pine nuts, the basil leaves and 2-3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil together and blend them, add more olive oil if too thick, add more pine nuts if too runny; check for the flavour and add salt and pepper accordingly.

How to prepare Summer Lasagne

Cut the onion and fry it until tender, grate and add the courgettes and let them cook until soft; add salt and pepper. Do not cover to prevent them from getting too watery, if necessary remove excess water before adding them to the lasagne.

Start your Lasagne with a layer of Bechamel Sauce, then lay the pasta sheets (check on the packaging if need precooking), cover with the courgettes (roughly 3 spoons), add a spoon of Pesto Sauce and sprinkle some Grana Padano cheese on top; now start again with the bechamel sauce, pasta sheets, courgettes, pesto sauce and grated cheese and repeat until your tray is full of delicious lasagne.

Bake in a pre heated oven for 30 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius (gas mark 4).

Enjoy!

Eggs, bread and tomato sauce

Saturday I had planned to go to the Shoreditch Vintage Fair, but I woke up late in the morning and I wasn't feeling very well (thanks to a nasty cold which has been going on for two weeks and it's starting to be annoying) so I decided to skip it (luckily the next one will be on February, yay!) and stay at home.

I had lunch really late, if you can still call it lunch after 3PM, with a recipe inspired by Sardinian "pani frattau", which is slightly different from how I made it most of the time.

It's a very quick and easy lunch or dinner option, and it's perfect if you have some leftovers (as stale bread or a couple of spoons of tomato sauce).

You will need (for1 portion):

2 eggs; 

some tomato sauce; 

some stale bread,;

1\4 onion;

2 tbsp evo;

basil or dried Italian herbs;

a cup of lamb stock;

Pecorino or Parmesan cheese.

If you have a little tomato sauce as leftover then it's perfect. The best would be a very simple tomato&basil sauce, but if you don't have it ready don't worry because it's very easy to make.

Start chopping the onion (I like it in big chunks) and gently cook it with a little extra virgin olive oil. When the onion is softened add some peeled plum tomatoes (3 of them will do) or some spoons of passata and let it simmer for about 20 minutes; add fresh basil leaves or dried Italian herbs mix at the very end (you don't want to burn the herbs flavor).

You can choose then to cook the eggs directly into the tomato sauce or made them poached.

Remember to toast the stale bread (if you don't have stale bread, you can toast fresh one and nobody will notice), either in the toaster or in the oven, personally I prefer the oven; and then soften it with a little stock (lamb is better, but you can use whatever stock you have at home, just avoid the fishy one).

Serve the slices of stale bread topped with tomato sauce, the eggs and finally a generous amount of grated cheese.

Enjoy!