Tuna & Vegetable Lasagne - very definitely out of the ordinary!

Announcing ... hubby's truly spectacular Tuna & Vegetable Lasagne!

This recipe was dreamt up during our brainstorming session, last Monday.  Hubby had wanted to make a Lasagne since for ever and it just seemed that the time was right for the Lasagne, as we were having a bit of an Italian theme.

We picked a day when (we hoped!) we wouldn't have too much else on, so that he could give the recipe the time it required.  We didn't want him to be rushing the various stages, as when you're developing a recipe from scratch and without a recipe to follow, some times you need time in which to make changes.

As it was, he travelled through the various stages (starting in the morning, with the fennel sauce) without mishap or any changes to the original plan - and the end result was pretty darned exceptional.  It continued being exceptional the following day for lunch, too!

I'll pass you over to hubby now, so that he can talk you through the process :

As most people will already know, a classic Lasagne has several elements and cooking stages to tussle with.  These include making two sauces and then assembling with pasta sheets before smothering in cheese and then letting the oven do the rest.  In truth, one could pre-buy the sauces and then just put the thing together in a dish for a perfectly good Lasagne...but where's the fun in that eh?  This recipe adds a couple of extra tasks which aren't very taxing but do add a little to the time required.  For the sake of simplicity, I'll list all of the ingredients needed for all of the stages and then move on to the method.

TUNA & VEGETABLE LASAGNE    (serves 5-6)

Ingredients :

For the Tomato & Tuna Sauce

1 medium Onion (or three banana shallots), chopped small

1 clove Garlic, minced

2 Tbs Olive oil

1 Courgette, chopped to 1cm pieces

1 large Carrot, chopped to 1cm pieces

6 Asparagus stalks, tips removed, stems cut to 1cm pieces

185g Tin of tuna, in Water or Brine  (130g drained weight)

1 Tin Chopped Tomatoes

2 tbs Tomato Puree

1 tsp Oregano

1 tsp Basil

1/2 tsp Thyme

Dash of Worcester Sauce

For the Fennel Bechamel

1 Fennel (preferably with lots of the green frondy parts on top)

200ml good Vegetable stock  (I use Marigold stock powder)

75g Salted Butter

75g Plain Flour

2 pints semi skimmed Milk

Pinch of Nutmeg.

Additional Ingredients

1 pack Lasagne sheets

100g grated Cheddar Cheese

75g grated Parmesan

Method :

1.  Take the fennel and slice into thin strips, reserving the green frondy parts, and place in a small saucepan with the vegetable stock.  Simmer these together for ten minutes or until the fennel softens.  Drain the stock into a cup and set aside before using a hand blender to puree the softened fennel.  Put the fennel puree into a bowl and set aside.

2.  Melt the butter in a saucepan and then mix in the flour, stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon.  Take great care not to let the flour burn on the bottom of the pan or you'll have to start all over again.  A thick paste, called a roux, will quickly form in the pan.  Keep stirring for a few minutes to allow the flour to cook out before adding enough milk to loosen the roux.

3.  Keep adding more milk, little by little, making sure that it mixes in well, until you have a thick sauce.  At this stage it's probably best to switch to a balloon whisk as you continue to add more milk until the sauce gets to a nice consistency.  I aim for a bit thicker than double cream.  At this stage, season the sauce with salt (not too much, remember the butter was salted) pepper and a little grated nutmeg.  Now add the pureed fennel and the finely chopped green frondy parts.  Bear in mind, that the flour in the sauce will continue to cook and thicken throughout the whole process so you may need to readjust the consistency, by adding more milk, after adding the fennel puree.

4.  Taste to check the seasoning and add more if necessary, before setting the sauce aside. As a final point, I should mention that classic bechamel uses milk which had previously been infused with onion and cloves.  I elected not to use infused milk because I didn't want to lose the delicate flavour of the fennel.

Now go and have a nice cuppa.....your whisking arm will thank you for it.

5.  For the tomato sauce you will need firstly to par boil the carrots in just enough water to cover them until they are slightly tender before being set aside.  Keep the liquid that the carrots cooked in as this will be added to the tomato sauce, along with the fennel stock reserved earlier.

6.  Saute the onion and garlic gently in the olive oil until soft.  Add the herbs and cook for a minute or two before stirring in the tomato puree.  Allow this to cook for a few minutes and then add the chopped tomatoes and the reserved cooking liquids from the fennel and the carrots.  Simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the tomato sauce has thickened a little, before adding the courgette and asparagus.

7.  Cook through until the vegetables begin to feel tender and then stir in the drained tuna. After adding a dash of worcester sauce, check for seasoning and consistency, which should be a nice thick ragu-a-like, before adding the carrots and then taking the pan off the heat.

Both sauces should be allowed to cool a little before assembly, which goes  like this:

8.  Firstly place a thin layer of the bechamel on the bottom of the lasagne dish.  This layer is here purely to prevent the lasagne sheets from sticking to the bottom of the dish.  Now place a layer of lasagne sheets to cover the whole base of the dish and then top it with half of the tomato sauce.  Another layer of pasta is followed by a layer of bechamel, then pasta, then tomato, then pasta and finally a top layer of bechamel.

9.  The whole lasagne can now be put aside for cooking later in the day or frozen for cooking another time (allow an extra 45 mins in the oven if cooking from frozen).

10.  When ready to cook, sprinkle the grated cheddar evenly over the top and then the finely grated parmesan over that.  If cheese isn't really your thing (quelle horreur!) then the cheddar can be omitted....but definitely not the parmesan.

11.  Cook in the oven, preheated to 180c for 45 minutes, rotating the dish halfway through cooking.  When ready, remove from the oven and allow to rest for at least 10-15 minutes. Ideally, lasagne should be served warm, rather than hot (oh, and the aroma generated will drive your family nuts....hehe).

Serve with your preference of salad.

Printable version

Meal planning ahoy!

After a cunningly placed two days without a recipe worth blogging (in the hope that I'd catch up a little bit! Still got a book review to do though), here I am on Wednesday all ready to talk about this coming week's menu list.

Which is a bit better than last week, when it was very nearly all over by the time I got to it!

Here's what we're having :

Pizza and doughballs

Spicy lamb mince and Kosheri

Spring time prawn pasta

Parmesan chicken with Polenta and peas

Tuna & Asparagus salad with Ciabatta

Chicken a la Son & Heir with Jersey Royals, carrots & tenderstem broccoli

Sausages, cheesy champ mash & peas (or baked beans).

Tuesday starts the week with a special request from hubby for Pizza and doughballs.  Yes, I know I should have had some virtuous salad or something, but there we are.

Tonight is a lovely combination, being my recipe for Spicy Lamb Mince and Ottolenghi's recipe for Kosheri.  It's been a while since we've had Kosheri and I am remembering it as being a bit of a trek - but having read the recipe it seems easy-peasy, so either it's harder than it looks, or my memory has gone to pot - which is quite possible!

Thursday demands an easier recipe as it's a working day.  I discovered a recipe for Spicy Shrimp & Mushroom pasta, which I've used as a base and developed what I'm euphemistically calling "Spring time prawn pasta".  It's basically what it says it is - pasta with prawns, plus sugar snap peas and baby corn.  It has a cream cheese (low fat) sauce which binds it all together.  I've never done this one before but hopefully it'll be tasty.

Friday is another case of "face the scary recipe", where I'll be having a go at cooking wet polenta for the first time.  I've taken Willie's advice (and who better, considering he's been making it for years) and I'll let you know how I get on!  The chicken is a simple chicken dunked in grated parmesan recipe, so that I can give the polenta my attention!

Saturday (pray for fine weather!) will be a Tuna & Asparagus salad, with Ciabatta.  The tuna is only tinned - but then I've two tins lurking in the cupboard needing using - and hopefully I'll be able to get some Asparagus, even though we're at the end of the season now.  I have a fall-back position just in case I can't find Asparagus - which is to get some fine green beans, but Asparagus would be so much better!  The Ciabatta will be rubbed with garlic, drizzled with olive oil and cooked on our new griddle pan.  Hubby found the griddle pan in a charity shop for £1.50!  Bargain!

Now Sunday is a special day, as that's when Son & heir will be trotting out his recipe for Sunday dinner, involving a chicken breast wrapped in bacon, with Jersey Royals, carrots and tenderstem broccoli.  The last time he cooked this for us, it came out beautifully.  He's keen to do it again - and I'm certainly not going to stop him!

Which brings us back to Monday, which being a working day, demands an easy dinner.  We'll be having sausages from the butcher, with the cheesey champ mash that I saw Paul Merrett making on "Perfect" the other night - except with somewhat less butter!  The combination of raw spring onions with the melted cheese and mashed potato has been making my mouth water ever since - so it just has to be done!  I'll be having some peas with it and I expect the boys will be wanting baked beans.

So that brings us to the end of another week.  I'll have to buy just the Pizzas, prawns, chicken and sausages, as the lamb mince and tuna are in the kitchen already.  The Kosheri doesn't require shopping for, as I bought everything for it last week.  The Polenta is already here, as is the parmesan and the peas.  I did have to buy some blue cheese to use with it though, and hopefully Willie will forgive the fact that it's French blue cheese instead of Gorgonzola - as there was a difference of £1 inbetween the two!  I think it's a nice variety of styles of cooking and meat products, with plenty of opportunity to get those all important veggies into us.

Now, if only I'd remembered to get the Lamb mince out of the freezer this morning ....

.

Pasta Puttanesca with Tuna - at last!

You may be wondering why the addition of "at last!" in the title there.

Well, you see, I was beginning to think that I'd never get the chance of making this 'ere pasta dish.  The last THREE times it has appeared on the menu list, it has been bumped off for one reason or another.  I was beginning to think it was cursed - or that hubby and son viewed its inclusion on the list with such trepidation that they were going to all kinds of lengths to avoid having it.

However, it turns out it was just unfortunate circumstance that brought about its loss from the menu lists and we successfully ate it for dinner a few nights ago.

Now you may also wonder about the addition of tuna to the recipe, as I know that a strict pasta puttanesca is largely vegetarian (if you forget about the anchovies).  The trouble is, that my boys (both large and small) are committed carnivores.  If the meal doesn't include meat of some kind - and fish is included under the heading of "meat" for this purpose - then it's not "dinner".

So, having come across Delia Smith's recipe for straight Pasta Puttanesca and liking the look of it very much, I immediately began to consider what meat I could include and how it would go.  Should it be included in the recipe, or the recipe used as a side dish to the meat?  I considered bacon, but we've already got a number of successful pasta dishes that use bacon and I'd rather use something else.  Then, the anchovies raised their delicious little heads, which got me to thinking tuna.  Having re-read the method, it seemed entirely logical to include a tin of tuna right at the end when the sauce is pretty much made.  That way, the tuna wouldn't be broken up too badly.

I have to admit that I tinkered around with Saint Delia's recipe something awful (shallot, red pepper, wine, fish sauce, ketchup .. the list goes on) - but then considering the scrumptious dish that resulted, I'm not of a mind to apologise for doing so!  I think I can safely say that this is the first dish I've made, that I've been actively aware of the Umami (the fifth taste sensation) involved.

PASTA PUTTANESCA WITH TUNA (feeds 3)


Ingredients :

350g spaghetti or linguine (more, if you are hungry!)
3 drops olive oil
1 pinch sea salt

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 shallot, chopped fine
1 red pepper, seeds removed and sliced small
2 cloves garlic, grated
2 tsp fresh basil, chopped
150ml red wine
50g anchovy fillets, drained
1 tsp fish sauce
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
50g pitted black olives
1 tbsp capers, drained
400g tin cherry tomatoes
1 tsp sugar
tin of tuna in spring water, drained
pinch black pepper.

Method :


1.  To make the sauce, heat the oil gently in a medium saucepan then add the shallot and red pepper and cook them slowly until softened.


2.  Add the garlic and basil and cook for 1-2 minutes.  Then add the red wine and allow it to bubble until reduced by approximately half.  This should only take a few minutes.


3.  Add the anchovies, fish sauce, ketchup, olives, capers and tomatoes and season with black pepper.  Do not use salt, as you've already got salt in the form of the anchovies and fish sauce.


4. Turn the heat down to low and let the sauce simmer uncovered for some 40 minutes, stirring from time to time, by which time it will have reduced to a lovely thick mass with very little liquid left.  Taste for seasoning and add the sugar if the acidity is too much.


6.  Add the tuna and a little extra basil to the tomato sauce and stir gently to combine.  Allow it a minute or two to heat through sufficiently.


5. While the sauce is reducing, cook the spaghetti or linguine to manufacturer's instructions, except adding the three drops of olive oil and making sure the water is salted.  Drain the pasta when there is still a little bite left in it and return it to the pan.  Aim to have the pasta ready when the sauce is finished.



6.  Serve on warmed plates with plenty of grated parmesan cheese and garlic bread.

. 

Birthday High Tea No. 2 : Tuna & cheese tart

The tart, prior to having its pastry crust trimmed

I have been after, since time immemorial, my Mum's recipe for her Salmon Tartlets.

Lo and behold, she turned it up the other day and sent me a copy - right in time for me to be able to make a version of it for Son's birthday High Tea.

You know how some dishes stay in your memory, long after the occasions they were made for have vanished?  Well this is one of those.  I seem to remember our having the Salmon Tartlets at just about every Christmas tea-time, when you're so stuffed from Christmas Dinner that all you can really manage is one leetle tartlet and a wafer-thin mint.  They have resided in my memory, alongside a big sign which says "YUM" for as long as I can remember, so you can imagine how pleased I was to finally get the recipe.

However, needless to say, I couldn't quite run to Salmon on the ole budget but Tuna goes very well with Cheddar cheese in a Tuna Pasta Bake, so I figured that Tuna would be an acceptable replacement, as indeed it was.  Chillibob was surprised at the lack of white sauce, he expected it to come up a lot more "saucy" than it does.  However that was his expectation as opposed to the recipe's results, as my Tuna version actually came up a lot "saucier" than my Mum's remembered Salmon versions!

Apart from the denomination of fish, the tart differs from my Mum's recipe in that the original has you make individual leetle tart cases for filling.  I didn't have a suitable tart tray (mine having died when the boiler began leaking, one day) so I made one big tart and divided it into slices on the day.

TUNA & CHEESE TART (serves 6 for a buffet, or 4 if you're hungry!)

Ingredients :

1 small can of Tuna in spring water
a white sauce mix, including enough milk (or make a sauce from scratch with a Roux)
half a lemon, zested
black pepper, to taste
cheddar cheese, grated, to cover

Method :

This recipe presumes that you have already either made or bought a shortcrust pastry case, approx 8" across.

1.  Pre-heat your oven to 180deg C (fan).  Make up the sauce mix, including some generous seasoning as the fish - being in spring water - doesn't have any added salt.  Set aside to cool.

2.  Decant the fish into a bowl and lightly break up the chunks.  Add the lemon zest and a bit more pepper.

3.  Add the sauce spoonful by spoonful until you achieve the desired consistency, which is one where there's just enough sauce to hold everything together, but not so much that it is loose and runny.

4.  Add the fish mixture to the pastry case, smooth until it's level and sprinkle a covering of cheddar cheese over.

5.  Bake in the oven for 30 mins (or more, depending on the thickness of your cheese), then allow to cool before serving.

Serve as part of a buffet, or with a jacket potato or salad (or both!) as a main meal.