{"id":59,"date":"2016-09-04T13:28:36","date_gmt":"2016-09-04T13:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/?p=59"},"modified":"2023-12-18T12:22:02","modified_gmt":"2023-12-18T12:22:02","slug":"a-recent-lasagne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/a-recent-lasagne\/","title":{"rendered":"A recent lasagne…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_20160830_173149\"Here are some of the things I used to make a recent lasagne. It’s fairly hard to see, but there’s a bowl of home grown garlic at the back, on the right. Just push garlic cloves that are too small to bother peeling into the ground. A few months later, they will have multiplied enormously, and somehow pulled themselves down until they are six inches underground. I have no idea how they manage to do that, but they do. I must remember to ask my favourite botanist, if he ever visits us.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_20160830_175521\"This is the humble, yet powerful, Oxo cube that I used, to flavour the rather insipid looking beef mince. Some people tear the foil off, and crumble the cube with their fingers. Try this… Pull the little flaps out as shown, and hit\u00a0the cube a couple of times \"IMG_20160830_175534\"with your palm, until it is flattened. Now you can just rip it and tip the powdered Oxo straight into the pan. Isn’t that clever? I would credit the source of the tip, if I could remember it.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_20160830_175603\"That meat will need to be browned properly, of course, before you carry on making the sauce, but\u00a0you know that, don’t you? I wasn’t following a recipe, just doing what seemed likely to be the way I have made lasagne before.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_20160830_181542\"Now some recipes have you put layers of sauce in with the layers of meat and pasta. I don’t do that, mainly because it increases hugely the amount of sauce you will need, and tends to make the final dish sloppy. I have been known to put in layers of grated cheese, and that can work quite well, but this lasagne didn’t have any.<\/p>\n

Making the sauce is something one\u00a0\"IMG_20160830_182615\"ends up knowing how to do without measuring things. A lump of butter of a certain size. A big, but not too big, spoonful of flour. Do not forget Colman’s mustard powder, about half a teaspoonful. It’s not enough to make the sauce\u00a0taste mustardy, but it will seem dull if you forget to put it in.\u00a0\"IMG_20160830_182651\"The butter and flour have to be cooked until there is what one recipe book describes as a “biscuity smell”.<\/p>\n

You can see how it looks after the first little bit of milk has been added, in the third shot of the pan. Gradually, more milk is added, until the sauce seems runny enough to add grated \"IMG_20160830_182728\"cheese. Please use a decent Cheddar, not soapy cheap stuff.<\/p>\n

Lately, I have taken to cooking the layered meat sauce and pasta while I make the cheese sauce for the top, and that does help to prevent it from being sloppy. The result can be seen in the last \"IMG_20160830_194550\"picture, along with a salad that miraculously appeared while the lasagne was cooking.<\/p>\n

Nice tins of cider also got onto the table, and made the meal even more pleasant.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are some of the things I used to make a recent lasagne. It’s fairly hard to see, but there’s a bowl of home grown garlic at the back, on the right. Just push garlic cloves that are too small to bother peeling into the ground. A few months later, they will have multiplied enormously, … Continue reading “A recent lasagne…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71,"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/71"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doctor-dark.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}