This is a traditional Greek recipe, which my family fell in love with when we visited Athens last month. I used beef in my recipe instead of lamb but you could use any minced meat that you have available. I made it in the same way as a lasagne with a couple of layers whereas it is traditionally made with one.

Ingredients:

A batch of white sauce

A batch of bolognaise sauce

4 medium potatoes

1 aubergine

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Method:

1. First of all make up your batches of white sauce and bolognaise sauce.
2. Peel your potatoes and chop them up into slices. Boil them for about 8 minutes; tip them into a colander and blast with cold water to cool them down.
3. Next chop the aubergine into slices, put them in a colander with some salt for 10 minutes. Then put them into a saucepan with some olive oil and cook on each side for 5 minutes, do this for all of the slices. Put them onto some kitchen towel to soak up all of the oil that isn’t required.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Assemble the moussaka. Put a layer of bolognaise sauce, then a layer of aubergine, followed by a layer of potatoes and then the white sauce over it all. As mentioned before I repeated this again but you could just do one layer of all of them but use all of the mixture for each layer.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Place in the oven for 45 minutes at 180C. I served this by itself and my sister said it was really good! I will take that from her!!

Courgette Lasagne

Last week, I tried something a bit different; I had already tried “courgetti” and I absolutely love lasagne, so I thought I would replace the pasta sheets with slices of courgette instead. Here is my recipe for courgette lasagne.

Ingredients:

Slices of courgette

A batch of white sauce

A batch of bolognaise sauce

Method:

Peel the courgette; with a normal vegetable peeler; into slices of courgette, they will be quite slim so you will need quite a few slices.

Assemble the lasagne after you have made your batches of white sauce and bolognaise sauce. In your baking dish, put a layer of bolognaise sauce, then a layer of courgette slices and then a layer of white sauce. Repeat this until you have used up all the ingredients or the dish is full. Try to keep the layers similar in size.

Place in the oven at 180C for 30 minutes. It won’t need to cook for as long because the layers of courgette are thinner than the pasta sheets.

Serve with garlic bread or more vegetables, I had mine all on its own, as I didn’t feel I needed any more than that.

I know it’s not the most attractive looking plate of food, but trust me, it tasted even better than normal lasagne.

White Sauce

Over the years I’ve made this countless amount of times, so here’s the recipe I use and my tips to go with it.

Ingredients:

25g butter

25g plain flour

600ml milk

25g cheddar cheese

Method:

Melt the butter in a saucepan, over a low heat.

Stir in the flour and cook for 1 to 2 minutes. I recommend constantly stirring to avoid it sticking and not burning.

Take the pan of the heat and gradually stir in the milk to get a smooth sauce. Return to the heat and, stirring all the time, bring to the boil. It’s important not to leave it, keep your eye on it at all times to avoid it catching or it will ruin.

Add in the cheese and whisk while it is on the heat, this will allow it to thicken it up quite quickly but leave it on the heat until it does, whisking regularly.

I will be referencing this recipe quite a lot in my next few recipes.