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.

Nans Spag Bol

There’s no doubt that my Nan makes the best spaghetti bolognaise, I don’t know how she does it but it always is way better than mine!

There’s something so great about it!! The whole family agrees. So here’s the recipe that she so kindly gave me, it feeds 5 people.

Ingredients:

½ a red onion

1 large carrot

450g mince beef

1 tbsp tomato puree

tin of tomatoes

1 beef oxo cube

a drop of Worcester sauce

oregano

basil

salt and pepper

Method:

Cut up the onion and carrot by giving it a blitz in the food processor and then fry it in a little oil. Add the meat and stir it into the vegetables and fry it off, making sure it is all brown. Add in the tinned tomatoes and tomato puree. Put in all of the herbs and seasoning. Simmer it for half an hour, if you have a pressure cooker then put it in there for 10 minutes. If not cover the saucepan and simmer it all.

There's always a surprise at the bottom of the pasta bowls, they're all different!

This is the best spaghetti bolognaise you’ll ever have!

Bolognaise Sauce

This is the first thing that I ever learnt to cook so that I could make lasagne. I must have been 14 at the time; my Aunty bought me a Sam Stern Recipe Book (I still have it!) and I followed the recipe to make lasagne. I’m now a pro and make it without a recipe, how great am I!

Anyway, here’s the recipe that I go by when I make it.

Ingredients:

1 onion

2 carrots

1 garlic clove

450g mince beef

1 beef stock cube

1 tin of tomatoes

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Method:

1. Start by cutting up the onion and carrot and taking off the outside of the garlic clove. This time I blitzed them all up because otherwise my brother won’t eat it. I would normally just dice up the onion and carrot into small pieces and mince the garlic cloves.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Add the onion, carrot and garlic to a pan with some oil and fry it for about 5 minutes to soften them all.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Add the mince beef and brown it by cooking for about 8 minutes while breaking up the mince into smaller pieces.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Add the tin of tomatoes, stock cube and seasoning. Fill up the tin with water and add that as well. Stir it all together and simmer for 15 minutes, keep stirring throughout.

The dogs loved the smell of it too!

This sauce can be used in a lasagne or moussaka or just on pasta with some cheese. All of these recipes are coming in the next week or so! With my own twist of course!