If I have a signature dish, this is it.

My lasagne is never done in a rush, the meat sauce bubbles away for about 2 hours and the milk for bechamel always gets infused before it’s used.

The finest lasagne I’ve had in my life was in Tuscany, when Ken took us to the little village not far from Bagni di Luca, not even to a restaurant, there was no menu,  every plate on the table was from a different set, as was the cutlery, but the lasagne  we were served was melting in the mouth, it tasted like heaven.

I make mine starting from the meat sauce. Onion gets chopped and fried up on the olive oil with some chopped carrots and celery, then I add the minced beef, not necessary lean one, brown it up and then pour some red wine, sweet red wine if I have it, it’s looooovely!. When it’s nearly all sunk in the meat I add a can of chopped tomatoes, lots of oregano, salt, pepper, nutmeg, a bit of sugar and let it all simmer slowly for at least 1,5 hour, stirring every 10-15 minutes. I don’t like my meat sauce to be too thick, otherwise the lasagne is a like  a brick afterwards, sometimes I loosen it up with some chicken stock or more wine.

Them onto the bechamel. I infuse my milk with a shallot, some garlic, peppercorns and a bay leaf and heat it up slowly.

I melt some butter, then add the flour, stirring vigorously, cook it up quickly and then start pouring in the infused milk gradually, having disposed of the infusing bits previously, of course. I like my bechamel quite thick, so in goes some grated parmesan, lots of seasoning and nutmeg.

I use fresh pasta from Waitrose, if it’s Sunday and Florian is in the mood, he might make it from scratch, it is sooooo worth it!

The bottom layer is always meat sauce, then some bechamel, pasta, meat sauce, bechamel, pasta and bechamel on top, finished with some more parmesan.

And into the oven for 30-40 minutes until slightly browned up, bubbly and the smell in the house drives us wild. While it’s baking, I open the wine and enjoy it on its own in anticipation of a feast.

I serve it with some good red wine and a crunchy green salad. I can see myself making it for my grandchildren in 40 years time. 🙂

Thanks to Alice, who gave me 3 older editions of it, I recently subscribed to Good Food magazine. Love it, every single paper is packed with good ideas I’d never have thought of.It came in handy this evening.

I tried out a side dish  tonight, made of courgettes and rice to go with my chicken kievs- a room for improvement here, I must say.

I fried up a couple of onions, thrown in 2 sliced courgettes and 2 handfulls of rice, topped it all with some hot chicken stock and seasoned well. I cooked it for about 5 minutes, added some grated cheddar and a table spoon of creme fraiche, made it all quite watery with the stock and transferred to the casserole dish. Covered with some more grated cheddar – in it went to the oven for about 40 minutes. When I took it out and tasted it, the rice was beautifully cooked with the flavours of the courgettes and chicken stock with a hint of cheese. Loved it!

I served it with an attempt of totally home made chicken kievs. I used to buy them ready from Waitrose, but having recently seen a BBC programme about  mechanically retrieved meat I don’t think I’ll be buying it any time soon again, though I normally trust Waitrose.

I seasoned 2 chicken breasts well, stuffed with some garlic butter- could have been more generous with it- dipped in egg and breadcrumbs, fried and finished off in the oven.

Really liked the courgette thing as an alternative to roasted potatoes or mash.

It looked like that…