Delicious UK - (11)November 2020

make it special.

deliciousmagazine.co.uk 51

Lasagne of love

MAKES 9-12 SLICES, THOUGH I WOULDN’T WANT

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This is what I make for my

children before they go away, and

to welcome them back when they

come home again. I love the ritual

of making it: the anticipation, the

preparation, the soothing repetition

of the layering up, all suffuse me

with celebratory cosiness; even

writing about it now, I find I have

an idiotically fond smile playing

about my lips.

MAKE

AHEAD

Prepare the meat sauce up to 3

days ahead, cover and chill until

needed. Assemble (without

heese topping) up to 2 days ahead,

erand refrigerate until needed. Add

e andbakeasdirectedinrecipe.

STORE

Chill leftovers, covered, for up

to 2 days. Reheat in microwave

or cover with foil and heat in

180°C/160°C fan oven until piping hot.

FREEZE

Freeze the assembled lasagne

(without cheese topping) for up

to 3 months. Tightly wrap the

dish in a double layer of food wrap and

a layer of foil. Defrost for 24 hours in

fridge. Add cheese and bake as directed

in recipe. Freeze leftovers in airtight

container for up to 3 months. Defrost

overnight in fridge and reheat as above.

FOR THE MEAT SAUCE

• 2 large-ish onions (approx 350g)


• 3-4 x 15ml tablespoons olive oil


• 125ml full-fat milk


• 4 x 15ml tablespoons tomato purée


• 2 carrots (approx 250g)


• 1 stick of celery


• 4 fat cloves of garlic


• 150g rindless pancetta (or bacon)


• A small bunch of flatleaf parsley
  (approx 20g)


• 1 x 15ml tablespoon fresh thyme
  leaves (or 1 teaspoon dried thyme)


• ⅛ teaspoon dried chilli flakes


• 350g minced beef


• 350g minced pork


• 250ml red wine (good enough to
  drink) or red vermouth


• 500ml beef stock


• 2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes


• 2 teaspoons sea salt flakes
  (or 1 teaspoon fine sea salt)


• 3 fresh bay leaves →

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satisfactorily reflect that it is a simple
one, but often it just means that
details which could help the cook have
been jettisoned.
A recipe can be many things: a
practical document; a piece of social
history; an anthropological record;
a family legacy; an autobiographical
statement; even a literary exercise.
You don’t have to take your pick:
the glory of food is that, beyond
sustenance, it comprises a little of
everything – aesthetics and manual
labour thrown in.
There is a particular immediacy
about a recipe, in that it can never be
written for posterity. Even if it endures
long after its author, it is a message
entirely in the present. There is often
something unbearably poignant about

old photographs – those hopeful

faces, trapped in time, not knowing

anything of the depredations of the

future. Old recipes can seem similarly

guileless, similarly vulnerable. It is

not so much that the people for whom

the recipes were written no longer

exist, but that the food itself can often

seem so unrecognisable, even alien,

to us now: such urgent sustenance

reduced to historical interest.

I sometimes think that the appetite

for recipes, for reading and writing

about food and how we cook it, says

just as much about our hunger for

stories – these little condensed

chronicles that say so much – as

about our hunger for pleasure and

sustenance. In the recipe form, these

hungers are fused.

:OaOU\S

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