I know you love lasagna and this one's going to be a little bit different,
I'm going to take some of the pain away some of the preparation away, no white sauce, no layering.
This is my easy peasy scruffy aubergine lasagna with a gorgeous sweet tomato sauce
topped with crispy sage leaves and almond crunch, delicious.
So let's do this - one of the things that we do badly in the UK is cook this, I don't know why,
everyone in the Mediterranean is celebrating it. But I don't want it to be kind of like woolly and
sort of spongy I want it to be creamy and sort of substantial and pull in flavour,
and I really think that this method you're gonna love. So first up we'll just nip off the ends
and then split in half. I want about 250 ml of water. Let's get it on a medium-high heat,
and then I want three onions. You can break these little quarters up if you want,
and the first part of this recipe is steaming and the steaming is going to make the onions
and the aubergine soft and silky and delicious, and ready to take on flavour.
And for that we're going to use 6 cloves of garlic, a bit of lemon zest, and a de-seeded
dried chilli for some background heat. And then I want to get some herbage. Now you could use so
many different herbs, I want to use sage on this one. This is a purple sage, get a nice little kind
of wadge of that, and then here is your classic green sage, so give them a nice little wash.
And this is going to give the most incredible fragrant savoury flavour. Let's have a look
at what's going on in here. So the onions and the aubergine have completely changed texture,
they're soft. And as this excess water starts to sort of cook away you can hear the sounds in the
pan change, right? You can hear it begin to sort of dry fry. Push all the veggies to one side.
Then go in with 3 tablespoons of olive oil then those fragrant flavours, the garlic,
lemon and chilli, and about half the sage. As I push this around there's sticky bits on the bottom
that are like the concentrate, see that on the end of the spoon? It looks like rubbish it looks like
mess but that is deep, deep delicious flavour. Now we've fried you can add the wet stuff,
squish up two tins of beautiful plum tomatoes and refill the cans with water, in it goes. And in the
next 20 minutes while that simmers and blips away beautifully all that caramelisation on the bottom
will come off and flavour that sauce. We're gonna want some crunchy toppings with this guys, so bash
up 50 grams of almonds and rub the remaining sage leaves with a little olive oil. And then
when that bakes on top of the lasagna it makes the most incredible almost like savoury crisp.
I haven't seasoned yet and there's a reason for that because I'm going to use two cheeses
for this. I'm using a cheddar and a beautiful Parmesan. You can get hard cheeses that are
vegetarian in the Parmesan world. Cheddars, they're all over the place have a little look.
Whatever you use, 80 grams of each will do. So let's turn the heat off now. If you have
a look at the bottom can you see how that's completely clean? So the flavour has now gone
into the sauce and now we can go in with that blend of Parmesan and cheddar. Mix that through
and it should go oozy. Okay, so I'm going to use 300 grams of fresh lasagna sheets
and all I'm going to do is literally tear them up right, into sort of odds and sods. And I'm
not going to layer it up I'm not going to get uptight and sort of do an architectural thing,
I said it was scruffy right and it's going to be scruffy. So almonds on top. Last but not least,
those oil-rubbed sage leaves. In the oven it goes for 25 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius,
which is 400 Fahrenheit, and what's going to happen in there is pure deliciousness.
Let's have a look. Come on! Look at that, beautiful. It's gone gnarly, it's blipping away,
it smells absolutely incredible. And it'll work a treat with a bit of salad. Right. Here we go.
So get in there with a nice big wadge.
Mm! Oh my Lord! It's amazing. I think it's a really fun alternative to your regular lasagna.
Glass of wine, bit of salad, nice company, happy days.
Right, we're gonna do mac and cheese but this is gonna be greens mac and cheese,
packed full of the good stuff. This family classic is so mouth-watering kids and adults alike will
never believe it's busting with veg. So I start with the humble leek and I want to show you a
way of getting the most incredible flavour out of vegetables. Take this part off here,
split the leeks in half, and give it a nice wash. Just roughly slice up the leeks. And then I've got
a casserole pan on a medium heat and a knob of butter. And I will just nip over here and get
some thyme. I absolutely love thyme right, and I love growing herbs on the window sills, backyard,
garden whatever. And literally just a few little bits of thyme will give so much flavour. And in
we go with the leeks. Oh, the smell is amazing! Then three big fat cloves of garlic. Little crack,
a little peel, and a little slice. Now the other veg we're going to use is sprouting broccoli,
this is going to give the most amazing flavour. Take these beautiful heads off, right, they can go
in later. And then we want to embrace the goodness in the stalks. By finely chopping them and adding
them to that pan, your mac and cheese with veg is going to be way way better in nutrition and
in taste. The next 15 minutes of softening are key so be patient and let the veg do its thing.
Then it's time to get saucy.
We're going to start with some plain flour, 2 tablespoons. And then a litre of milk,
and stir the whole time. We'll bring that to a simmer now and just thicken it up a little bit.
At this point, off goes the heat. And then grate 150 grams of cheddar then 30 grams of
Parmesan. Parmesan isn't vegetarian but there's some brilliant veggie Parmesan alternatives out
there so have a little look around. For a last hit of veggies and colour I'm going to use 100 grams
of spinach. It will just wilt in the residual heat of this sauce, and that is my basic recipe. But,
if you wanted to load more veg in, out in the yard I've just got a few small bits and pieces growing.
So I've got some lovely Swiss chard here so you can just nick a couple of leaves and you can
bespoke your amazing mac and cheese. Wash and stir in any extra veg then bring on the hand blender.
Turns it into a silky luminous green sauce. Add to the party 450 grams of dried macaroni boiled for
just 5 minutes and the pasta will finish cooking in the oven. Finally, fold in the beautiful heads
of broccoli. That is like an eruption of gorgeous mac and cheese green goodness.
A little grating of Parmesan just on the top, and then one last flurry, flaked almonds. Put them in
like little individual soldiers and... nah come on just sprinkle it on top, you know I'm only joking!
Bake for 30 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius or 350 Fahrenheit and your
family will be begging for this veg-filled supper. This is too exciting... oh! Yes.
Look at that. Proper glorious cheesy oozy food. So let's serve some up.
Welcome to the wonderful world
of greens mac and cheese. Nice lemony salad. That is a thing of joy. So let's get in there.
That is absolutely delicious. Wow. You've got that gorgeous creamy oozy cheesy sauce
but it's full of the good stuff! And that's what it's all about right, don't apologize,
celebrate with possibly one of the best mac and cheese ever. Great.
I'm going to make a beautiful carbonara pasta, yes I know it normally has smoky
bacon but I have a beautiful veggie version with sweet leeks. And I'm
amplifying the sweetness in an utterly decadent luxurious sauce.
This is a family favourite in my home and I want to show you how to do it so it starts
with two leeks. By concentrating on the white part of the leeks what we're going
to do is get a whiter sauce and a really sweet deep flavour. So just strip it down the middle
and give it a nice wash. Finely slice it.
And by taking the care to make them nice and fine they're just going to cook in a
more delicate way and they'll wrap around our spaghetti in the most beautiful way.
Get a pan on a medium heat, add a tablespoon of olive oil, a knob of butter, 4 sprigs of thyme
and four finely sliced cloves of garlic. Then go in with the leeks, give it a season with salt,
let's have a stir-up. I don't want to achieve any colour. What I do want to do is achieve some
incredible sweetness and depth of flavour, so what I need to do is pretty quickly stop this frying
and I'm going to do that with some water, 400 ml and then we'll turn the heat down to low,
a lid goes on top and we're gonna let that just gently gently tick over. It will get
sweet and delicious and it's that easy. Leave for 40 minutes until silky and soft.
Can you see how it's cooked down? That will be perfect to wrap and coat the pasta.
Now we're going to cook a bunch of spaghetti. Spaghetti of course is the classic pasta
that goes with carbonara. We're going to salt this water. Cook the pasta according to the
packet instructions, 10 minutes here. So I need to do the egg part of the sauce. Traditionally you'd
use just the egg yolk but I'm going to use the whole egg because I just don't want to waste it.
Beat the egg up like that and then we need to add and grate in the cheese. I'm going to use
Parmesan but you know this isn't vegetarian okay it's got rennet in it which is from an animal
product but if you have a look around you'll see hard cheeses that are vegetarian. So grate in 50
grams and mix it up. And then I just want to take a little moment to take stock right, we've got the
sauce here right it's perfect big flavour. Turn the heat off now, and I want to steal
some of that lovely starchy cooking water. Now I'm going to add a little bit of that to the Parmesan
and the egg and that's just going to loosen it up and it gives you beautiful silky sauce.
Drain the pasta and go into our leeks. We'll toss this together, and you just want the heat
to calm down a little bit. If I add that egg and Parmesan straight away it will start to scramble
and that's not cool. So when the pans cool down a little bit we'll go in with the Parmesan and egg
and then we want to move really fast okay? We want to keep agitating it like this.
Look! Look how creamy that is come on! Amazing. Let's plate this up.
Just roll it around in that sauce and you can see like the leeks have almost cooked into nothing.
They surround the pasta completely but you can't even see it. And here we go over to the plate.
And then hit it quite generously with the black pepper, it gives it that classic flavour. A little
Parmesan and just a kiss of extra virgin olive oil. Right, let's try some of this. Look at that.
The sweet leeks are off the chart. What I like is we've taken the humble leek,
a vegetable that's often not celebrated you know, always the bridesmaid never the bride,
but we've given it time. And it's just simple but delicious, quite luxurious.