Before I begin, let me get this out of the way. This is not a midweek lasagne, if such a thing exists. It is a weekend or ‘I have the shared kitchen to myself this afternoon/evening’ lasagne and I say this only because I was slightly nervous to share the recipe in case it seemed like it had too many ingredients. But sometimes, recipes do have more than five ingredients and that’s ok: I put them in because I wanted to make something non-accidental for a crowd larger than I had any business attempting to feed.
So. Broccoli Arts celebrates five years of existence in 2024; I got word of the first successful Arts Council grant on International Women’s Day of that year and I hit ‘submit’ on Grantium on 31st January 2019. In that time, a lot has changed, not least of all my relationship to the production company I set up. Eve Allin now runs it and I think that is an excellent thing for the artists involved; it is significantly harder to get project funding from ACE than it was even as recently as then. It was hard to imagine, though, that artists were expected to mount public-facing projects within the under £15k cap for smaller grants, given what a challenge it is to cover costs these days with an under £30k bid.
And it was with this changed landscape that I suggested hosting a supper club to raise funds for the company, which we did last Friday at Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses. This is the recipe for the lasagne I made. It’s enough for one standard IKEA roasting tin, which means about 8 portions. Feel free to riff on it, tag me and Broccoli in photos of you making it if you do so, but please do not tell me if you hate it. The two sauces are very close children of Alison Roman and Smitten Kitchen’s lasagne dishes, so if you want a more red or purely white sauce, check out their respective recipes.
Leek and Aubergine Lasagne
Ingredients (serves 8 or so)
2-3 shallots, diced
1 medium-large aubergine, diced (1cm or so cubed)
3 large, or 5 small, garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 tsp chili flakes
3tbsp olive oil (but if, like me, you have confit garlic oil knocking around in your fridge after feeding over 30 people on the weekend, and you infused that oil with bay leaves and chili flakes, you can just use 1 garlic clove for the béchamel and omit the rest)
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 can whole plum tomatoes (The two types of tin are for the texture but don’t get too hung up on this if you have two of the same kind knocking around at home — I basically never buy chopped tomatoes because I don’t think they’re as good value for money as whole ones mashed up with the back of your spoon in the pan. If you only have whole tomatoes, you might want to add an extra 5 minutes to reduce the sauce a bit further.)
1/2 tsp fennel seeds, ground
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp capers, finely chopped
950ml whole milk
115g unsalted butter
65g plain flour
1 tbsp wholegrain mustard
3 large or 6 smaller leeks (500-700g), sliced
60g hard cheese, grated (I used a vegetarian one for the supper club— if you’re using pecorino, though, be conscious that it is saltier than a parmesan-type cheese so possibly hold back a little on the salt while seasoning until everything is combined!)
80-100g cheddar, grated (Cheese is so incredibly personal though, so feel free to start off with half that amount and add more, depending on your preference. This recipe won’t be the cheesiest ever, but I am tempted to make cheddar, mustard and leeks on toast at some point this winter as an actual midweek/lunchtime option)
Freshly-ground nutmeg, optional
Lasagne sheets
Method
First, start on your red sauce. Heat two tablespoons of oil in a large pan, then add the shallots, garlic and chili flakes and cook on a medium heat until the shallots soften but haven’t started to brown yet; stir often with a wooden spoon.
Turn the heat down to low while you add the aubergine so your shallots don’t stick to the bottom of the pan; return the heat to high once all the veg is in. Season with salt and pepper; if the pan feels dry and the aubergine catch while you’re stirring them, reduce the heat down to medium, and add another tablespoon of oil. The aubergine will have a decent amount of liquid to evaporate so don’t be daunted if you hit the top of your pan at first— stir occasionally and maintain a medium heat, and the volume will reduce considerably.
Once the aubergine has reduced to about half its uncooked size in the pan, add the two tins of tomatoes (mashing the whole tomatoes on the back of your wooden spoon to break them down a bit), fennel seeds, capers, chili flakes and balsamic vinegar. Stir to combine and make sure there’s no aubergine stuck to the bottom of the pan, then turn the heat all the way down to low and let it simmer for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Meanwhile, get started on the béchamel. Peel off the first layer of your leeks, then slice them widthways so you get green-and-white coins, roughly 3 cm thick each, and put them all in a large bowl and cover with cold water to soak. Leeks are great, and very much in season in the UK at the moment, but can get very gritty, so shake your hand around in the water bowl to disturb the dirt that might be nestled in the leeks’ layers — do not worry about keeping the coin-slices intact as they’re going to be cooked down to resemble ribbons/strips anyway.
This is the step which is all Smitten Kitchen (apparently via Ina Garten): the béchamel. Add one clove of minced garlic to the milk and heat until warm then set aside. Melt the butter in a large pan and keep it on a medium-high heat for about 30 seconds after it’s all liquid to give it a bit of a brown; it will sizzle and have white flecks at the top. Add the flour to the pan and stir continuously (for the white sauce, I’d use a whisk or a silicone spoon over a wooden one) until combined with the melted butter. Then add the infused milk, bit by bit, into the roux pan, drawing on the same stores of patience needed when gradually adding stock to a risotto. Once half the milk has been incorporated, though, you can chuck the rest in the pan in one go. The sauce should be glossy, but quite thin.
Take off the heat, then add two thirds of the cheeses, the mustard and season with salt and pepper (and some nutmeg too if you wish).
Preheat the oven to 200C. Drain the leeks out into a colander and then add a small amount of vegetable or a light olive oil (maybe a tablespoon) to a smaller pan or frying pan on a medium along with a slither — maybe 10 grams? — of more unsalted butter. I suggest a lighter flavoured oil in this because a very green olive oil is very nice, but it is a flavour, and this oil is just to make sure the butter doesn’t burn in the pan. Add the leeks, season, and keep it on a medium-high heat, so as to speed up the evaporation. Again, the vegetables will reduce a lot, but if your pan feels overloaded, feel free to sweat the leeks down in batches, and add more butter to the pan if needed. Once all done, which will be between 10-15 minutes, add the leeks to the béchamel and taste to check for seasoning.
Check the tomato and aubergine sauce too; it will be a bit sharp but the piquancy is to cut through the creaminess of leeks. There will also be less red than white sauce and this is fine.
Assembly time: start with a thin layer of red sauce before putting the first lasagne sheets down. I used dry, but fresh would also work. I can’t recommend trying to pre-cook dried lasagne sheets and trying to keep them in a slightly oiled water as Alison Roman did in her video to keep them separate because I couldn’t make that work, though you might be more gifted with tongs than I am. For the second layer, add more red sauce and then the white sauce, and more pasta sheets. I got to three layers of pasta when the tomato sauce ran out and this is good because we want the final, top layer to be purely leeks. Sprinkle the remaining cheeses and some black pepper and put in the oven for 30 minutes. Check to make sure the bottom layer isn’t too al dente; cooking time might vary depending on your oven.
Enjoy! The component sauces can be frozen before assembly, if you would prefer, and could make for good portioning if you want to cook smaller batches of the lasagne in ovenproof glass tupperware dishes. In my opinion, this dish goes well with torta caprese if you’re hosting: Rosie Mackean’s recipe is fantastic.
NB: regular readers, the criticism will be back before the end of the month! Writing is for life, not just for Critmas, so I’m looking to be back here at least monthly this year. Apologies to those who subscribed for takes on arts and culture and instead got Garfield-fare. Normal programming will resume shortly.