I made Jamie Oliver's simple baked lasagne for the second time last night because it is delicious and also because it uses up the squashes I grew. However, it is also a lot of work, so the second time I made quite a few modifications to make it easier, with no significant change to the taste. That said, I wasn't able to bring the time it took down below 2.5 hours (although I think I could have cut another 30 minutes of that if I hadn't failed to read ahead in the recipe). In case you would also like to make the simpler version, here's what I did (with pictures along the way to help you):
WARNING: Start cooking at least 2 hours before you want to eat, 3-3.5 hours to follow the full cooking times recommended by Jamie.
Ingredients for the meat part
4 rashers pancetta or smoked bacon, finely sliced
1 pinch cinnamon
200 g (=about the volume of 2 onions) Sainsbury's frozen finely chopped vegetables (=chopped carrot, onion and celery, replaces 1 onion and 1 carrot)
2 tsp frozen garlic (replaces 2 cloves of garlic)
5 rounded teaspoons of dried herbs, e.g. herbes de Provence or thyme, rosemary, oregano, sage (replaces 2 handfuls fresh herbs: sage, oregano, rosemary, thyme)
olive oil
600 g frozen beef mince (replaces 400g beef mince, 200g pork mince)
2 x 400 g tins of chopped tomatoes
2 glasses red wine or water (= about half a tomato tin of liquid)
2 bay leaves
1 butternut squash , halved, deseeded and roughly chopped
2 heaped tsp of ground coriander (replaces 1 tablespoon coriander seeds, bashed)
1/2-1 tsp red chilli flakes (replaces 1 dried red chilli, bashed)
salt
black pepper
1 packet of fresh lasagne sheets (ideally 400 g, but I tried freezing my leftovers last time and they were horrible after that, so on the basis of waste not want not, just use whatever pack size you can find)
400 g mozzarella , torn up (or simply 2 balls of mozzarella, unless you have use for the the remaining bit you will be left with from the fact no one seems to sell 200g mozzarella balls)
Ingredients for the white sauce
500 ml crème fraîche (or 600 ml if like me you can only find 300 ml and 600 ml pots)
optional: 3 anchovies , finely chopped - I leave this out, I'm allergic to fish
2 handfuls of grated Parmesan cheese - Jamie says freshly grated, using pre-grated saves time and washing up
a little milk , optional
Method:
0. Start 2-3.5 hours before you want to eat - 2 hours for quick cooks prepared to skip part of the recommended cooking time, 3.5 hours for less speedy cooks who want to cook for as long as Jamie recommends, somewhere in between for any other combination (I removed an hour of the recommended cooking time for my version).
1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4.
2. In a large casserole-type pan slowly fry the pancetta and cinnamon until golden, then add the frozen finely chopped veg, the garlic, the herbs and about 4 tablespoons of olive oil.
3. Mix these together, then add the frozen beef.
4. Cook for about 5 minutes, then add the tinned tomatoes and the wine or water.
5. Add the bay leaves and bring to the boil.
6. Get some greaseproof paper, wet it and place it on top of the pan with a lid placed on top as well.
7. Then place in the preheated oven for about 1 hour (Jamie Oliver says 2 hours in the oven or simmer on the hob over a gentle heat for around an hour and a half). Go immediately to the next step of this recipe, you don't have time to sit down yet.
8. Peel, deseed and slice your butternut squash (if you are using up a winter squash with the sort of skin that refuses to come off when it's still raw, just slice and deseed, you can take the skin off when it's cooked). Rub your squash slices with olive oil, and sprinkle with salt, pepper and the ground coriander plus chilli flakes to taste (not much if you're a wuss like me). Place on a baking tray and roast in the oven for the last 45 minutes of cooking the sauce. If you're like me, it's taken you about 15 minutes to get your butternut squash to this stage, so just stick it straight in the oven and make sure there's 45 minutes left on the timer, the meat will be sufficiently done when the squash has had its 45 minutes. You can now go and do other things until the timer goes off (although if you are grating your own Parmesan, doing that grating should be one of those things).
9. When the timer goes off and the sauce is done, take it and the squash out of the oven.
10. Mix together your crème fraîche, anchovies (if using), and a handful of Parmesan.
11. Season the crème fraîche mixture and also the meat mixture with salt and pepper. You may need to loosen the crème fraîche mixture with a little milk.
12. Turn the oven up to 200ºC/400ºF/gas 6.
13. To assemble the lasagne, rub an earthenware lasagne dish with olive oil. Jamie Oliver then says to lay some sheets of lasagne over the bottom and drape them over the sides. I found this quite hard to interpret, so I did this:
15. Add about a third of the white sauce and a sprinkling of Parmesan (I used too much white sauce and had to skimp on the other layers).
16. Break the butternut squash into pieces/use a spoon to scoop out the winter squash away from the skin and use this as one layer.
17. Assess whether the sheets of lasagne you have left will only be enough for one more layer or whether there's enough for two. If you have enough for two, add another layer now, like I did, if not save your remaining sheets for the top.
18. Add the rest of the meat mixture in another layer (whether or not you've added in a layer of lasagne sheets).
19. Then add half the remaining white sauce (a third of the total white sauce - I didn't have as much left as I'd have liked as I didn't realise I needed to split it into thirds).
20. Add your final layer of lasagne sheets and fold in any bits of lasagne sheet hanging over the side.
21. Spread your remaining white sauce across the lasagne sheets, making sure that all parts of the pasta sheets are covered, unless you like crispy bits, in which case the way I did it is enough.
22. Tear up your mozzarella and scatter this over the top, then sprinkle with the last of the Parmesan.
23. Cook in the preheated oven for 30–35 minutes until golden.
In case you want to make Jamie Oliver's original version of this recipe, you can find it here. I highly recommend this lasagne. It is one of the nicest things I've ever cooked (and I've cooked a lot of nice things), and on top of that, although there are a lot of stages to this recipe, none of them are complex or need more than a pretty basic level of skill.
By the way, on the off chance that any supermarkets ever read this, I would love to be able to buy frozen mince with high welfare standards, particularly outdoor-reared, but organic would be fine (I just want the animals have led a happy life). Buying high-welfare fresh mince and freezing it myself is not as good, because you have to carefully defrost home-frozen mince before using it, whereas you can use producer-frozen mince straight from the freezer.
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