
Here is a “Meat Free Monday” kind of meal. Certainly not the lowest in calories – but truly delicious and full of goodness! Just a word of warning – it does take quite a lot of effort but it is worth it in the end. In other words its not a quick and easy dinner – so save it for a special occasion!
Ingredients:
- 2 tins lentils
- 2 tins chopped tomatoes
- 1 onion
- 1 large punnet brown mushrooms chopped
- 1 cup frozen peas
- Basil leaves
- 2 large aubergines – sliced into thick-ish slices
- Lasagne sheets
- Mrs. Balls’ chutney
- Grated cheese (I use mature cheddar)
- White sauce: 2 tbsp butter 2-3tbsp
- Cake flour
- 500ml Milk
- Roast the aubergines in the oven. Add a dash of olive oil and salt to them and roast them until soft and cooked (then remove from the oven)
- Chop the mushrooms and fry them in a dash of olive oil (and a dash of white wine)- if you are feeling rebellious
- Put the frozen peas in a bowl and pour boiling water over them to defrost
- Pick the basil leaves off the stalks – you don’t want to add stalks to the lasagne
- In the same pan that you did the mushrooms – take the mushrooms out of the pan though. Fry the onion until soft then add the lentils and the chopped tomatoes. Cook this up adding a dash of Mrs. Balls’ chutney, salt and pepper. I also sometimes add a dash of soya sauce to make it more flavoursome!
- Make the white sauce:
- Heat the butter until runny
- Add the flour (about 2-3 tbsp) and with a whisk, mix the 2 together – it will look crumbly
- Then add about 500ml milk and continue to stir until the sauce gets thick. Add some black pepper and salt.
- In a big lasagne dish – add the first layer of the lentil mix
- On top of that add a layer of mushrooms (you are going to do 2 layers of mushrooms so only use half of them for this layer)
- Then add a layer of lasagne
- Then add another later of lentils with a layer of peas on top of the lentils and then a ‘layer’ of basil leaves – spread them out but keep them quite close together
- Then add a layer of lasagne
- Then another layer of lentils, a layer of mushrooms and peas (you can add a few more basil leaves as well – but not too many, basil can be a strong flavour)
- Then add the last layer of lasagne – if you have any lentil mix left over, please add that now or just add the aubergine layer on top of the lasagna sheets.
- Pour your white sauce over the aubergines
- Sprinkle some grated cheese over the top