Recipe for Fennel and tomato lasagne
Serves about 6
I hope I’ve given the ingredients in shopping friendly measures but this is not a very exact dish so do cut down on the cheese a bit if you want to keep this lower fat.
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, chopped or crushed (whichever is easier)
3 fennel bulbs, cut in half then sliced, leaving the hard bit at the very bottom
2 medium onions, sliced
125ml red wine (doesn’t have to be posh but something drinkable)
3 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes
¾ tsp oregano or 1 tbsp fresh oregano/marjoram
1 tsp fennel seeds, roughly ground
1 tsp sugar
salt and pepper
250g ready to cook lasagne sheets
3 x 150g packs fresh mozzarella, the soft type in bags of liquid (not low fat, it won’t melt in the right way)
Warm the olive oil in a biggish saucepan or high sided frying pan over a medium heat and fry the onions and fennel until they go soft. Add the garlic and continue frying for another minute or two.
Add the tomatoes, wine or balsamic vinegar, oregano and sugar. Simmer for about twenty minutes. Doesn’t have to be exact but don’t do what I did and leave it for three quarters of a hour while chatting – I think this lost some of the delicate fennel flavour and made it a bit mushy. If, like me, you have a fridge full of jars of random stuff then a little something extra in the tomato sauce wouldn’t go a miss at this point, maybe a spoonful of sun dried tomato paste or a bit of harissa/chilli.
Spoon a good layer of the tomato sauce into the bottom of the dish and follow with a layer of pasta sheets. Continue layering with a layer of sauce, a layer of torn pieces of mozzarella and a layer of pasta sheets. You’ll probably end up with about 3 layers in total. If you can keep back a little more than a third of the cheese for the top layer to make it extra gooey and golden. If you want to you can leave the lasagne at this point and cook it later.
Cook in the oven for about 25 minutes at 180C/gas 4, adding on another five to ten minutes if you’ve made it in advance and left it standing for a while before cooking.
This reheats beautifully the next day with a tinfoil cover removed for the last ten minutes to let it crisp up again.