Today I spent the whole morning of cooking making Vegetarian Lasagne, yes, one dish, nearly 5hrs work!

First I started the Fresh Spinach Pasta - The spinach needs to be cooked & then dried as much as possible. Unfortunately as I was squeezing the moisture out of the spinach between 2 plates - I broke a plate and had to start again in case there were bits of plate in the spinach - the perfect start to my morning!

Next I got started on the Piperonata - this is basically a tomato sauce with peppers, garlic, onions, basil, salt & pepper. The tomatoes were frozen from last years glut of them and they had to be peeled and chop, my fingers got frost bite! I made twice the recipe of this while another student made twice the Mushroom a la Creme recipe and then we shared.

Then I started some Bechamel sauce. Boiled some milk with carrot, onion, thyme, parsley & peppercorns, simmered, taken off the heat to infuse. Sieved the milk and discarded the veg etc - boiled again and thickened with roux - seasoned, yum!

Then back to the pasta - I whizzed up some 00 flour (the best flour to use for pasta) with the dried & chopped spinach then added some egg until the mixture came together. Rolled half out in a pasta machine and half with a rolling pin. Cooked in boiling water for 30 seconds and left aside.

When I thought I was ready to assemble the lasagne my teacher reminded me that I still had to cook more spinach to make buttered spinach for another layer of the lasagne. While rushing to get this dry I burnt my hand with hot spinach water - ouch!

Finally I assembled the lasagne & popped it in the oven until it was golden on top. I made a mini one with the leftover bits & pieces as you can see in my picture. After my teacher had a taste I gobbled the rest and it was well worth the hard work!