Masterclass

Choosing vegetables

You’d hardly be aware of it walking through a supermarket in the 21st century, but vegetables grow seasonally.

If you’re making any vegetable dish, foremost in your mind should be what is in season. In summer, this lasagne could be full of capsicum, eggplant and zucchini, while in winter, you could lean into the wonderful variety of greens and brassicas that will be at their best. Here are some options:

Summer

• 2 cups diced capsicum
• 3 cups diced eggplant
• 3 cups diced zucchini

Autumn

• 4 cups diced butternut pumpkin
• 3 cups roughly chopped silverbeet
• 1 cup sliced leeks

Winter

• 2 cups roughly chopped leafy greens
• 2 cups roughly chopped broccoli
• 2 cups roughly chopped cauliflower
• 2 cups sliced Brussels sprouts
• perhaps a bit of blue cheese

Spring

• 3 cups roughly chopped spinach
• 2 cups green peas
• 2 cups sliced asparagus
• 1 cup sliced artichoke hearts

Keep it simple

My bugbear with many recipes that contain multiple vegetables is that they can get too complicated, muddying the flavour of each vegetable.

The goal here is for your lasagne to have a specific flavour. If you make it with capsicum, eggplant and zucchini, it should be distinct from a version you make with leafy greens and Brussels sprouts. That might sound straightforward, but many vegetable dishes just taste like the same old vegetable medley.

It’s like painting a room. If you carefully choose a palette of one or two colours, perhaps with an additional accent here or there, you’ll have a distinctive and stylish room. But combine every colour you have, and every room you paint will be the same shade of brown.

The reason we cook the vegetables separately and stir them through the sauce at the end is to keep the flavour of each vegetable distinct, so you know if you’re biting into a piece of eggplant, broccoli or pumpkin. The same applies to many other mixed vegetable dishes, from ratatouille to curries.

Red or white, and besciamella

After choosing the vegetables, your next decision is whether to use a tomato or a ricotta base. This is entirely up to you. A summer or winter lasagne might work fantastically with a tomato base, but perhaps you could try a white base for your autumn or spring versions.

Regardless, to me, the key to a great lasagne, be it meat or vegetable, red or white, is the besciamella (bechamel). Season this well. So many lasagnes end up bland because cooks forget to season the besciamella – and because they don’t par-boil the lasagne sheets (more on that later).

Seasoning vegetarian dishes

While we’re discussing seasoning, you might note that I’ve encouraged you to season with vegetable stock powder throughout this recipe. As a meat sauce such as bolognese (ragu) cooks, the Maillard reactions between proteins and carbohydrates develop savoury flavours. As a vegetable-heavy dish cooks, some of the complex carbohydrates will change to simpler, sweeter compounds, which is why cooked vegetables are usually sweeter than their raw counterparts. There will be some increase in umami savouriness, too, but nowhere near as much as when cooking meat.

The challenge in seasoning, therefore, is to ensure that the dish remains savoury rather than ending up too sweet. Vegetable stock powder is useful for achieving this, so I recommend using it to season all of these vegetable lasagnes.

“The key to a great lasagne, be it meat or vegetable, red or white, is the besciamella (bechamel).”

Quick tricks for baked pasta

You might notice that I recommend you soften the lasagne sheets in boiling salted water before layering your lasagne even though your pasta packet assures you it isn’t necessary. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but I’ve had quite a few crunchy lasagnes where the liquid content of the sauce or filling wasn’t enough to soften the pasta, and which were under-seasoned because they were crying out for the salt normally added to the pasta water. I’ve never regretted softening the sheets a little in boiling salted water before layering, both for flavour and texture.

While I’m at it, an old Italian trick for al forno (baked) pasta dishes is to add 60ml (¼ cup) of water around the sides before baking. I started doing this a few years ago and have never looked back.

Another thing I always do with baked pasta dishes is rest them for 10 to 15 minutes after they come out of the oven. This allows the sauces to thicken and the cheeses to firm slightly, which helps the whole thing hold together better – no more layers of lasagne sliding around when you’re trying to slice and serve.

Lastly – and this is my favourite – a baked pasta dish will benefit from being covered in a sheet of aluminium so the edges don’t dry out. But how do you do this without the foil sticking to the top layer of cheese or bechamel? A toothpick or two inserted into the top of the dish will keep the foil sitting proud of the surface so that you can remove it to grill the top without pulling the whole top layer of cheese off with it. You’re welcome.