And to celebrate, how about a competition? Lets make this fun and simple. How about we find the best recipe for lasagne? Who doesn’t like lasagne? Any takers, there is a corner over there and a paper bag to pull over your head while the rest of us play.
Rules. It has to be good. It can be out of a book, but in that case, please give credit to the author. It can be traditional Italian, or otherwise. It can be vegetarian. So we post a recipe here and people try it out and rate it from 1-10 with 10 being high.
I think this will have to be a competition lasting until Thanksgiving as people will need to try out different recipes. Oh, and because there are two Thanksgiving dates, lets go with the American one in November and not the Canadian one in October.
Prize? How about a copy of one of my ebooks for the recipe with the highest score? I will have another one out by the end of the competiton, so there will be a bigger selection.
Anyone like to start? Please post here in the comments. I will put my favorite recipe tomorrow.
cnlesley 
Near to us is a pier which has been rebuilt and people have been able to sponsor planks and put their own tributes on one. I was walking there the other day with my friend Heather and she decided that if I had a plank it should say “Jo – she killed a lot of people, but she made a mean lasagne…” So, here’s my mean lasagne recipe.
Joey’s Baddass Quorn Lasagne.
I always make my lasagne with Quorn because my BF is a vegetarian. It’s lower in fat than beef mince, it’s not as greasy, and because it has the same texture as meat, once you’ve chucked all the other stuff in it’s really hard to tell the difference.
You will need : a large saucepan
a large oven dish
a cheese grater
500gm of frozen Quorn mince
Two cans of chopped tomatoes
Lasagne sheets.
Garlic Puree
Tomato Puree
Chilli
Basil / Mixed herbs
Cheddar Cheese (lots) (or Red Leicester.)
Cheese sauce mix (Yes, I cheat, because I hate making cheese sauce. I also cheat with pastry 😉 )
Any or all of the following – half a large onion, half a pepper (any colour, but I find green goes well), 250 gm mushrooms.
Serves four hungry people, or six modest appetites, or one Garfield.
Pre-heat your oven to 220 degrees.
Put the Quorn mince in a saucepan and cook it over a high heat until it starts to brown.
Add the tomatoes, then chuck in the finely chopped peppers / mushrooms / onion according to taste, and turn it down to a low heat.
Add a dash of chilli, and a generous squirt of garlic puree (Some people claim there’s such a thing as too much garlic, but I maintain that keeping vampires away is a good thing…)
Add a slightly less generous squirt of tomato puree, and a big sprinkle of herbs.
Simmer the whole concoction over a low heat for about 15 minutes, stirring regularly. If it starts spitting and generally behaving like an active volcano, turn it down.
After 15 minutes, turn it off. Get your oven dish and spoon a layer of your sauce into the bottom, then cover it with a layer of lasagne sheets (one layer, and don’t worry too much if there are a few gaps. Repeat this laying process until you run out of sauce, or the dish is about 3/4 full. You should end up with lasagne sheets on top – don’t worry if they curl up a bit, they’ll flatten in the cooking.
Mix up a packet of cheese sauce according to the instructions (I won’t tell anyone!) – you can probably do this in a small saucepan or microwave. I like to add a handful of grated cheese to mine to make it extra cheesy, but you don’t have to.
Pour the cheese sauce all over the top of the lasagne, then grate a shedload of cheese all over the top of it until the dish is full.
Bung it in the oven until the cheese has all melted and the top has browned and gone a bit crunchy (about 25-30 minutes should do it)
Serve with garlic bread and fresh tomatoes.
Enjoy!
Thanks Jo, that looks yummy. I will look for some Quorn ground beef.