Serves: 4

If you’ve got plenty of time on your hands, why not challenge yourself to create this vegetarian lasagne? The recipe, from watercress.co.uk, combines leeks with onions, watercress and a delicious miso-flavoured pesto for a multi-layered result. You can replace the dairy products with plant-based alternatives to keep this recipe fully vegan.

Ingredients

For the lasagne and filling:

3 leeks, finely sliced
1 onion, finely chopped
80g watercress, roughly chopped
Lasagne sheets
Parmesan for the top

For the pesto:

50g watercress, chopped
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp pine nuts
2 tbsp white miso
Olive oil

For the white sauce:

50g butter
50g flour
300ml milk
50g grated cheese
½ tsp nutmeg
1 tsp mustard

Method

Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Make your sauces; for the pesto, blitz everything together in a pestle and mortar, adding the oil a little at a time until it reaches a runny consistency. For the white sauce, melt the butter in a pan before adding the flour and combine: cook the flour off for two minutes then gradually add the milk a little at a time, whisking constantly until the sauce begins to thicken. Stir in the cheese, nutmeg and mustard and set aside.
In a pan, fry the leeks and onion in a little butter until soft. At the last minute, stir in the watercress. Add in the pesto and combine.
Assemble your lasagne in a deep oven-proof dish – start with some of the vegetable mixture, then pour a little white sauce over the top before covering with lasagne sheets. Repeat the process until the dish is filled, covering the last layer of lasagne sheets with the rest of the white sauce. Sprinkle with grated parmesan and bake in the oven for about 35 minutes, until the top is golden.

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