Lasagne

Another freezing cold day, but it was livened up by real reindeer and an animatronic polar bear at Gateshead's Frost Fair.

There were no reindeer for tea, just a blast of 1970s lasagne (coincidentally, Hugh Fearnley Whearnley's got a good recipe for one in today's Guardian as well).

You'll need:

bolognese sauce - recipe here from August
some sheets of lasagne - you could probably go to town here and make your own, but ours was Morrisons value, and tasted no worse for that
lots of grated cheese (preferably mature cheddar)
black pepper
a bechamel sauce (the amount depends on how big your lasagne dish is - ours was A4-sized today)

For the bechamel, I used:

about 1/3 pint of full cream milk
a large knob of butter
a heaped tablespoon of flour
lots of freshly grated nutmeg

Melt the butter in a non-stick pan, and add the flour. Swish about until the butter has been absorbed into the flour - you've now got a mixture called a roux. Little by little, add the milk, making sure each time that it's absorbed into the roux - you want a really nice, smooth paste, with no lumps. Keep stirring, and gradually add all the milk. Grate some nutmeg into the sauce, and then heat until it thickens - you probably need to give it a good stir every minute or so.

Right. Stick the oven on at a sensibly high temperature - 180-200 degrees C. Now assemble the lasagne. Take one large squarish/rectangular dish (makes it easier when you've got rectangular sheets of pasta). Stick a layer of bolognese on the bottom, followed by a layer of pasta sheets. Repeat. Pour the bechamel sauce all over the top pasta sheet, and let it trickle down the layers. Sprinkle with grated cheese (you don't need a huge amount).

Bake in the oven for 30 minutes or so - once the top is browned and bubbling it's ready. It goes well with a nice green salad, and maybe a bit of baguette (I suppose it should be garlic bread if you're being authentically retro...).