Freeform Pork & Fennel Lasagne & Fig & Pistachio Crumble
Main: Freeform pork & fennel lasagne with bacon béchamel
Delicious Magazine May 2020
Dessert: Fig & pistachio crumble cake
Delicious Magazine May 2020
“Family and friends are hidden treasures, seek them out and enjoy their riches.”
Hi Everyone!
Feels amazing to have a little freedom doesn’t it! More than ever, this time has made us realise the importance of family and dear friends. It’s so good to be able to share a meal with them.
We also had breakfast on the weekend at our favourite local café The Tramshed at Narrabeen. Keen to support our local coffee shops and restaurants and help them get back on their feet. It’s been a hard road for them.
Anyway dinner this week was very interesting in deed. If you have been following this blog you will remember that my family is not particularly fond of pork. Well, the MAV is but that’s because he loves anything that is meat. However, I wanted to give this very interesting twist on the simple lasagna a go. A couple of tips when making this. 1. There is no instruction as to the size of the fennel or the onion so I suggest just making it what you would call medium for both. 2. Breaking up the pork mince takes a bit of time but please persevere because otherwise the texture of the lasagna will be too lumpy (see photo pre breaking up).
3. It requires white wine which I have never used in lasagna before and was tempted to substitute red wine but the flavours of this lasagna are more subtle than the traditional form so stick with the white.
The béchamel sauce with the addition of the bacon is really delicious and I would probably use this with a regular lasagna. The construction of the dish is not layer upon layer as we are all accustomed to doing. You place the mince into the appropriate dish and “poke” the torn lasagna sheets into the mince.
Now here is the “BUT”. We all enjoyed the overall flavour of the lasagna – “very tasty” was the general comment. I personally found the texture very odd. Because of the way the lasagna sheets are pushed into the meat you would get lumps of the pasta with your mouthful of mince and lovely sauce.
Now many would not care about that but for me it felt quite odd in my mouth. Okay – call me weird but there you go! Would I cook it again? Yes! but I would layer the lasagna sheets in the traditional way. It scored 8/10.
And so to dessert. How beautiful does this look and not very difficult to make either. It would feed 10 easily, however, the flavour is surprisingly bland. It definitely needed home made custard (which I did), ice-cream or cream. The making of this cake and the main course was enhanced for me because I now have a new Breville food processor (my old one went to heaven). I’ve been without one for quite a few months and I didn’t realise just how much I used mine until I didn’t have it any longer.
The texture and smell is lovely and somehow very wintery so I was surprised to find that it was rather dry and uninspiring. Sorry Delicious Magazine but this one is not a winner for me. It only scored 5/10.
Next week I’m going to do a roasted fillet with red wine risotto. That should go down well with the MAV!
Until then,
From my table to yours with love. x
Freeform Pork & Fennel Lasagne
This has a beautiful bacon béchamel sauce
- ¼ c extra virgin olive oil
- 1 fennel – medium (finely chopped)
- 1 onion – medium (finely chopped)
- 3 garlic cloves
- 1 kg pork and fennel sausages (casings removed)
- 1 c white wine
- ⅓ c sage leaves (chopped plus extra to garnish)
- 900 ml tomato sugo
- 250 g fresh lasagne sheets (torn)
- 150 g mozzarella (grated)
Bacon Béchamel
- 20 g unsalted butter
- 6 smoky bacon rashers (finely chopped)
- 1 onion – small (finely chopped )
- 2 tbs plain flour
- 2 c milk
- 40 g parmesan (finely grated)
The Pork
-
Preheat oven to 180°C. Heat oil in a large, deep ovenproof pan over medium heat.
-
Add fennel, onion and garlic with a pinch of salt flakes and cook, stirring, for 15 minutes or until softened. Add sausage meat and cook for 15 minutes, breaking up with a wooden spoon, until browned all over.
-
Add wine and sage and bring to a simmer. Cook for 3 minutes or until wine is reduced by about half. Add tomato sugo and 1 cup water. Bring to a simmer and cook for 25 minutes or until thickened and reduced. Season to taste.
Bacon Béchamel
-
Place butter, bacon and onion in a cold saucepan over low heat. Gradually bring to heat, stirring regularly, to render fat from bacon. Cook for 10 minutes or until bacon is rendered and onion has softened but not coloured. Increase heat to medium-low. Stir in flour and cook for 2 minutes to cook out four. Add milk in 2 batches, whisking to ensure no lumps form. Increase heat to medium and bring to a simmer. Cook for 5 minutes or until slightly thickened. Remove from heat, stir parmesan and season.
-
Push torn lasagne sheets into hot sauce so they are submerged. Pour over béchamel and top with extra sage leaves then scatter with mozzarella. Place on a tray and bake for 30-35 minutes until golden, then serve.
Fig & Pistachio Crumble Cake
- 1⅓ c pistachios (roasted)
- ⅔ c plain flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 c almond meal
- 250 g caster sugar
- 3 eggs (slightly beaten)
- ½ c extra virgin olive oil
- 1 orange (zest finely grated)
- 100 g unsalted butter (melted, cooled)
- ½ tsp rosewater
- 5 small figs (halved horizontally)
- icing sugar to dust
Pistachio Crumble
- ⅓ c plain flour
- 55 g lightly salted butter (chopped)
- 35 g brown sugar
- 30 g almond meal
- 1 orange (zest finely grated)
- 30 g pistachios (roasted, roughly chopped)
-
Preheat oven to 160°c. Grease a 23cm springform cake pan and line the base and sides with baking paper
-
For the pistachio crumble, place the flour and butter in a food processor and whiz until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar, almond meal and orange zest, and pulse until just combined. Transfer to a bowl and mix through the pistachio. Set aside.
-
To make the cake, place the pistachios in a food processor and whiz until finely chopped. Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl and stir in the chopped pistachios and almond meal. Place sugar and eggs in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat for 4-5 minutes until fluffy and pale. Gradually beat in the olive oil followed by the orange zest, butter and rosewater, then fold in the flour mixture.
-
Spread batter into the prepared pan and top with halved figs, cut side facing up. (Make sure to push the figs down into the batter.). Scatter over the pistachio crumble and bake for 1 hr 15 mins – 1hr 30 mins until skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
-
Allow to cook slightly, then remove from the pan and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
-
Dust with icing sugar to serve. Perhaps with custard, cream or ice cream.
Comments are closed