Right, I have well and truly started this blog off now, so one more post before I go and enjoy Chris’s ‘Credit Crunch Meal’ (I’ll leave him to explain that one later!) This is one we said we’d add to the permanent collection but then forgot about, but we will definitely be cooking it again because it’s easy to precook and really tasty. It’s another Good Food classic! Samantha quite liked it, but didn’t totally love it, she found the pasta a bit chewy in places I think. I don’t actually like lamb at all, but want to make sure she eats it, so my idea with doing this was that it would be not to ‘lamby’. It wasn’t, hence it’s a winner!
Ingredients
1 onion (Chris hates onion but will accept it in a meal nowadays so long as it’s been chopped in food processor- turns out this is a much better way to chop it anyway as you don’t get any lumps, but I only use the little bowl on my food processor as it does make it a bit oniony for a while so not ideal to use the same bowl you use for cakes!)
2 garlic cloves (I always crush them, no matter what the recipe says- who wants to try chopping them and then stink of garlic for days!)
500g lamb mince (or whatever pack size you can get)
cinnamon (1tsp)
stock cube (beef/ lamb best, but I always run out so have to use whatever I can find!)
2 tins chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp oregano
400g macaroni (a little annoying as the pack size is 500g!)
250g tub ricotta
50g parmesan (I used cheddar as I forgot to buy parmesan)
50ml milk
Brown the onion for up to 10 mins (I heard somewhere that adding salt helps it not to burn but not sure if it’s true) then add the garlic
Add the mince and cook for a bit (only actually needs to be brown but I get nervous so try to cook it right through)
Add the cinnamon, stock cube, tomatoes and oregano
Stir, cover and simmer for 15mins until it thickens
Meanwhile, cook the macaroni
Mix ricotta, most of the cheese and the milk with the macaroni
Put the lamb in a lasagne dish. Put the macaroni mix on top (be careful not to dollop it on to hard or it will displace the mince!) Bake for 30 mins. It’s already cooked so you could reduce this if you’re hungry!
I’m going to make this next week I think, it’s delicious!
The Hoblog 