Easy Eats: One-pan Lamb and Fennel Lasagne

Sam Parish's One-pan Lamb and Fennel Lasagne Photo: Sam Parish

Serves 4 / Prep time: 10 minutes / Cook time: 30 minutes

Think lasagne is a time-consuming, labour-intensive meal best saved for when you have a spare two days? Sam Parish proves otherwise with this speedy version.

"The snap of the lasagne sheets will feel wrong at first, like you’re breaking some sort of unspoken food rule, but persevere and this baked ONE-PAN beauty will make it all worth it," she says.

"I was thinking of the parents with this recipe, the lamb meatballs are stuffed with veggies and fennel (in season) is used in the sauce to expose the kids to something beyond carrot and potatoes. Finished with bubbling cheese, they’ll be sure to come back for seconds on this one."

If you can't get your hands on fresh fennel, substitute 2-3 sticks of celery and 1 tsp fennel seeds.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 small red onion, finely grated
• 1 small carrot, finely grated
• 1 fennel bulb
• 400g lamb mince
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon
• ½ tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1x 680g bottle tomato passata
• 1 cup milk
• 5 sheets dried instant lasagne sheets (about 10 x 20cm), broken into pieces
• 100g cheese, grated
• Freshly grated Parmesan, to serve

Method

Preheat oven to 200C. Place oil and garlic in a lidded ovenproof casserole dish or roasting tray and add to oven while it preheats for about 15 minutes (while you prepare the meatballs) or until garlic is aromatic.

Meanwhile, grate the onion, carrot and half the fennel and place in a large bowl with lamb mince, spices and salt and pepper. Mix well with hands to combine. Divide into eight and roll into large meat balls. Set aside. Chop remaining fennel and pick fennel fronds.

Remove pan from oven, add fennel and passata and stir to combine. Arrange the meatballs on top, and add the lasagne sheets. Pour over the milk and 1 cup water (I add mine to the passata bottle to get all the passata out of it).

Then cover with a lid or tightly with foil and bake for 10 minutes or until pasta and meatballs are partly cooked and sauce is hot.

Remove lid, increase oven to 220C and scatter over the cheese. Cook for a further 20 minutes or until the top is golden and the pasta and meatballs are cooked through.

Scatter with fennel fronds and parmesan to serve.

Photo: Sam Parish

Sam Parish is a Christchurch-based chef, writer and food stylist. Her food philosophy is ‘maximum of flavour, minimum of fuss’ (MOFMOF), which means she’s all about cooking smarter, not harder. She’ll be sharing delicious, fast, family-friendly food ideas every Wednesday (after road-testing them on her own whānau, of course).

Sam’s first book Cook Me is out now.