Ingredients:

1 jar of store bought pasta sauce (Paul Newman’s is a nice brand to use)
1 bunch of silverbeet or spinach, if available, washed with the centers cut out
2-3 cups mushrooms, any variety or combination, cleaned and roughly sliced
3 zucchini, washed and sliced into rounds
2 onions, finely diced
1 packet of lasagna sheets
olive oil
Optional: Cheese to top & breadcrumbs

White sauce:

2 tablespoons plain flour

3 tablespoons of butter (roughly)

1 cup of milk

1 cup of water

1 vegetable stock cube

bay leaf if available

salt and pepper to taste

To make the white sauce:

Combine water, stock cube, milk in a medium saucepan over a moderate heat, stirring to dissolve stock cube and making sure that the milk doesn’t boil over. Once heated, remove from heat and remove bay leaf, if used.. 

In a separate saucepan melt the butter over a moderate heat. Add flour and stir until slightly brown and delicious smells rising.  

Whisk the flour mixture into the milk mixture and whisk until thickening occurs.

Add salt and pepper as desired.

Lasagne

Shallow fry the zucchini with oil, salt and pepper, until tender. Set aside.

Roughly chop the silverbeet or spinach. Using a large frypan and a little oil, fry the onion until clear, then add silverbeet or spinach and shallow fry until delicately wilted. Set aside and prepare the frypan to be reused on the mushrooms.

Stir-fry the mushrooms with oil again, until tender.

Prepare a large pot with water and bring to a rolling boil. Boil individual sheets of lasagna, 1 or two at a time.

Meanwhile, place two or three tablespoons of pasta sauce in the base of a tray, enough to lightly coat the base. Arrange two sheets of lasagna on the bottom of the tray – or three, if that’s what you need to completely cover the base. Sheets can be snapped.

Next place all the zucchini rounds across the base, followed by some more pasta sauce, to nicely coat zucchini. Top with another layer of lasagna, and fill with the mushrooms.

Drizzle a layer of white sauce over the mushrooms and then layer silverbeet or spinach. Layer more white sauce on top of the silver beet and finish with a layer of lasagna sheets, topping with pasta sauce then white sauce.

If you wish you can add cheese and breadcrumbs to the top before placing tray in oven to brown on top, approximately 20 minutes.  

Serve!  

Further Tips & Hints

This basic white sauce recipe can be used for macaroni cheese, pasta bake, or any other recipe which calls for a white sauce.

You can jazz it up by adding fresh herbs to the white sauce, or make your own vegetable stock flavoring, by adding any scraps of veggies to the heating milk, straining before mixing in the flour & butter.

I like to build up a “stock bag” in the freezer, adding any clean vegetable scraps left while making dinners. This can include pumpkin skins, celery tips and ends, zucchini ends, carrot tips etc, etc – all I would leave out is sulphorous veggie scraps, such as cabbage leaves and maybe cauliflower scraps, or beetroot because of the discoloration!

Never, ever, discard celery leaves - the flavour it contributes to stock or soups is simply divine.