Who doesn’t love pesto? It’s basically a rite of passage to live off of a pre-made pesto pasta for at least half of your time at university nowadays, but it’s actually very simple to make yourself.
This recipe takes the greatest of the pasta sauces – both pesto and béchamel and combines them in a super creamy chicken lasagne dish, where you won’t need to spend ages simmering a ragù sauce and ensuring the meat is cooked adequately, as leftover chicken works a trick here.
With the crunch of almonds on top, combined with oozy melted cheddar, this is a super comforting dish that looks even more impressive than a standard lasagne.
Serves 2
Ingredients:
For the pesto
30g basil
30g pine nuts
2tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic
1tbsp grated parmesan
For the lasagne
125g shredded cooked chicken
50g cheddar
4 lasagne sheets
2tbsp butter
1 clove garlic
3tbsp flour
milk
nutmeg
handful of almonds
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (depending on your oven – use your own judgement).
- Put all the pesto ingredients into a food processor and blend to a paste.
- Boil some salted water and part-cook the lasagne sheets until very al dente.
- To make the white sauce, melt the butter in a saucepan, add the diced garlic and flour and mix well.
- Add milk bit by bit, continuing to stir on a low-med heat until you have a thickened sauce.
- Grate in the nutmeg and remove from the heat.
- Mix the chicken and pesto in a bowl.
- In a food processor, blitz the almonds into coarse crumbs. For extra flavour, don’t wash out the processor after making the pesto, as then your almond crumbs will suck up all the excess pesto left in there.
- In a loaf tin, layer a lasagna sheet, then chicken and white sauce, then repeat twice more.
- Top with the final sheet and sprinkle with grated cheese and the almond crumb.
- Bake for 15 minutes until the cheese on top is golden.
¡Comemos!
xo
¡Comemos! 