To be fair it was a rather reserved case of sounding out whether I was still posting recipes, which in connection with the lasagne we were eating at the time for me translated to “Can I have the recipe please?”

Without further ado I proudly present: spinach lasagne (vegetarian)

• Thaw a bag of chopped spinach and add salt, two crushed cloves of garlic and a finely chopped shallot.
• For the cheesy sauce cut a piece of mature Stilton into smaller pieces and put them into a blender. Fill up to max. capacity (mine can do 1 1/8 pt.) with half single cream and half (dry) white wine. Let the blender whip this to a creamy sauce and then stir in a bit more white wine.
• Butter an ovenproof dish and put in a generous layer of the sauce, cover with lasagne sheets followed by a layer of spinach and another layer of lasagne sheets. Repeat until the last spinach is used and drizzle leftovers from the sauce over the spinach. Top with grated mature cheddar and bake at 200°C for about 25 – 30 minutes.
• Serve with salad, dough balls or baguette and wine (white or red work equally well).

After some contemplation of the matter and based on my experiences with different kinds of Cheddar I decided to determine the answer by rigorous testing.

The experiment consisted of 250g grated Cheddar (based on what I considered to be a good choice I took Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference grated mature West Country Farmhouse Cheddar), 750g fresh green Tagliatelle, ca. 600g of skinned and boned haddock fillet, cream, lime and (dry!) white wine (I choose a Pinot Grigio).

Cook the pasta in saltwater and place it in an ovenproof dish. Slice the fish into pieces and season with salt, pepper and lime juice. Steam the fish in 1/4l white wine and put the fish on top of the pasta. Add cream and cheddar to the wine and stir in a teaspoon of cornflour dissolved in a bit of water. Season with salt and pepper to taste then pour the sauce over the fish and sprinkle liberally with paprika. Place the dish in the preheated oven at 200°C for about 20 minutes. I recommend serving the dish with a salad.

The result was delicious and the answer is “Yes!”.

While having one of those strange discussions on IRC that start with something random (like bones of sheep in Kullervo) and then go off on a tangent we talked about lamb and how to prepare it. There was a clear consent that lamb and garlic are a dreamteam, but I actually found my claim that rosemary had to be included disputed! I was quite unwilling to believe that, but confronted with a beautifully simple and mouthwatering recipe I was starting to wonder …

Since the recipe wasn’t exactly willing to leave the part of my brain it had hooked it’s claws into I told my husband that we were going to have a leg of lamb the next weekend.

What followed was the modern version of hunting and gathering, meaning we trekked all over the city for the perfect ingredients. Then a short preparation phase followed by the waiting and ooh-that-looks/smells-nice phase and finally feasting on the results. And I admit it: a leg of lamb can be fantastic without rosemary!

The recipe:

Put quartered potatoes into a roasting pan and drizzle with the juice of 1-2 lemons, a bit of olive oil and sprinkle with salt and oregano
Lard the meat with cuts of garlic and rub with salt and pepper. Put the leg of lamb on top of the potatoes.
Roast for 1 to 1.5 hours at 180-200°C making sure there is some fluid at the bottom of the pan. Add a bit of water if required.

Since this easily serves 4 I served this with Broccoli on the first day and a salad on the second day. To warm it up you just put the pan with the potatoes into the oven again and place the foil wrapped meat slices on the same shelf.

All in all an amazingly easy recipe with exquisite results. I’m just wondering how it would turn out if you replaced the lemons with limes …