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P Is For Pancakes and pasta

 Definitely one of my favourite times of the year is when Shrove Tuesday comes around and we can eat pancakes with freshly squeezed lemon juice and sugar on them.  It is a popular food in America, with pancakes being eaten all of the time, rather than once a year in February on Shrove Tuesday, as we often do here in the UK.

P is also for pasta, and it comes in many shapes and forms.  One of my favourite pasta dishes is lasagne and the recipe for today is a vegetarian option, spinach and mushroom lasagne.  A lot of people don’t cook lasagne at home but it really is very simple to make.

Steps of cooking lasagne:

  1.   You need a deep dish so you can put the layers of mix on top of each other. 
  2. Heat a little oil in a frying pan and add a  clove of finely chopped garlic. 
  3. Give this a minute to soften then add your spinach. 
  4. I use a 300g bag of spinach and wash it well before adding it to the pan.
  5.   Cook for a couple of minutes until the spinach has softened. 
  6. Remove this mix from the pan, add a little more oil, then add another finely chopped clove of garlic and your mushrooms, about the same weight as the spinach will be sufficient. 
  7. Cook until your mushrooms are browning.  
  8. Next add a tin of chopped tomoatoes and a handful of chopped herbs, basil and oregano work well with this dish. 
  9. Add the spinach back into the pan and heat through before removing the pan from the hob. 
  10. Now for the sauce.  Some people use cheese sauce or white sauce for the layers, but I think creme fraiche works very well, and there’s less to do as you can use it straight from the tub! 
  11. You will need a 4-500ml tub of creme fraiche for this recipe.
  12.   Next we need to put it all together, so starting with a layer of lasagne sheets on the bottom of your lightly greased dish, next put a layer of the mushroom and spinach mix, then a layer of creme fraiche and a layer of grated cheddar cheese, repeat this at least once more or twice if you have enough mix, finishing with a layer of pasta with creme fraiche and grated cheese on top in that order. 
  13. Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes, or until the pasta is softened, and serve with garlic bread and a fresh crispy salad. 
  14. It really is a quick and simple supper that is tasty and popular.


Words beginning with P that are not instantly associated with foods and cooking terms include:

  • packet, a term used in both Cork and Limerick for the Irish black pudding known as drisheen,

  • peacock, and the female peahen (known as peafowl, with peachicks being the young), during the medieval period many types of fowl were eaten, in poorer houses common birds such as chicken were consumed, but on the tables of the gentry the more exotic creatures were offered for consumption, and peafowl were commonly eaten,

  • Peggy’s leg, a stick of boiled sweet, a bit like rock sold at the seaside, found in Ireland.

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