I was very sad to hear of the death yesterday of Antonio Carluccio. I loved watching him in cooking programmes over the years and listening to him talk about growing up in Italy during the war and foraging for food – to make meals from mushrooms and nettles. His cooking reflects so much of the kind of food I’m hoping to promote in this blog – meals freshly made every day with simple cooking techniques that everyone can learn,  using ingredients that don’t cost the earth.

As I never met Antonio Carluccio in real life I can’t say for sure what he was like but on TV he came across as a very gentle and wise soul.

I wasn’t working today so I could indulge myself for hours and hours looking through his recipes and as a result have come up with a list of recipes I’m going to make over the next few days. I might even go foraging for nettles at the weekend…

This beetroot lasagne, is the first of those recipes.  There’s no actual lasagne pasta in this but it would be easy to put lasagne in here.

The recipe calls for large beetroots but I could only find small ones, so I bought double the amount instead (and I only boiled them for about 40 minutes). Also I didn’t use smoked ham, and I mixed in some breadcrumbs for the topping,  but otherwise the recipe is exactly the same. Check it out on the Antonio Carluccio website.