Lazy courgette & butter bean lasagne

With a pesto ricotta sauce

Lasagne can be a bit of a faff… but not this one. There’s no pre cooking of the filling, no béchamel sauce to make and only one thing to chop.

The sauce is made in seconds by mixing ricotta cheese with pesto which gives the dish loads of flavour too. Layer up with chunks of courgette, peas, butter beans, lasagne sheets (no need to pre cook) and mozzarella cheese for a seriously tasty veggie pasta dinner.

This isn’t as quick as most of my recipes, as it needs 1 hour in the oven, but the hands on time is minimal, so once you’ve added it all to the dish and popped it in the oven you can let the magic happen while you get on with any jobs or put your feet up and read a book/lounge out in front of Netflix…

You’ll need (serves 4):

• 250g ricotta cheese

• 100g green pesto

• 2 courgettes, quartered lengthways then cut into 1-2 cm chunks

• 200g peas (can use straight from freezer or run under water to defrost)

• 400g/1 tin butter beans (and the stock)

• 9 lasagne sheets

• 200g mozzarella, torn into pieces

Preheat oven to 180C. In a bowl, mix the ricotta cheese with the pesto and 100ml of water. Season with salt and pepper.

In an ovenproof dish, start with a layer of courgette, peas and butter beans, spooning some of the stock/liquid with them as you go. You’ll do three layers, so use approximately a third of each.

Spoon over some of the ricotta pesto sauce and spread it evenly. Top with a layer of pasta, breaking any edges if you need to to make them fit. Then top with a thin layer of the pesto sauce too (the pasta needs moisture both sides to cook) and a third of the mozzarella. Season with salt and pepper.

Repeat again twice more, seasoning each layer as you go. On the top, cover with the remaining pesto sauce but keep the remaining mozzarella aside. Cover the dish with tin foil (you might need two pieces) so it’s sealed - this will trap the moisture in. Cook for 45 minutes with the foil on.

After 45 minutes, remove the foil, turn the heat up to 200C and add the remaining mozzarella cheese (during this step, if any corners of the lasagne are sticking up so they are not in sauce, push them down). Return to the oven for a further 15 minutes until the top is golden brown.

Remove from the oven and let it sit for a 10 minutes before serving. Slice and dig in.