Your Prog Chef: MICHAEL WOODMAN (THUMPER MONKEY)

On the menu: Emerson, Lake and Parmesan Lasagne

“I’ve been cooking for a long time; there’s something meditative about the process that’s always given me pleasure. It’s often the only time I can catch up on podcasts and new music as well. On more than one occasion, I’ve even ended up chatting to Thumper-monkey’s bassist Sam [Warren] about the virtues of quinoa during rehearsals!

I can’t remember where the original recipe for this lasagne came from, but I’m pretty sure it was the result of trying to tweak an existing one to reduce the meat content. I can’t stand food waste, and I make terrible, expensive shopping decisions when I’m hungry so I like to cook this in batches and freeze it.”

Ingredients (serves 6)

6 vegetarian sausages (roughly chopped), 400g broccoli (cut into florets), 250g halved cherry tomatoes, 200g frozen peas, 400g mascarpone cheese, 150g fresh pesto, handful of chopped fresh basil, 12 lasagne sheets, 50ml milk, 100g grated mozzarella, 3 tbsp grated parmesan, 20g pine nuts, olive oil.

Preparation

“Fry the chopped sausages in olive oil until browned. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200°c/gas mark 6 and make up the names of at least five Zeuhl bands.

Boil some water in a pan and add the broccoli. cook for 3-4 minutes and drain. While cooking, spread the cherry tomatoes on a baking tray, drizzle with olive oil, season well, and roast in the oven for 10 minutes.

Stir the broccoli, peas, half the mascarpone, pesto, and chopped basil into the sausages, and simmer for a few minutes to create a sauce. Taste and season. Spoon a third of the mixture into a casserole dish, top with roughly a third of the tomatoes then place three lasagne sheets on top. Keep layering until all the pasta sheets have been used up. Keep a few tomatoes aside.

Add the milk to the remaining mascarpone to make a white sauce. Pour over the pasta, and top with the mozzarella, parmesan, pine nuts and reserved tomatoes.

Listen to Weidorje while you bake the dish for 35-40 minutes, or until the lasagne is golden brown and bubbling. If it gets too crispy, cover with foil and continue cooking. Serve with salad and garlic bread.

Optional: announce, ‘Grub’s up!’ in Kobaïan to your dinner guests. If they don’t understand Kobaïan, that’s their problem — all the more for you!”