I spent the beginning of the week with my partner, Katie, up at Gleneagles.
It was gorgeous, and of course we did some pretty amazing eating. Katie had this beautiful roast beef sandwich which was served with a mini portion of macaroni cheese. The mac 'n' cheese got me thinking, and so did many of the other little meals we had.
What I've devised this week is a take on both the classic lasagne, and, sort of, tapas. It's got enough carbohydrates to keep you running for 1000 miles -or you could do the Tour de France after eating it.
I'm not big on protein, forget it. For me, it's all about the carbs. For example, I love mash potato but sometimes it can be a bit much when it's a side all by itself. So we're mixing it up.
This is my toast-pancake-crumpet-potato-pasta-cous-cous lasagne.
Or, six-carb lasagne for short.
Serves four
Ingredients
4 oz macaroni
4 crumpets
2 big baking potatoes
4 pancakes
4 slices of bread
Cous cous
For the pancakes
4 oz flour
4 oz milk
4 eggs
For the sauce
2 diced onions
6 fl oz cream
Nutmeg
Splash of white wine vinegar
2 oz of mature Scottish cheddar
Big slash of olive oil
Method
1 For the sauce, sweat the onions in the oil then and slowly whisk in all the other ingredients. Set aside
2 Cook the pasta in a pan of boiling water and set aside
3 Grate the baking potatoes, then add to the boiling water
4 Spread the cooked potato gratings on a greaseproof tray with a glug of olive oil and salt and pepper to get them nice and mushy
5 Cook the cous cous in the boiling water for two minutes, then remove and put into a colander. Add olive oil, lemon juice and salt and pepper
6 Take 4 slices of white bread and cut out a disc with a pastry cutter. Set aside.
7 For your pancakes, add the ingredients then make and fry four. Each pancake should be double the size of your crumpets.
8 Toast and butter four crumpets
9 Start layering the four towers. At the bottom is the macaroni, followed by the pancake, then the cous cous, then potato, then crumpet. Keep layering until you're all out of each component part.
10 Add a little grated cheese on top, then trickle the sauce on top.
11 Garnish with any/all of the following: chervil, parsley, chives, salt and pepper, olive oil or Tabasco sauce.
12 Grill under a medium heat for 3-4 minutes until glazed
13 While the towers are grilling, shallow fry the bread discs with lemon and parsley which will cut through the creaminess elsewhere in the dish
14 Serve each tower with one disc.
Mixed heritage tomatoes (the colourful ones) are perfect with this dish - try them with a dressing of chopped shallots, herbs, cayenne pepper, chilli and plenty vinegar.
Alongside the tomatoes and the towers, add a dollop of sour cream.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article