Mark Moriarty’s chicken and mushroom lasagne: making magic with condensed soup

Simple ingredients, big on flavour, and some handy shortcuts we won’t tell anyone about. My mother always had a way of making magic with condensed chicken soup, so I’ve tried to do her cooking some justice here. It gives the sauce some serious flavour while maintaining the right consistency.

1. Preheat the oven to 150°C.
2. Place the portobello mushrooms, garlic head and some olive oil in a piece of kitchen foil and wrap tightly. Cook in the oven for 1 hour until the garlic pulp has gone soft in its skin.
3. Remove from the oven and slice the mushrooms and reserve the garlic head for the sauce later on. Increase the oven temperature to 190°C.
4. Next, remove the thick stalks from the spinach or cavolo nero, rip the leaves up into smaller pieces and set aside.
5. Warm the milk in a saucepan and season generously. Transfer to a bowl, then place the butter and flour into the same pan and cook over a high heat for 1 minute, whisking continuously to cook out the flour.
6. Next, pour in the warm milk, still whisking continuously. It will begin to form a sauce immediately. Whisk the sauce up to the boil so it becomes glossy and shiny, with no lumps. Remove the pan from the heat and whisk in the grated cheese, condensed soup, mustard and lemon zest and juice.
7. Squeeze the garlic pulp into the sauce by removing the base of the bulb with a small knife and pressing the outer skin. Whisk this through thoroughly.
8. Layer the mix in an ovenproof lasagne dish: pasta sheets, sliced chicken, mushrooms, sauce, spinach or cavolo nero, and repeat. Finish with a final layer of pasta, topped with sauce and more grated cheese.
9. Bake for 45 minutes, leave to rest for 15 minutes, then serve warm.