Meat mains
Torn lasagne chicken with mushroom, spinach & garlic
Torn lasagne, or handkerchief pasta as it is sometimes known, is just lasagne sheets cut, torn, or snapped into bite-sized pieces, and served in a bowl instead of being layered and baked.
Cook's notes
Splitting egg yolks from the whites can be a tense act for some people. The first thing is to crack your egg with a short, sharp blow in the middle. This should give you two roughly even, cup-shaped pieces of shell. Now pass the yolk from cup to cup allowing the white to flow away a little more with each tip. You can keep the whites for another recipe (meringues, macaroons, cocktails?).
Ingredients
- 200g spinach
- 2 garlic cloves
- 200g portobello mushrooms
- 200g lasagne verde sheets
- 1 egg
- 300g diced chicken breast
- light olive oil
- 100ml double cream
- 1 bay leaf
- 50g Italian hard cheese
- salt and pepper
Method
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Step 1
Put a large pan of salted water on to boil. Wash the spinach well, strip away any particularly large or tough looking stalks. Peel and finely chop or crush 2 garlic cloves. Give the mushrooms a quick wipe clean and slice into generous ½ cm pieces. When the water has come to the boil, add the spinach and blanch it for about 30 seconds until wilted.
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Step 2
Remove with a slotted spoon and cool immediately in cold water. Keep the water on the boil. When the spinach is cool, squeeze out as much water as you can and roughly chop it. Using four fifths of the pack of pasta (200g), snap the lasagne sheets into rough 4cm pieces; variation in size and shape is good, within reason.
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Step 3
Crack the egg and split the yolk from the white (see cook's notes). Cut any large pieces of chicken down so you have even 1cm chunks. Season the chicken well with salt and pepper. Heat 2 tbsp of oil in the frying pan. Add the chicken and fry on a medium-high heat until nicely browned on all sides. This should only take a few minutes.
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Step 4
Remove the chicken and keep to one side; it doesn't need to be fully cooked as you will finish it in the pan later. Add the mushrooms to the pan, season with a little salt and pepper. Fry them on a medium-high heat for 4-5 minutes, until they stop releasing liquid and have started to take on a little colour. Drop the pasta into the boiling water. Cook for 10 minutes, or until just tender.
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Step 5
While the pasta cooks, add the garlic to the mushrooms. Cook gently for 1 minute. Tip in the cream and bay leaf, bring to a gentle simmer. Add the chicken back into the pan to carry on cooking. Simmer together for 5 minutes. Next add the chopped spinach to the frying pan with 2 tablespoons of water from the pasta pot. Toss together to heat through the spinach.
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Step 6
When the pasta is ready, drain it well and add it to the frying pan. Toss together with the egg yolk and mix well. The heat of the pan will cook the egg and thicken the sauce. Keep it moving so that the egg doesn't scramble. Divide between 2 bowls, garnish with the Italian hard cheese and eat immediately.