Rachel Roddy's recipe for lasagne with courgette and three cheeses | A kitchen in Rome

"When I was writing a book about pasta, an acquaintance from Naples who lives in Chisinau, Moldova, with his Welsh wife suggested that the first step with lasagne is to approach it like a town planner. That is, first work out the size of the dish in relation to the size of the pasta sheets (this applies to both fresh and dried),"

"We also decided that the construction of a lasagne should be like that of a bricklayer combined with a Jackson Pollock approach to the sauces. My ceramic lasagne dish is 30cm x 20cm, and three 10cm x 25cm dried lasagne sheets make a single layer in it, so a five-layer lasagne requires 15 sheets. Most dried lasagne sold today doesn't require pre-cooking or soaking, but those sheets depend on the sauce being liquid enough to provide enough moisture to hydrate and cook them."

"Dry sheets also require a relatively long cooking time, so, in the case of today's lasagne, which involves a dense and creamy, rather than a liquid sauce, I dip the sheets into boiling water for 30 seconds, then in cold water and then lay them on a tea towel to dry, which gives them a head start. It also reduces the total cooking time, which suits the delicate texture of the courgette and ricotta in the sauce."

Approach lasagne like a town planner: match dish size to pasta-sheet size and decide number of layers. Combine bricklayer construction with a Jackson Pollock approach to sauces. For a 30cm x 20cm dish, three 10cm x 25cm sheets make one layer, so five layers require 15 sheets. Most dried lasagne sheets do not need pre-cooking but rely on a sufficiently liquid sauce; dense, creamy fillings benefit from briefly dipping sheets in boiling then cold water to shorten cooking time. Fry courgettes in olive oil with salt to develop flavour before they finish cooking in the oven and fuse with cheese and bechamel. Cheese types and quantities are flexible; compensate with seasoning and herbs.

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