Rachel Roddy’s spinach and bechamel bake

Bechamel is a cornerstone of cooking that invites variation. The lessons learned from making choux buns in a home economics class are just as relevant to this Tuscan spinach bake inspired by cook Lori de Mori

Rachel Roddy
Tuesday 10 October 2017 12.24 BST

The most important thing about home economics was the basket. It had to be packed the night before with the ingredients required, then carried to school and left in the Watts block kitchen-classroom, ready for the lesson with Mrs Carrington. My shopping basket was too big and too wide for any shopper, never mind a 12-year-old girl. While everyone else carried their neat, coffee-coloured shoppers, I lugged my sturdy one down the hill and through a graveyard, across the high street, then up another hill to school, the ingredients for scones or choux buns rolling around the bottom of the basket like drunks on a boat. These days that same hand-woven basket sits in my parents’ shed filled with 25 kilos of apples or a section of tree, proving that it is indeed better suited to logs.