Homemade Lasagna:
Lasagna comes from the greek lasagnum. Lasagnum was the greek word for dish or plate, and as time wore on became the name of the meal served inside the dish. There are many lasagna recipes out there, as it is an extremely customizable dish. Lasagna has been made for vegetarians, it has been made from seafood, with various types of cheeses, and most popularly with Bechamel and Bolgonese, which is what I will be making.
One of my favorite things to eat, lasagna is fairly simple to make at home.
1 Carrot
Half Onion
2 cloves Garlic
2 Tablespoon Parsley
3 or 4 Mushrooms
3/4 Pound Ground beef
1 Pound Sweet Italian sausage
1/2 Tablespoon Basil
2 Tablespoons Sugar
1 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Pepper
3/4 Tablespoon Italian Seasoning
2 Tablespoon Parsley
1 Teaspoon Fennel Seeds
Tomato Sauce
Tomatoes
Ricotta
1 egg
Mozzarella
Provolone
1/2 Teaspoon of salt.
Milk
Butter
Flour
Nutmeg
Salt
Pepper
Oven ready noodles
The way I make it is done in 3 parts, the Bolognese sauce, The Bechamel sauce, and the Ricotta mix.
The Bolognese will need to chill for at least one hour, preferably a day, so we should start that first.
The first step is chopping up the vegetables.
I'm adding carrot for its health properties as well as its flavor and texture.
We need to chop all of our vegetables as small as possible, I love the flavor of mushrooms, so I will add a lot.
Another crucial ingredient is half of an onion.
Once the vegetables are finely shredded, we need to heat up the pan to a medium heat and drizzle a bit of olive oil in the bottom.
Add the vegetables, and actively mix them until they are mushy and soft. We don't want any crunch in our lasagna.
Once the vegetables are ready, we need to add the pound of Italian sausage and 3/4 pound of ground beef.
Don't forget to thaw the meat for 15-30 minutes before adding it, or it might be difficult to mix.
Once mixed we need to add our seasonings.
3 tablespoons of parsley, I chopped 5 initially because I will need 2 for the ricotta, which I can add to the ricotta bowl now.
We will also need to add 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1/2 tablespoon of basil, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of pepper, 3/4 tablespoon Italian seasoning, 1 teaspoon fennel seeds. Keep mixing at appropriate intervals. After the meat is nice and browned, I continue to mix and simmer for 30 minutes stirring regularly. Then its time to drain some of the fat out, leave a little fat so the meat isn't completely dry but you don't want a really watery texture at the end. When making the Bolognese sauce, remember that the more concentrated the better. You will wind up with a really runny lasagna in the end if you leave too much water in.
Whatever tomato sauce you are going for, homemade or from a jar, use the best you can, it is very important as the sauce defines much of the flavor, try to get a good jar if you decide to go that route.
Mix the tomato sauce into the meat, and continue to simmer, stir and dehydrate the Bolognese.
at this stage we want to add 2 diced tomatoes.
once those are added we can begin to stir every 5-10 minutes and simmer the sauce on a low heat, making sure it is covered, for 45 minutes.
We should get some nice bubbles, telling us where all that water is going.
Once we have it set, we will need to cover and refrigerate the sauce for at least one hour, preferably a day.
First we need to melt some butter, do not be afraid of making too much bechamel, it will be much more frustrating to come short, than to have extra sauce.Add an equal amount of flour to the now liquid butter.
The sauce takes a live effort of constant stirring to make sure it comes out right. When it becomes very thick we will need to switch to the whisk before adding the other ingrediants.
We want to get it nice and thick before we add our milk.
(I realized at this stage I was out of milk, covered the sauce, left it on the counter and went on a long walk to the store to pick up a half gallon and return an hour later.)
Once we have our milk we need to add it in small amounts before going back to whisking.
add a little bit, whisk it to a nice consistency, add a little bit, whisk, repeat.
As we work at it, it will be more and more like a nice creamy sauce, and less like a brown goop.
Once it becomes somewhat runny and isn't really whiskable we will add our seasonings and cheese. Add 1/2 to a teaspoon of salt and pepper each, as well as a teaspoon and a half of nutmeg.
Mix them in and stir a bit, test and season until you like the flavor.
Shred in the mozzarella and provolone, mix until you get a really nice thick creamy consistency with your sauce.
Now that that is done we can do the quick work on the ricotta mix.
add a pound of ricotta to the parsley in the bowl.
Mix these ingredients together with an egg, a half teaspoon of salt, a tablespoon and a half of sour cream and some more shredded mozzarella.
It's time to take the Bolognese out, it looks nice and we have all of our ingredients ready.
We will use this for the bottom layer after we prepare our pan.
Everything should be ready, we will layer in the ricotta mix next.
As we have 2 types of cheese, I chose to use all of the ricotta on one layer.
After the ricotta mix we will add a layer of oven ready noodles. Oven ready noodles differ from boiled noodles in that they were rolled, instead of made with an extruder, this makes them more like handmade noodles in that it is porous, absorbing more moisture than extruded noodles.
On top of that we will spread the remainder of the Bolognese (or continue to layer in the order, meat, cheese, noodles until we run out.)
Don't have enough to make a new layer, so we should even it out and add the bechamel.
Now we need to cover it with tinfoil, we will need to use cooking spray or butter to ensure the tin foil does not stick to the top of the lasagna, this is extremely important.
Bake at (preheated) 375 for 30 minutes before removing the tin foil.
Cook for another 30 minutes without the foil. This helps cook it evenly, most people I know seem to have an issue with making an evenly cooked lasagna.
Leave it on the stovetop to cool down for 25 minutes.
Afterthoughts:
I really loved this one, dehydrating the Bolognese, and thinking about the texture of the end result throughout the whole preparation really made a nice difference from the tasty yet runny dishes I usually tend to make. The nutmeg was an amazing addition to the bechamel and really helped the overall flavor. This is one of the best lasagnas I've made, and is a dish I am still interested in learning more about. I don't feel like I've achieved perfection in this dish, but I still feel I did a very good job.
I made the bechamel much too thick and added too much, it rose to a much larger height than intended.
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