Lasagna

Egg sheets layered with a long-cooked meat sauce and besciamella, not ricotta.

Pork, Beef, Egg. Not vegetarian — contains beef, parmesan whose rennet the source does not name, pork.

Ingredients

• 300 g plain flour and 3 eggs, for the sheets
• 400 g minced beef and 200 g minced pork
• 150 g pancetta, diced
• 1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 celery stick, finely diced
• 200 ml dry white wine
• 300 ml whole milk
• 400 g passata
• 1 litre milk, 80 g butter and 80 g flour, for the besciamella
• 150 g parmesan, grated
• nutmeg
• 2.5 teaspoons salt

Method

1. Soften the pancetta and vegetables, add both minces and brown them properly, then the wine.
2. ADD THE 300 ML OF MILK TO THE MEAT and let it cook away before the tomato goes in. Milk into the meat sounds wrong and it tenderises the mince and takes the edge off the tomato's acid.
3. Add the passata and cook uncovered on the lowest heat for 3 hours, topping up with water when it tightens.
4. Make the besciamella: butter and flour cooked 2 minutes, then the litre of milk added gradually, simmered 10 minutes, seasoned with nutmeg. THERE IS NO RICOTTA IN THIS. The ricotta version is a different dish from further south.
5. Roll the pasta thin and blanch the sheets 30 seconds, then lay them on damp cloths.
6. Build six thin layers: sauce, besciamella, parmesan, pasta. Thin layers and more of them, so no stratum reads as a separate thing on the plate.
7. Bake at 180C for 40 minutes, then REST IT 20 MINUTES before cutting. Straight from the oven it slides apart.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes