I love Lasagne

[juamei]

I'm sure everyone has their own lasagne recipe, but this is the one I've settled on after a lot of experimentation. I love mine stodgy, so this may not be to all tastes...

Meat part - 2 hours or so
1/2 kg lean beef mince
1 large onion or leek
2 cloves garlic
Black pepper
Mixed herbs
Paprika
Splash of Olive oil
2 tins chopped tomatoes
A tin or so of water
1/2 glass red wine (optional)
(2 out of the 3 following)
1 chopped courgette
1 chopped sweet pepper
Some chopped mushrooms


Chop up the onion and crush or chop the garlic. Bung the olive oil and mince into a pan and brown with the onion/leek and garlic. Add the veg and cook for a bit (5-10 mins). When you can see the veg has started to cook, add the juice from the chopped tomato tins plus the tomatoes from 1 & 1/2 tins. Do what you will with the other 1/2. Fill the empty tin with cold water and add that. If you have a bottle of red on the go, chuck in half a glass for good measure. Throw on the herbs, black pepper and paprika and stir in well. You should now have enough liquid to just have a few bits of veg poking through. Leave to simmer for 2 hours with a lid on, stirring occasionally, to make the meat lose structural consistency. When you are good to go with the merging of the components for the lasagne, this needs to have very little runny sauce. You may need to stick it on a higher heat for 5-10 mins to reduce it sufficiently.

White/Cheese sauce - 20mins or so
40g Butter
Plain flour
1 1/2 pints milk
Lots of grated cheddar cheese

This is basically a roux sauce and may take a few goes to get the ideal consistency for what you need. Basically you are after a splodgy consistency akin to thick custard or extra thick cream. Melt the butter in a pan, when completely melted take off the heat and add the flour a table spoon at a time. Stir/mix in each spoon of flour completely and then keep adding spoon fulls and repeating until you can't mix in any more flour. Note you can add a splash of olive oil if you accidentally go over! Now replace onto the heat and heat the mixture whilst turning it for 5 mins or so until a sweet smell arises. Reduce the heat to the lowest and mix splash after splash of milk into the mixture, making sure each one is mixed in completely before the next.
When it goes quite runny which should be about a pint or so, stop adding milk. Now heat higher and stir. Keep stirring, including scooping stuff off the sides and bottom. The mixture will not thicken until it boils and if you don't keep stirring you will get lumps. STIR STIR STIR. When it boils and thickens reduce the heat, keep stirring until thick. Now turn off the heat, add the cheese and stir in. Delia says never boil when the cheese is in else it separates. She is correct.

The rest - 45 mins in oven or so
Lasagne sheets
More grated cheddar cheese

Preheat the oven now at 180 C. You need a large oven dish, big enough for all of the gumph to fit it. The lasagne sheets we use do not need pre soaking, but can sometimes be slightly hard especially if you put 2 or 3 on top of each other or if they poke out the top. Ideally by this point, both your constituent parts are beyond goopy. If not, either reduce or have sloppy lasagne. Sloppy lasagne is much better than no lasagne and we all make at least one sloppy one...
Its Layering Time now. I like to layer meat, cheese sauce, lasagne sheets, meat, cheese sauce, lasagne sheets etc etc. Leave enough cheese sauce for a top layer at the end and make sure the lasagne layers are complete across the dish. Now sprinkle the cheese on the top.
Bung the concoction in the oven for 40-45 mins until brown and crispy on top. When done, take out and leave to sit for 5-10 mins, I know this is hard, but it really is better this way.

Now eat and indulge. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm lasagne.

[eefanincan]

Sounds delic!

[Skylace]

Sounds very good indeed!

[luke]

i'm going to have to try this, i love lasagna but i've never cooked it myself and haven't had it for years

[SquareEyes]

I now know this as "pasticcio", living in northern Italy, but doing a quick Google before going to bed, I found nothing more accurate than Juamei's recipe (except that you don't have a hope-in-hell of finding Cheddar Cheese in Italy, and they usually use Elemental).

I came across all kinds of strangeness like nutmeg in my internet searchness... I always think a pinch of tarragon is tasty in this, btw.

This (like most) pasta dishes in Italy is considered a first course. Don't pig-out on it, if you want to move on to more delicate meat or fish courses, before finally grossing-out on tiramisu (literally "pick me up") or something else that turns you into the stereotype

[Stones]