I realise that many of my posts start this way but, I effing LOVE lasagne! How can you go wrong with meat, cheese and pasta baked in such a way that the AWESOMEness of the total far exceeds the sum of awesomeness of the parts? Nowhere, that's where. I've looked, trust me. My recipe here for you tonight isn't something special or over-the-top or anything, just a good, trusty, simple recipe with the odd little tweak here and there to make this an awesome meal with stuff all effort. All you need is a little time, patience and a big appetite!
How many of you out there remember
Garfield? That arrogant, overweight ginger cat from the comic of the same name that started in the late 70's. When I was little, my dad told me that my birthday was on the same day as Garfield. Not really understanding that he was a fictional character, I set about emulating the life of this cantankerous tomcat. Well, folks I can pretty much say that I have achieved this goal! Right down to the completely unreasonable love of lasagne (and all but the ginger fur... although there was that one terrible bleach job when I was a teenager). Fortunately for my dad, I didn't attempt to emulate the life of Elvis whom he told me
died on my birthday. Although I've come pretty
close.
Here's a list of ingredients - enough to make a lasagne 25cm x 25x x 8cm or so:
- 800-900g of beef mince - nice and lean
- tinned tomatoes & herbs or pre-made pasta sauce
- Some sheets of pasta - fresh or dry, totally up to you
- ~2C cheese
- ~150g sliced ham
For the sauce:
- 3 Tbsp Butter
- 3 Tbsp Flour
- 1.5C Milk
- 2C grated cheese (measured after grating)
First of all, put the oven on to preheat at about 150C - all the ingredients will be cooked by the time we put them into the oven (with the exception of the pasta, which only needs 100C to cook anyways), so we just want a slow-medium oven to bring them all together.
Now, get the mince on. You've probably got your own technique for this and all you need to do is make your best bolognese sauce. A couple of tips though... You want plenty of flavour and you also want to have a relatively dry sauce before you start to build the lasagne later. I tend to put lots of tinned tomato and passata in and let it reduce down - that way you get intense tomato flavour without the soupy, sloppiness of your average
Dolmio. (This picture is without the sauce BTW... you don't want it THAT dry!)
Now... the sauce. I'll take you quickly through the various stages that you will go through here. First off, pop your milk into a pot on low heat and add a bayleaf. One tip with fresh herbs is to tear them by hand just once if you intend on removing them later - also put them in the palm of one hand and 'clap' with the other, the pressure caused by this fractures the soft fleshy 'lamina' in the leaves and helps release more aroma (yeah, that's right...science, bitches.)
You want to melt the butter over a low heat being careful not to burn it (salt-free butter helps with this) and then add the flour, mixing thoroughly. This bubbly paste is what is referred to as a
Roux (huh, La Roux comes up on google before Roux... ironic as she's another cantankerous ginger...). This is the base of so many sauces and is an absolute staple of Surrender Cooking. I mean French Cuisine. One last tip, NEVER turn your back on the roux - the milk solids in the butter can burn in an instant.
Next we're going to add the milk. The tip here is "little and often" - this applies to either spooning in 1/4C at a time over and over again or as I do it, dribbling in slowly and stirring lots. The slightly brown colouring comes from getting just a little colour into your roux - this adds a nutty flavour. Your cooking puritans (the French, mainly) would say that you're done with this sauce now... but no. They are wrong.
Because this isn't France (yes, I know this is an Italian dish...) and we would defend our city for more than 6 weeks, we will be dumping some cheese up in here. I've finely grated 2C of a mild cheddar - use something with a bit of flavour, but beware of anything to oily like a tasty or whatever.
Now... the build. The best tip I can give you here is to think about building a strong foundation on which to tower saucy goodness. I start with a meat layer.
Followed by a layer of ham. F*ck yeah, ham.
Followed by a layer of grated cheese. I actually alternated cheese and cheese sauce for each layer, being careful not to put too much sauce on the lower layers.
And last, a sheet of pasta. As I mentioned earlier, you can use fresh or dried - it doesn't really matter. One note is that you don't have to cook the sheets before putting them in. They will cook in the sauces. Hells yeah! Once you add this layer, it's pretty much rinse and repeat until you've used up all your meat, pasta or space in the dish.
When you're all layered up, time for the remainder of the cheese sauce - if you haven't used too much on your layers, you should have about 1.5C or so now. Lather it all on there, making sure it gets down the sides between the dish and the lasagne. Top with a hefty layer of grated cheese. Pop it into the oven for about 45mins to an hour depending on how brown you like your top. Also, depending on how long you wait!
Put down that spatula Sonny Jim! This puppy's not quite ready for eation' just yet. Ideally you want to let the lasagne sit for about 30mins to an hour. This helps the layers sorta set so you can cut them easily. Of course, if you are of a French disposition (wow, the frogs are really getting a bashing tonight) you can just ignore me and get in there with a spoon straight away.
Once it's cooled plate it up and reheat - microwave is OK, but if you can avoid it... do. A really neat trick for an entertaining situation is to plate slices into individual bowls with quite a little space around the sides, pour over more pasta sauce, top with more cheese and rebake. This is great if you want to do most of the prep in advance & is an old restaurant trick. Serve with a little salad and a lot of beer.
This is such and AWESOMEly quintessentially Italian dish and conjures up images of red & white checkered table cloths, straw-wrapped bottles of Chianti and mandolins playing in the background. I reckon if the British crime movie "Layer Cake" was to be remade, they should defo call it "Lasagne Pie".
I'd love to hear how y'all get on with this recipe or if you have your own versions you'd love to share (I've made a chicken and spinach one once that was the tits) so drop me a message in the comments or hit me up on
@jeffois
Choice
-jeffois
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