Lasagna

I was thinking about what my inaugural post should be – I have a few political things already in the works, but it’s January 2022, we’re two years into a pandemic, our politics are a disaster, and people are exhausted. They need some comfort; they need to be brought together. For me, the most comforting and unifying thing I can think of is food. And one of the most comforting and unifying of all foods is lasagna – who doesn’t love lasagna, especially in the depths of winter? I happened to have made lasagna yesterday (maybe that tells you where my head is at these days). So that is where this blog is going to start, with a lasagna recipe.

The lasagna I made is based on one from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. I probably got the idea from this video:

The first time I tried this style of lasagna was a revelation – it’s so much more tender and silky than other lasagnas I’d had, probably because there’s no mozzarella or ricotta. Don’t get me wrong, I like any lasagna, but one downside to mozzarella or ricotta is that, after baking in the oven, the former tends to get rubbery, and the latter tends to get dry and crumbly. This Emilia-Romagna style of lasagna, on the other hand, uses a bechamel sauce, which is composed of butter, flour, and milk. That’s right, a lasagna recipe that doesn’t necessarily have cheese – sounds crazy, I agree.  I do however put grated parmesan (after all, Parma is in Emilia-Romagna) into the bechamel once it’s thickened a bit, for flavor. So I guess the downside to my version of lasagna is there’s no stretchy cheese effect, which I admit is nice. But the upside is that the final result is more tender and silky than some of the mozzarella/ricotta lasagnas.  

As far as the recipe goes, mine is pretty similar to the video, with a few tweaks (I don’t think I’ve ever followed a recipe exactly, which is probably why I’m not a great baker). But basically, you make a Bolognese sauce (since Bologna is the capital of Emilia-Romagna), you make a bechamel sauce, you make wide flat pasta, you layer them in a casserole dish, and you bake it. Of course, you can just use dry, store-bought pasta, but I do think homemade pasta makes the dish more velvety, which is the effect we’re going for. If you’ve never made pasta, this is a great recipe to learn on, because you just make sheets of it; you don’t need to fiddle with the next step of making shapes. I have a simple manual pasta roller like this, which is easy to use, and I recommend it. I am not, and never will be an Italian nonna-level pasta maker with a rolling pin.

P.S. This takes a long time, but it’s worth it if you like to cook, and you like lasagna. It’s much more manageable if you make the Bolognese ahead of time too. This is not a fussy, tedious recipe either. There are three elements, and each one is straightforward.

P.P.S. If I know anything about Italian food, it’s that it’s all about the ingredients. So the better quality ingredients you use, the better this dish will turn out.

Anyway, here’s the recipe:

Emilia-Romagna-style Lasagna

Ingredients

Bolognese sauce

1 lb. of ground pork

1 lb. of ground beef

1 or 2 carrots

2 or 3 medium yellow or Vidalia onions

2 or 3 ribs of celery

5 or 6 teeth of garlic

1 cup of dry red or white wine

1 bunch of parsley

1 or 2 sprigs of fresh rosemary

1 large can of peeled plum tomatoes

3 bay leaves

1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar, plus a dash later to taste

Red chile flakes to taste

1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil

Salt

Fresh ground black pepper

Bechamel sauce

3 tbsps. of butter

3 tbsps. of flour

3 cups of milk (or substitute one cup of half and half or heavy cream for added richness)

1 pinch of nutmeg

3 oz. of grated parmesan cheese

Salt

Fresh ground black pepper

Pasta

3 cups of flour, plus another 1/4 cup to dust when kneading and rolling the dough, and keeping the pasta from sticking to surfaces once made

4 or 5 eggs, depending on size

Dash of extra virgin olive oil

1 tbsp. of butter to grease the casserole dish

Instructions

Bolognese Sauce

Cooking time: 2.5-4 hours

Servings: One full lasagna, plus a few more cups

I would first start with the Bolognese, since it takes the longest, and like I said, you can make it in advance and even freeze it. In fact, it will taste better as the flavors “marry” (something all Cajuns know). Plus, the amount that this recipe makes will probably leave you enough extra to use as a full spaghetti Bolognese meal.

For the veg, I didn’t put the exact amounts because the sizes can vary a lot. For my taste, I prefer maybe twice as much onion as carrot or celery, and plenty of garlic. In the video above, the chef grinds the veg in like a meat grinder. A nice option is to put all these in a food processor and finely chop them. This is not a stew; it shouldn’t be chunky. It’s a sauce that will be layered in a lasagna, so it should be thick but of a pretty smooth, uniform texture. It will cook for a long time, and the veg kind of melts in there. You may be wondering why the recipe calls for whole peeled tomatoes, rather than sauce then. I have a general rule that whole things retain more flavor than pre-chopped/pureed things. So I think whole canned tomatoes are more flavorful than pureed or diced tomato. The same goes for nutmeg and parmesan for the bechamel - start with the whole item and grate it, for better flavor. I usually break the tomatoes up in the pot with a spoon a bit; the long cooking time should do the rest.  I often cook my Bolognese in an Instant Pot, on the pressure cook setting, since it basically cooks twice as fast. But a big Dutch oven is great; it will just take longer.

1.       Finely chop the onions, carrots, celery, and garlic. Put them aside.

2.       Strip the needles from the rosemary sprigs. Finely chop them, and finely chop the parsley (parsley stems are fine).  

3.       Season the meat generously with salt and fresh ground black pepper.

4.       If using an Instant Pot, pour the olive oil in the pot, set it to “Saute”, and let it heat up. If using a conventional pot, pour the olive oil in, and set the heat to medium. When the oil is shimmering and moves quickly in the pot, add the ground meat, in batches if necessary to get good browning. Let the meat sit in the pot for a few minutes first without stirring to help with this.

5.       Once all the meat has nice caramelization on it, add the onions, carrots, celery, and garlic, as well as the chile flakes if you like a bit of heat. Stir everything around thoroughly so that you get some good contact between the veg and the pot. It’s a good thing if little brown bits are sticking to the bottom of the pot – that’s flavor, and it will get deglazed by liquid in a moment.

6.       After a few minutes, once the vegetables starts to get a bit translucent, add the wine. With a wooden spoon, scrape the bottom of the pot to deglaze the brown bits. Let the alcohol cook out of it for a couple of minutes, then add the tomatoes, parsley, rosemary, bay leaves, and balsamic vinegar. Add a cup of water if the mixture has no liquid. Scrape the bottom of the pot again with the spoon. Also with the spoon, break up the tomatoes a bit, but don’t go crazy with it. The cooking will do the rest.

7.       Bring the contents of the pot to a boil. If in an Instant Pot, seal the lid and set the pressure cooker setting for 1.5 hours. If in a conventional Dutch oven, cover, reduce the heat to low, and cook for 3 hours, if possible. More time means a smoother texture and deeper flavor. Check every hour and add water if it needs any liquid.

8.       After the cooking time has elapsed, remove the lid and check the seasoning. Add salt, pepper, and balsamic if it needs it. If there’s still a bit of liquid in the sauce, cook it for a bit longer with the lid off in order to get rid of it. Once it’s done, set it aside to cool a bit. Remove the bay leaves. If you’re not making the lasagna that day, put it in the fridge in a sealed container for up to a few days, or in the freezer for up to a few months.

Bechamel sauce

Cooking time: 30 minutes

Servings: About 3 cups of sauce – good for one full lasagna

This sauce maybe sounds fancy or intimidating, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. The key is just to keep gently stirring the whole time, so that the consistency becomes smooth and nothing sticks to the bottom of the pot and scorches. Some people say that the milk/cream has to be heated, or that it has to be added slowly. I’ve never found either to be necessary, as long as you stir pretty continuously. As far as remembering the recipe goes, this is pretty nice - use the same amounts of butter and flour, and use the same number cups of milk as number of tablespoons of butter and flour. So this recipe is 3 tbsps. butter, 3 tbsps. flour, and 3 cups of milk.

1.       Melt the butter in a medium-sized saucepan on medium heat. Add the flour and stir it all together with a whisk, until it’s a smooth paste. This should happen readily.

2.       Whisking gently and continuously, cook the paste for a minute or two.

3.       Add the milk and continue to stir.

4.       Slowly, the sauce will thicken. You’ll notice that it begins to coat a spoon. Once that happens, you can add the nutmeg, and some salt and pepper to taste. Don’t add too much salt at this point, because you’re going to add parmesan cheese, which is salty.

5.       Once the sauce starts to bubble, the thickening will accelerate. I think ideally, you don’t want it too thick, because it will continue to thicken in the oven. So once it’s at a medium thickness, like about that of heavy cream, you can turn the heat off, add the grated parmesan, and whisk it in until smooth.

6.       Check it for seasoning, and add more salt, pepper, parmesan, and nutmeg to taste.

Pasta

Cooking time: 1.5 hours, including 30 minutes rest-time for the dough

Servings: 1 full lasagna

Again, store-bought dry pasta works fine and of course is much quicker. If you go that route, I would still go ahead and cook it until just about fully cooked, in boiling salted water, then remove it and let it dry a bit before layering it into the casserole dish with the two sauces. It will finish cooking in the oven, but there’s nothing worse than lasagna with uncooked pasta. ☹

1.       Put the flour in a large bowl and make a well in the middle of it.

2.       Crack the eggs into the well and add the olive oil to them. With the fork, scramble the eggs and oil, and gradually pull flour into the well with the fork to incorporate.

3.       With your hands, begin to bring the whole mixture together. It’s ok to work it forcefully, because you’ll be kneading it in a bit. If after working it together for a couple of minutes, it still seems dry (one clue is that not all of the ingredients are incorporated into the mass of dough), add another egg or a bit of lukewarm water. Work the dough around until all the bits of flour have been combined and the bowl is clean.

4.       Sprinkle some flour on a smooth surface and dump the dough onto it. Knead it for 5-7 minutes, or until it’s smooth and it springs back after being pushed in with your finger.

5.       Shape the dough into a ball and wrap it in saran wrap. Let it sit unrefrigerated for a half hour.

6.       Clamp the pasta roller onto a large, clean surface. Set it to “0” thickness.

7.       Cut off a tennis ball-sized piece of dough from the ball. Stretch it flat a bit, so that at least one end of it can go through the roller. Sprinkle it with flour on both sides, and rub the flour in. This will prevent it from sticking to the roller and make it easier to handle.

8.       Run it through the roller once. Fold it over itself, then run it through again. You’re basically kneading the dough a second time by rolling it.

9.       Set the pasta roller to “1” thickness. Run the sheet of dough through the roller. If at each stage the dough seems to be getting wet or sticky, sprinkle and rub in more flour. Be very careful handling the dough in this process. Try not to tug it. Otherwise, it will stretch or tear. Run it through the roller at “2”, then “3”, then “4”, then “5”. At this point, it’s pasta. Depending on its consistency, you could try to get it thinner by running it through at “6”. The thinner the pasta, the more delicate the lasagna. But if it’s starting to have stretch marks after “5”, stop there. You should be able to see the shadow of your hand through it. Gently lay the sheet of pasta down on your surface, and rub a dusting of flour into it, then lay it down flour-side, and rub a dusting of flour onto the side facing up.

10.   Do the same process for the rest of the dough.

11.   With this amount, you can probably make about 8 sheets of pasta, each about two feet long and about 4 inches wide.

Lasagna

Cooking time: 30-45 minutes

Servings: 6

1.       Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

2.       Thoroughly grease a large ovenproof rectangular casserole dish with 1 tbsp. of butter.

3.       With a spoon, spread a layer of the Bolognese sauce on the bottom of the casserole dish. You don’t have to cover every square inch, but it should generally cover the surface.

4.       With another spoon, spread the bechamel on top of the Bolognese. You can do it in ribbons or dollops, it doesn’t really matter. Don’t worry about making it in an even layer.

5.       Cover the layer of sauce with a layer of pasta. It’s ok if the sheets don’t fit perfectly, you can cut them and adjust them as you go.

6.       Repeat the process until all the pasta and bechamel is used. You should have a few cups of Bolognese left over. The top layer should be sauce, not bare pasta. The bechamel will get nicely browned in the oven.

7.       Put the lasagna in the oven and bake for 30 minutes, then check to see how it looks. If it’s not bubbling and the top doesn’t have some browning, put it back in the oven until it’s done.

8.       Remove the lasagna from the oven and let it cool and set a bit, if you can resist. 😊