Lasagna is a massive ordeal in our home. It’s definitely a gift for slow food fans with each piece of the lasagne puzzle researched and perfected over the years. There’s a little experimentation with every new edition, and long chats of how we might improve it for next time. Typically experimentation involves trying to keep the damn thing intact when we get it out of the pan, and also new interesting layers. Here’s the current incarnation.
Ragu Ingredients
- 14 cloves garlic (muhaha, seems severe huh!)
- 3 small onions
- 4 stalks celery
- 3 small carrots
- 1 Spanish chorizo
- 150g shortcut bacon
- 500g pork mince
- 500g veal mince
- 800g can tomatoes
- 1 cup red wine
- 1 cup milk
- 400ml water
- 250g tomato paste
- ¼ cup thyme, stripped off the stem
Ragu Method
- Add garlic to food processor. Blitz until it sticks to the sides.
- Add onions to food processor. Blitz until chopped but not too juicy.
- Heat oil, add onion and garlic on a low heat. We want to make them sweat. Sweat til they can’t sweat no more.
- Chop carrots roughly. Add one rough bit at a time to the food processor until super finely chopped.
- Add celery to processor. Blitz until finely chopped and getting juicy.
- Add carrot/celery mixture to onions in the pan. Gently fry until all vege are translucent and start giving off some liquid.
- Chop chorizo roughly, but smallish. Add to food processor one bit at a time. These give the processor a lot of hard work to do, so so slow with them. Add bacon. Process both until they look like mince.
- Add chorizo/bacon mince to the pan. Stir it around a bit and let the fat render out of the chorizo for about 5 mins. Mmmm, flavour.
- Add pork and veal mince to the pan. Get some colour onto the mince, and let cook for 10 minutes. Break up any lumpy looking meat bits.
- Add milk, cook for 5 more mins.
- Add canned tomato, tomato paste, water and wine. Stir, stir, stir. Get all the meat making liquid kisses.
- Add thyme. Stir, put the lid on, sit down for a bit.
Ricotta Mixture Ingredients
- 1kg ricotta
- ¼ basil leaves, chopped
- ½ flat leaf parsely, chopped
- Rind of 1 lemon
- 2 eggs
- Salt
- Pepper
Ricotta Mixture Method
- Add all ingredients to a bowl.
- Stir well to break up the ricotta.
Bechamel Sauce Ingredients
- 1 small onion
- 6 cloves
- 1 bay leaf
- 750ml (3 cups) milk
- 50g unsalted butter
- ⅓ cup plain flour
- 1½ cups grated parmesan
- 2 tsp dijon mustard
- ½ white pepper
Bechamel Sauce Method
- Stud the onion with the cloves. Add it, and the bay leaves to a saucepan of milk.
- Bring milk to the boil, then set aside for flavours to infuse.
- Melt butter in a pan. Add flour and cook for 2-3 minutes it starts to bubble and looks a bit like honeycomb.
- Add milk slowly, a ladleful at a time, stirring after each ladleful is added and the sauce is smooth.
- Add mustard, white pepper and nutmeg.
- Remove from the heat and stir in the cheeses. It’s now really yummy.
Assemble