Since the theme of today's Valentines Day was #LoveYourself I decided I would love myself by treating myself with a gorgeous lasagna and some wine.. I also decided to make it the best I could! Made some mistakes on the way and even hurt myself a bit 😂honestly, I usually don't.. I'll tell you what I did and what I would've done differently.
What you'll need:
Olive oil
A nice red wine that you'd drink
3-4 strips of pancetta or streaky bacon
About a pound of beef and lamb mince
2-3 mid sized carrots
1 big onion or 1.5-2 mid sized ones
About 1.5 sticks of celery
4-6 cloves of garlic depending how much you want it
Fresh herbs, whatever you like.. I had thyme and rosmarine
Couple leaves of bay leaf
Salt and pepper
Tomato paste
Couple tins of good quality peeled tomatoes in a can
Beef stock cubes and veg stock cubes
Milk
3 eggs
Lasagna sheets
Low moisture mozzarella, however much you like to have in your lasagna
A hard cheese like parmesan or pecorino, whatever you like
Since the bolognese takes some time to make I made it day before, but it's artist's choice how you'd like to do it yourself.
1. Prep
Get a big pot and start preheating it in medium heat with a good glug of olive oil.
Chop the onion and celery is fine as you can and grate the carrots. Crush the garlic cloves with your knife and run through them. Then put some coarse salt on them and mince em to a pulp. Cut the bacon and remember to take the mince to room temp early so they're not too cold when you start browning them.
2. Start to make the bolognese
Start frying the bacon and fry it till crispy. Put them on a paper towel and try to reserve the oil in the pot. This is where I made a mistake.. Was supposed to brown the meat first and then put the veg, but started pouring in all the veg..
So I cooked the veg on low medium heat and remember to add some salt to draw water from them. You don't want to color them and you want to boil much of the water content away to intensify the flavor. Once the veg is a mush, I put it aside in a bowl.
Add some oil to the pan and increase the heat. Start putting in the meat bit by bit and add salt to again draw the moisture out. Let the water content boil away again to intensify the flavor and start frying the mince. You want to get some nice fond at the bottom of the pot (that's flavor!). Add the bacon back in and create a well in the middle of the pot. Put in about 3-4 table spoons of tomato paste in the well and let it fry for a bit to remove some of the bitter flavor and then mix it in. At this point I actually added some dried herbs too, but it's optional.
3. Time for some waiting..
Add the veg back in and it's now time to deglaze the pot with the wine. I put in about half a bottle, didn't really measure :D. Scrape the bottom of the pan to capture all to good flavor into your sauce. Let the wine reduce until you have a nice meaty winey paste.
Add your tin tomatoes and about the same amount of water. Then add two beef stock cubes and a veg stock cube to start with (add more later if the sauce needs it). Make a bouquet garni of your herbs and add it with the bay leaves. At this point you can try and break down the tomatoes with ladle, but it's not necessary yet, since they'll break down while cooking.
Now comes the long wait. It's gonna take a few hours for the sauce to reduce. Put on a low heat. You just want a small simmer, not a wildly boiling witches cauldron.. Grease and scum is going to gather at the top and you can scrape them off with a spoon while the sauce is reducing. Also stir it every now and then and try and break down the tomatoes.
Once the sauce has reduced add about a cup of milk, let it reduce and then add another cup and let it reduce again. Also before adding the milk start preheating your oven to 375 fahrenheit (about 190 celsius), if you're making the lasagna the same day. Check the seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste. You should now have an amazing creamy and unbelievably flavorful meat sauce. If you're making the bolognese day ahead, this is where you can leave it.
4. Time for lasagna
Take the sauce of the heat or reheat it (and preheat the oven). Separate and add 3 egg yolks into the sauce one by one and stir them in (it'll add so much to the richness..). Take out an oven tray. My ceramic tray was cracked so I had to use a big steel tray so the lasagna didn't become as tall as I wanted, but that's fine..
Grease the tray with a bit of oil..
Put a layer of sauce,
layer of pasta sheets,
layer of sauce,
layer of mozzarella grated or sliced (dealer's choice) and some hard cheese grated,
layer of pasta sheets,
layer of sauce and some fresh herbs,
layer of pasta sheets,
layer of sauce,
layer of mozzarella and hard cheese,
layer of pasta sheets,
final layer of sauce and
mozzarella and hard cheese and some herbs. This time a less mozzarella and more hard cheese.
Of course add layers if you want to :)
Put in the oven for about half an hour. Take it out and LET IT REST! If you cut into it now, it's just going turn out into a sludge. Let it settle at least half an hour.. and now cut into the most sinful, flavorful, masterpiece of a lasagna and enjoy it with some of the wine you used to cook it with.
Have a good day ;P
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