Lasagna.

Lasagna – I guess it’s one of everybody’s favorite comfort foods and crowd pleasers and yet still, everyone has his own and different way (or ways) of preparing it. Beef or pork, chicken or vegetarian, only tomatoes or lots of vegetables… There are countless combinations and variations. I even once ate mushroom and deer lasagna at my uncles place. It was utterly delicious.

It’s great, that there are so many ways of cooking something, that is basically so simple as lasagna. Alternating layers of meaty tomato sauce, béchamel sauce, pasta and cheese. Something like that has to be tasty!

Even though it leaves so much room for variation, I decided to do a rather classical and simple lasagna, when my girlfriend asked me to put it on my list for this weeks cooking. The only fancy thing I added was a layer of ricotta, below the cheese crust. It’s a nice creamy addition.

I wish I would have had the time and motivation to use home made pasta for the lasagna. It’s definitely one great way to improve flavor and texture. So, if you’ve got the time and a pasta machine at hand I definitely encourage you to invest the one hour additional time.

Ingredients:
serves 4 hungry people

Meat Sauce
3 tbsp. olive oil
600g minced beef
1 medium onion
1 carrot
3 cloves of garlic
2 cans chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup tomato concentrate
1/4 cup red wine
1 cup chicken stock
1 sprig of thyme
1 sprig of rosemary
1 sprig of flat leaf parsley, chopped

Béchamel Sauce
1 cup of milk
2 tbsp. butter
2 tbsp. flour
1 pinch of nutmeg

Cheese Layer
1 cup of ricotta cheese
5 oz. (150g) of mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese
1 large egg

lasagna pasta sheets
salt and fresh ground black pepper

Start with making the meat sauce. It can be done one day ahead of time, if you prefer.

Heat the olive oil in a big saucepan over medium-high heat and add the minced beef. Fry until nicely browned. Meanwhile chop the onion, garlic and carrot. When the beef is done, remove it from the pan and set aside. Add onion and carrot and reduce heat to medium-low. Give it a stir every now and then and after about 10 to 15 minutes add garlic and continue stirring until fragrant.

Add beef and turn up heat to medium-high again. After a minute deglace pan with the red wine and chicken stock while making sure to scrape up all the nice stuff at the bottom of the pan.

Add tomato concentrate, diced tomatoes, thyme and rosemary and continue to cook over medium heat until the sauce has significantly reduced. Discard thyme and rosemary, remove from heat, stir in chopped flat leaf parsley and season with salt and fresh ground pepper to taste.

Set aside or refrigerate for up to 24 hours.

Okay, meat sauce is done, let’s move to the béchamel sauce. Start with heating the butter in a small saucepan over medium-high heat until bubbly. Stir in the flour and while stirring continuously wait until it has browned a little bit. Add the milk and while still stirring wait for the sauce to thicken. Season with some nutmeg and set aside.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl stir together ricotta, egg and half of the parmesan cheese. Set aside.

Line the baking form of your choice with the pasta sheets (pre-cook them before, if needed) and spoon a thin layer of béchamel sauce on the pasta. Add a thick layer of meat sauce and again, a layer of pasta sheets. Repeat the steps until you have three layers and add a double layer of pasta sheets. Spoon all of the ricotta parmesan mix over the pasta layer and top with sliced mozzarella. Sprinkle parmesan cheese over it, cover it with a sheet of aluminum foil and put it in the oven.

Bake, covered, for about 30 minutes. Remove the foil and bake, uncovered, for another 15-20 minutes or until the cheese is nicely browned.

Serve immediately with a glass of red wine.