Lasagne...

[jon bda]

Anyone got a good recipe for home made Lasagne?. Love the stuff but have never made my own...

[Lucio]

It's fairly easy

Step 1: Make up your favourite bolagnase (sic!) recipie
Step 2: Get an medium sized oven dish and coat the bottom with about half the bolagnase sauce
Step 3: Cover with pasta sheets
Step 4: Cover this layer with white sauce and a little grated cheese
Step 5: Cover with pasta sheets
Step 6: Repeat steps 2 to 4
Step 7: Add lots more grated cheese

Cook in the oven for about 20 minutes, until the cheese is bubbling.

Yes, you can get complicated by making up your own white or cheese sauce, or mess around with the layering (some people put the bolonagse directly ontop of the white sauce), but I've not found it varies the taste that much.

Main things to vary are A) the bolongase recipie (for example, I find onion salt add's a lot of flavour) or B) the cheese used (I like either a chedder and mozzarella mix, feta makes for an interesting flavour as well)

[KiMi-Tech]

I just use Ragu Sauces and fry my beef mince with some red onion, sliced peppers, and schwarz Steakhouse Pepper mix I also add some sweetcorn cause i love the stuff. Then layer as above i tend to use a mozerella and double glouchester cheese mix.

[indianwells]

I've done this Tamasin Day Lewis recipe. It is a bit of a special occasion recipe but my God it was superb!

UKTV Food: Recipes: Lasagne Al Forno

[Zak33]

We're presuming he can make a white sauce, or better still, a cheese sauce.

OK...here goes:

Make a Ragu: Fry one chopped onion, finely chopped garlic if you like it, any herbs you like (mixed italian dried?) and then add minced beef. Once beef is browned, add glass of red wine, stir to deglaze the pan, and then add tin of chopped tomatoes and bring to gentle boil. Add grind of salt and grind of pepper.

Allow to simmer on really low heat for up to 3 hours, adding water in little spashes if it needs it. The ace thing about a ragu is is can be cooking for HOURS while you do other stuff and as long as you keep moving it every 15-20 minutes it'll get better and better so long as its on a realy LOW heat and you add splashes of water when it needs it. It's not supposed to be WET....just moist

Make a Cheese Sauce
1 oz butter or marg.....gently heat in a pan
1 oz plain flour...add to the melted fat and stir with a wooden spoon This goes into a thick lump, and now you heat that gently for a few minutes to get the starch in the flour to expand and the oil attached itself to the starch, stirring wirth wooden spoon.

Take off heat for a few minutes and allow to cool a little. That helps.

Put it back on the mild heat & add a small splash of milk, and stir vigourously and the milk will be absorbed, then as it does, add more milk and stir and more milk...etc until you have a smooth sauce. Do it in bits.

It WILL go lumpy on you on your first try,, so dont be shy...use a hand held egg (baloon) whisk to get the lumps to dissolve in the milk

As it heats it thickens, add more milk ( to you may need up to a PINT of milk for this). Make it a little thinner than you want it, then grate cheese into it and it'll thicken a fraction and keep tasting it until the cheese taste is good. Add little more milk if needed to get the right saucey thickness and not too thick.

Then do as the man up there said.

Layer of ragu
Layer of pasta sheets
Layer of cheese sauce
Layer of pasta sheets
Layer of ragu
Layer of pasta sheets
Layers of cheese sauce.

Grate more cheese over it and oven cook until pasta ia cooked....about 20 minutes on 180C (GsMk 5 -6 ish)

It's actually even BETTER if you leave it to stand beforer puting in the oven...so layer it, and then leave it and the hot ragu will soften the pasta before it even goes in the oven

BEST OF ALL...it freezes well and you just defrost one day and eat that night

[directhex]

i like my mexican fusion version

[timread]

You can also get a good flavour by using 50/50 beef and pork mince, instead of all beef, in the ragu.

Also, I think you get a nice rich meat ragu if you use a fairly robust red wine as the liquid during the slow cook stage, rather than water. Just don't use something expensive. A £3-5 shiraz would work well. As Zak33 says above, just add a few splashes and let it cook off before adding more.

[MadduckUK]

layer...of...pepperoni

[toolsong]

Definately use fresh pasta sheets rather than the dry ones

[jon bda]

Thanks for the posts guys, making me feel hungry just reading them . Gonna try this at the weekend and i'll let you know how i get on...if i haven't landed myself in A&E with food poisoning...

[Lucio]

Originally Posted by toolsong

Definately use fresh pasta sheets rather than the dry ones

Why on earth would you do that??? You do realise that pasta is SUPPOSED to be dried before cooking and this "fresh" pasta stuff is a modern convience food. Ideally pasta should be "aldente" (sic?), that is, still slightly hard to bite into.

[Zak33]

Originally Posted by timread

Also, I think you get a nice rich meat ragu if you use a fairly robust red wine as the liquid during the slow cook stage, rather than water. Just don't use something expensive. A £3-5 shiraz would work well. As Zak33 says above, just add a few splashes and let it cook off before adding more.

he's soooo right...I've edited the description cos he's so right, and I do that every time...and I forgot to type it.

Cheers timread

[toolsong]

Originally Posted by toolsong

Definately use fresh pasta sheets rather than the dry ones

Originally Posted by Lucio

Why on earth would you do that??? You do realise that pasta is SUPPOSED to be dried before cooking and this "fresh" pasta stuff is a modern convience food. Ideally pasta should be "aldente" (sic?), that is, still slightly hard to bite into.

Due to the nature of the dish we are discussing.

The directions for dry sheets say to soften them in boiling water first.

I have never eaten an al dente lasagne and I order it fairly often at Italian restaurants.

If you have a method for lasagne to ensure both the pasta in the middle surrounded by an inch of sauce and the pasta at the edge which usually dries out a bit comes out al dente, please share

[Moby-Dick]

I'm sure I've seen some lasagne sheets which dont require softening , unlike the nasty value ones I just saw in my store cupboard which you have to boil the bejeezus out of first

[kushtibari]

Been using the same one for a while now.

Medium onion
3 sticks of celery
4 medium carrots

Chop them all up a bit

Cook the onions till soft in a decent bit of decent olive oil then add the celery and carrots for a couple of minutes.

Add about 2/3 lb of ground beef and 1/3 lb of pork mince at that point and add a bit of salt at that point. Once the meat is browned add about a 1/2 pint of full fat milk and grate a wee bit of nutmeg in.

Let the milk bubble away then add 1/2 pint of white wine. Once that has cooked out add a 1lb tin of chopped tomatoes.

Cook it slowly for about 3 hours minimum, adding water every now and then if it starts to dry out.

Once thats done I make a bog standard white sauce with milk/flour and butter (sometimes go overboard and bung in some double cream).

I then do a thin layer of white sauce, ragu, and lasagne, finishing with a decent layer of white sauce, topped with grated chedder and decent parmiganio cheese.

Edit: should have added that I bake it in the oven for about 25 minutes at about 175 once I've done all of the above.

[manwithnoname]

milk ... white wine!? I would have thought red wine and no milk, but then again I'm no michelin star chef. still you have got me wondering what it tastes like.

Bolognese sauce:
Onion
garlic
beef
mushrooms
grated carrot if you need an extra potion of veg.
2 tins of tomatoes if you have time to let it boil - 1 tin plus tomato puree if you are pushed for time
oregano
salt
pepper

white sauce:
butter
flour
milk
salt
pepper

Construction as above - if I have an egg that needs using up I will whisk an egg into what left of the white sauce for the top layer, cheddar cheese on top.

Zak33's cooking times look good. If I'm pushed for time I will cook the Bolognese sauce for as long as it take me to make the white sauce (i.e. not long at all) then I'll cook in the oven for at least 45 mins, just enough time to go out to the shops