Credit to Tamara.
What do you need:
- Mince a mix of beef and pork, for a batch I use a kg each so you might even get a bit leftover for the freezer and if you have a special butcher get him/her to put it through the mincer together already!
- start by sauté 2 onions, some garlic but not too much as Italians are scared of it so I use maybe 2 cloves max, celery, carrots (in that sequence one after the other one till everything looks nice and soft but not too brown).
Once you have all the stuff sautéed add the mince at a decent high heat as its has to brown a bit instead of steaming in it, sometimes I add it in batches as 2 kg could be a large/ish volume all at once …obvs you can make the first one with just 1kg but it would be barely enough for a large tray lasagna.
Sometimes I used to add some beef oxo cubes, Lee Perrin sauce (a few drops) and herbs, I like to use origano just because I love the flavour with the tomato sauce but any herbs that your family likes just bang them in, pepper, salt chilly flakes all good going here!
When the mince is nicely cooked and inter grated with the base “soffritto” of your onions etc add the tomato’s, I tend to use a mixture of 1 can of thick juice chopped tomatoes, 1 carton of passata and a few blobs of tomato pure’…then I can add some stock, or a large glass of wine (if I use wine I add it to the meat before I add the tomato to get it to evaporate the booze)…I probably used red wine that time as we were all consenting adults. Salt and pepper to your liking too …I don’t tend to use too much salt as the cheese will add saltiness etc..
Then I just leave it to cook slowly and add stock when necessary (beef one preferably) for a couple of hours semi covered too so everything just cooks nicely. I generally make the sauce the day before at least and let it do its thing overnight as it’s much nicer day 2. The slow cooking could take 6 to 8 hours. My mum adds sausage meat but Italian sausages …I’m sure you get the drift here and sometimes guanciale (like a belly of pork kind of piece) but those were. It available to me so I would have used it that time.
For the besciamella sauce it’s really simple…I don’t use the drama version of making the roux etc…I literally take 1 lt of full fat milk to 100 grams of white flour, some fresh grated nutmeg, salt and pepper & blitz it all with a blender. Bring it to the boil slowly and stir it gently, you don’t have to hover over the pot till it starts getting warm the milk then you have to just stir it and it will thicken ….boom that’s done!
Now you have everything ready to go, get your lasagna sheets, first layer is meat sauce, then lasagna, then besciamella, lasagna, tomato sauce…lasagna, besciamella and maybe starts adding a layer of cheese with the white sauce. I generally use a blend of mozzarella and cheddar or if you go original style it’s just parmigiano …carry on till the top layer which is going to be a white layer & finish it off with lots of parmigiano cheese at the top….
In later years I would add layers of precooked veggies like one layers of courgettes, aubergines etc…I just really like the veggies in it as I don’t eat much meat anymore …
I think that’s about it really …let me know if you need any help…questions etc
Happy cooking
Tamara