Gary makes lasagna

A couple of weeks ago, I made and ate my first eggplant parmigiana. Unlike eggplant parmigiana, I’ve eaten lasagna many times, but I’ve never cooked it.

I sought advice from my Italian guru and friend, GC. GC shared her family recipe with me. GC is all about authenticity, so if you expect to see me describe making a béchamel sauce in my fancy saucier pan…NUP, not going to happen! This authentic lasagna has no béchamel.

Ingredients

• Extra virgin olive oil
• One white onion—chopped
• Three pinches of oregano
• Two bay leaves
• Basil
• 250 grams of minced beef (regular rather than super lean)
• 250 grams of minced pork (regular rather than super lean)
• Two 700 gram bottles of passata
• ½ cup of red wine—suggest a Shiraz (it looks like blood)
• Iodised flaky salt
• Freshly ground black peppercorns
• Ham—roughly cut
• ½ cup of freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
• Italian-style Mozzarella cheese—broken up with your fingers (wash your fingers first!)
• Fresh Lasagna pasta sheets

Ingredients deviations

Beef and pork mince

• Because I halved the recipe from GC, I knew when I bought meat; I’d have to probably aliquot portions and freeze the leftover meat. However, when I went shopping, I spied some “bolognese” mince, a combination of beef and pork. I bought 500 grams of this “bolognese” mince instead of separate beef and pork mince.
• I initially thought I’d buy some chuck steak and pork belly to hand grind myself. Unfortunately, I had to attend a work meeting today, so my time was cut short. I prefer hand grinding because the meat doesn’t clump. The store-bought mince tends to clump.

Instructions

1. Gently heat some extra virgin olive oil in a large pot if you have one. I don’t, so the largest suitable cooking vessel I had is a large non-stick wok.
2. Sautée the onions until they sweat and turn a golden colour.
3. While the onions are sautéing, add in the dried oregano and a couple of bay leaves.
4. When the onions have a nice colour, add in the minced beef and pork and, with a wooden spoon, break up the meat so that all the ground meat is exposed to the hot metal of the cooking vessel to enable better browning.
5. Once the meat has browned, add in the red wine and allow the wine to “cook out” so the alcohol evaporates, leaving the rich flavour of the fermented grape.
6. Now it’s time to add in the bottles of passata. Empty the bottles into the cooking vessel one at a time, and with a small volume of boiling water, rinse out the bottles and empty the watery tomato purée into the cooking vessel. The additional water dilutes the tomato purée a little and avoids a sauce that is too thick. This is a good tip to reduce waste!
7. Bring the sauce to a simmer and add some basil leaves. I like basil so I add a whole lot including the stems and then fish the stems out with the bay leaves at the end.
8. Cook the sauce for about twenty minutes and stir the sauce regularly to avoid the sauce burning on the bottom of the cooking vessel.
9. Once the sauce has cooked through, please remove it from the heat source.
10. In a baking tray that is a suitable size for you, spoon some sauce onto the bottom. Spread the sauce with a flourish across the bottom of the baking tray. I do this by emptying a ladle-full of sauce onto the baking tray and then using the outer curvature of the ladle as a spreading tool.
11. Add some freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano onto the sauce, and then lay out a layer of fresh pasta sheets.
12. On the pasta sheets, spread out the roughly cut ham and atop the ham spread out some mozzarella.
13. Then add a little more sauce making sure there is mince in the spoon, and spread it out.
14. Repeat the steps until everything is exhausted.
15. Place a sheet of baking paper over the last layer of sauce and seal the tray with some aluminium foil.
16. Put the tray into a 180 °C oven and cook for about 30 minutes.
17. After 30 minutes, remove the tray and uncover the lasagna.
18. Allow the lasagna to rest for about 10 minutes to firm up a little because as much as a wobble is nice, it’s easier to handle lasagna, which is firm.
19. Slice the lasagna and serve on the warmed dinner plate along with a side salad in the style of my best friend (see photo).

Final thoughts

This lasagna was my first. Having the recipe explained made it easier to make on my own. Compared to lasagna Mum has made and lasagna I’ve eaten in restaurants and cafeterias, this was more delicious and unctuous. It was bloody fantastic! 🤤🤤🤤 Do you like lasagna?

I’ve now got enough leftover lasagna for meals this week, and I have some saved in my freezer.

You can purchase and use pre-grated mozzarella and Parmigiano Reggiano cheeses. However, pre-grated or pre-shredded cheeses have chemicals added to help the cheese pieces remain separated. These products also contain anti-fungal drugs because the extra surface area exposed to air makes the cheese more prone to fungal growth. Do you prefer grating your cheese? With the fresh mozzarella, I didn’t need to grate it, I just pinched off small pieces, and it came off in flat bits.

I used to joke that oncology patients should be prescribed pre-shredded cheese because of the amount of natamycin in the bag!

I don’t know much about alcohol because I can’t drink, so when I buy wine, I have two rules of thumb. If I’m buying wine to take to dinner with a friend, I use the price as the guide because I figure you pay for better tasting wine. When I buy wine for cooking, I go cheap. I’ve seen celebrity chefs say that you should cook with what you drink. I don’t know if it makes much difference. Do you have a rule of thumb for wine?

You’ll see I also had an affogato for dessert. The coffee is from Atlas on Hibberson Street in Gungahlin. The ice cream is on the recommendation of one of my ACT Pathology colleagues. One of our new trainees whose husband is vegan. It tasted pretty good. I would happily eat more.

As always, praise God, I’m grateful to GC for expanding my culinary horizons. 🙂👩‍🍳🔪😉

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