The major ingredients1) Ragu'
Bolognese sauce, but forget to buy it ready. Divine punishement falls onto who dares.... By the way, yes, ragu' is a ridiculous italianization for
ragout, which is a sauce with pieces of meat I think.
2) Besciamella (yep, sorry again for the italianization of
Besciamelle)
You can buy this, but if you have a mixer or good wrists, it is cheap and easy to make it
3) Pasta
I definitely buy this. Sorry not coming from the right region of Italy. Refer to another website if you want to learn how to make pasta. What I buy is ready-made pack of flat slabs of pasta, which don't need to be pre-cooked, as long as the sauces you add are liquid enough. It is called
Pasta all'uovo, that means pasta with eggs, and it is roughly the same pasta you use of tortellini and tagliatelle, different from the pasta spaghetti penne fusilli and all their little friends are made.
4) Grated parmesan cheese
Ragu'
1) Start with
soffritto (I told you it is a fundamental of Italian cooking)
Cut the onion, a carrot and half a celery stick and put them into a
big pan with a piece of butter (oil); fry until you see the onion pieces become rather transparent. Don’t burn it.
2) Throw 250g of minced beef and 250g of minced pork (or sausages, but you want no fuss sausages, only pork) in the pan and stir quickly. The 250g weight is indicative, usually I buy the pack at the supermarket and use it all.
3) Add tomato sauce, a lot of it, try to cover the meat. I usually like to use
passata, even though
pelati can also be used.
4) Add spices: typically one broth stock, salt, and a little little bit of cinnamon. Beware, the cinnamon is a family trick I am giving you! I takes away the "taste of meat" that the meat sometimes has in excess, if you know what I mean.
5) Keep it at a temperature at which the sauce boils slightly (under-boils) and leave it there forever, with a lid. Stir it since time to time (in the ads break of your favourite evening TV program for example), adding water if necessary.
6) How long? The more the better. Basically at the beginning the meat will tend to assemble in big pieces, but as long as you cook it it should disassemble in a whole pan of minced pieces.
BesciamellaOk if you are French I don't need to teach you how to make besciamelle.
For all of the others: Melt 100g of butter and mix it with 100g of white flour. Add slowly 1 l of milk, avoiding the formation of lumps. Try to add really very little milk and mix it with the flour/butter, and add homeopatic quantities of milk always mixing frenetically. This is the point where most people think: fuck, I always get the lumps. Me too. So what I do is: I take my mixer, it is extremely effective in sterminating lumps.
Finally, add a little bit of nutmeg.
The layering moment Get a
rectangular oven resistent
pan with borders at least 5 cm high.
Layer a little bit of ragu' and besciamelle on the bottom. The start with the proper layering, which is a repetition of Pasta, ragu', besciamelle, parmesan in this order. Repeat for about 4-5 times till you are at the top of the pan. Add more stuff on top than in the intermediate layers.
Put in the oven already hot (200 C) for 35 minutes. (Well, I guess you just put a fork in the pan and try to understand if the pasta is cooked in this way.) Here are your
heavenly lasagne! Enjoy!
FreezingI usually keep frozen meat for the ragu' in the freezer, so that I can make ragu' whenever I have time. I usually make ragu' the night before the day I want to make lasagne. Also you can still freeze lasagne once they are cooked, and have them ready for sudden visitors.
Finally you can also freeze ready ragu' in small portions and use it later for last minute pasta alla bolognese. Basically you are allowed to freeze the meat once when it's raw, and once when it's cooked.
