Italianization and Francisation

The ragoût, from the French word ragoûter, to revive the taste, (called ragu' in Italian) is a dish made from meat, vegetables or fish cut in small pieces and cooked (for a very long time) in a sauce.

The béchamel also called white sauce is made from milk, butter and flour. Its recipe first appeared in the book Le Cuisinier François (published in 1651), by the French chef de cuisine François Pierre La Varenne. The sauce was named to flatter a courtier, Louis de Béchameil, marquis de Nointel.

Lasagne!

The major ingredients
1) 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.

Besciamella

Ok 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!

Freezing
I 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.

The universal Risotto recipe

0. Broth (pan #1):
Prepare some meat broth, either boiling a piece of chicken (can’t be bothered to do this; maybe for Christmas) or by putting a stock in boiling water (preferred option always).

1. Soffritto (pan #2) (literally "under-fried"):
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. Vegetable/Mushrooms/Sausage:
Most of the ingredients go at this point: add any kind of vegetable (red radicchio for example) or mushrooms you want to put into the risotto. This is also the good moment for putting sausage (or pork mince, speck, non-smoked bacon…). Stir so that everything takes the taste from the soffritto and the vegetable lose their water.

3. Rice:
At this point add rice, about 70 grams per person plus 70 for the pan (this is what they say). So about 250 g for two people. Stir quickly so that the rice doesn’t stick to the pan. Buy Italian rice (e.g. Gallo), or any rice except parboiled/pilaf/Indian/Chinese rice. These last ones remain stiff, while you want a kind of rice which swells in water to make the creamy effect.

4. White wine:
Shortly after the rice, add some white wine. The pan should be so hot that the alcohol evaporates almost immediately. Stir the rice with the wine, so that it takes the taste of the wine.

5. Broth:
As soon as you see that the wine is gone, start adding broth in small quantities. You should just cover the rice with a thin layer of broth. Then stir, stir, slowly stir…. You can also add more broth altogether if it is late or you are fed up with stirring, but if you put all of the broth at the same time the result is not so creamy… I think this phase should take about 20 minutes.

6. Saffron/Cream/Cheese (optional):
Taste the rice (you will see it grow) and when it is almost ready, stop adding broth, add the Saffron (if it a yellow risotto you want to make) or the cream; I usually buy the saffron in powder, rather than the small leaves, it is easier to use.

7. Butter:
This is a fundamental step. Remove the pan from the hob, add a big piece of butter (no oil option available here) and stir until it melts completely in the hot risotto. Can you see the cream?

8. Parmesan:
Here comes the glorious moment of the parmesan, this gives risotto most of the taste. The parmesan also makes the risotto a bit drier, so just make sure that when you stop adding the broth at step 6 it isn’t already completely dry. This also depends on how you like it: I like it a little bit more liquid, so I usually leave some more broth. With time you will adjust the recipe according to your taste.

Enjoy!!!

Some classic ingredients combination:
sausage/ saffron; mushrooms/saffron; red radicchio/speck; red radicchio/speck/smoked cheese (like provola/scamorza); courgettes/non-smoked bacon; …………….

Suggestions are welcome!