Fri, 23rd Feb 2007

It's National Day and a public holiday today so I made Lasagna for my kids.

Step 1 - The Meat Sauce

First make the meat sauce. In a pan, add olive oil and finely chopped garlic and a chopped onion, fry till translucent, add minced topside and fry till lightly browned and dry. Add diced carrots, lots of mixed herbs, a bay leaf, dried parsley, salt & coarsely ground blackpepper and a tin of chopped tomatoes. Stir to combine, add a little tomato puree and some water and simmer gently till the meat is soft and the sauce thick and gooey. Add sliced fresh white mushrooms and simmer again and adjust seasoning.

While you are waiting for the meat sauce to finish cooking, make the white sauce or bechamel sauce.

Step 2 - The White Sauce

Put 2 tablespoons of flour into a saucepan, warm gently but do not let it brown. Add 2 tablespoons of butter and stir with a wooden spoon or whisk.

Add milk in a thin stream stirring continously. As you stir, the mixture should clump together. (Here, I wish I had a photographer to take over at this point as it's not easy to stir and click at the same time).

Don't be alarmed - just keep stirring till the sauce turns smooth and glossy.

Simmer gently and season with salt and pepper, parsley and a bit of mustard - a bit of veg stock cube does improve the taste. The traditional recipe calls for grated nutmeg but I wasn't going to buy a bag of nutmegs just to use one so I simply left this out! Put sauce aside.

Step 3 - Cooking the Sheets

Now boil the lasagna sheets in briskly boiling water for 2 to 3 minutes. Remove sheets gently and oil very very lightly to prevent them from sticking to each other. Now you have completed all the steps, it's time to start the assembly.

Assembling

Lightly butter a deep narrow roasting tin. Lay a sheet of lasagna (and do trim it to size), top with meat sauce, then white sauce and sprinkle a layer of parmesan cheese on top of the white sauce.

Proceed in a similar fashion till the layers reach the top of the roasting tin.

The final layer is lasagna

+ white sauce + cheese (omit meat sauce). Sprinkle surface with some parsley for flavour and colour.

And now bunk it in the oven for 15/20 minutes and put on grill function for the last 3 minutes so that the top is lightly browned and crispy.

Then all you have to do is cut a huge slice and put it on a plate, blow vigorously to cool it slightly and eat!

Mark really enjoyed this and Hazel said OMG!! when she tasted it. Wm said it was very very tasty and rich, and 'restauranty'.

I'm very happy with the result and Zippy, if you are reading this, I hope you like it too.

Next post - the lasagna when it came out of the oven... and closeups of the layers of lasagna on Mark and Hazel's plate.