It´s a bit embarrassing that it´s taken me so many #homemadeMondays until I gave you one of my favourite recipes – André´s lasagna. It´s one of the first dishes he cooked for me and I loved it so much that I never even bothered to attempt my own, because his is just perfect. I´ve accustomed you with comfort food, I´ve showed you Italian ones before, but none like this. A lasagna that will never fail you, whether for a romantic dinner for two or a fabulous dinner party for ten. Here goes.
Ingredients
(serves six)
1kg of minced meat
three carrots
two onions
four tomatoes
300g mushrooms
one garlic
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil
240 g grated cheese
200 ml red wine
500 ml of tomato sauce
500g grams of lasagna sheets
For the Bechamel sauce:
1l of milk
75 g of flour
75 g butter
a tsp of salt
1/3 tsp of pepper
1/2 tsp of nutmeg (don´t overdo it as you can destroy the sauce, but don´t be stingy otherwise the flavour will be blunt)
Instructions:
1. Peel the onions, cut them in half and then start slicing them thinly. Peel the carrots and run them through your blender to have them chopped really fine. Chop the tomatoes into small pieces.
2. In a pot, heat a little bit of olive oil and crush the garlic in it. Fry for one minute and then add the onion along with the salt and pepper. Fry for another two minutes.
3. Add 200 ml of red wine to the pot. Let the wine reduce and add the minced meat, mixing it well to avoid leaving it uncooked. Once the meat cooks a bit and turns brown, add the tomatoes, mushrooms and carrots.
4. Mix the veggies and the meat well, add the tomato sauce, cover and let them cook for 20 minutes (10 minutes with the cover and 10 without).
5. In the meantime, start working on your Bechamel sauce. Add the milk to a pot and let it warm up. Add flour while vigorously mixing it. Add the salt, pepper and nutmeg and keep mixing. Finally, add the butter. The trick is to vigorously mix so that no bubbles form and the sauce gets the right consistency. Once you reach the right consistency (less than 10 minutes), taste for flavour and more salt/pepper/nutmeg if needed. Turn off the fire and let it sit until your lasagna is ready.
6. Back to the veggie/meat mix. In a heat proof oven tray, lay the lasagna sheets, leaving some space between them. Add the veggie/meat mix to the sheets and continue layering, pressing more lasagna sheets and then more veggie/meat mix until you´ve used up your mixture. We managed three layers this time. Make sure the last top layer is of lasagna sheets.
7. Finally add the sauce and the cheese on top of your mix while you preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Let the tray cook until the cheese from the top layer has melted and feels slightly crunchy.
8. Enjoy with a good glass of red wine while watching Garfield!
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