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All items, save the bechamel sauce, are obtainable from Elena’s Deli in Robertsham – 15 Landsborough Street. See map on website.

You will need:

• Pasta – Either bought or home-made
• Bolognaise sauce – See recipe below
• Grated mozzarella – Bandini Mozzarella
• Parmesan – From Elena’s Deli
• Béchamel sauce – home-made
• Butter – Bandini Butter

Bolognaise Sauce Recipe – Or purchase the ready-made sauce from Elena’s Deli

Ingredients

• 250 gr GOOD quality beef mince. You can add 10% pork mince too, or chopped bacon
• 1 Tomato paste – small tin
• 2 tins chopped tomato or puree
• 2 Garlic pieces – Fry whole, then remove, or you can leave it in if you prefer
• Mixed Italian herbs and a bit of nutmeg
• 1 head of Celery – Chopped leaves only, not stalks
• 1 Onion
• 1 Carrot
• ½ cup Wine – Use white or rose’. Red makes it too strong.
• 1 cube of Beef stock
• Water to your discretion
• Olive Oil and butter (butter optional)

How to make

• Fry chopped onions, grated carrots and diced celery (just the leaves, not the stalk) and garlic until all are well cooked and golden brown, in olive oil, using a large enough pot.
• Add the mince and keep stirring so that mince does not cook into clumps. Brown the meat well.
• Dissolve the stock cube in a cup of boiling water and have extra hot water ready to add to the pot.
• Once the meat is well cooked, add the stock, tomato paste/ pureé and blended chopped tomato and herbs. Blend lightly. Keep mixing and ensure that meat remains loose.
• Once a little cooked, add the wine, salt, pepper and a touch of nutmeg.
• Add water – just enough to cover the meat.
• Allow to simmer for hours – even three hours. The longer it cooks, the better.
• Keep adding a bit of water and make sure it doesn’t stick or burn at the bottom.
• The sauce will be ready when you see a thick rich layer of gravy coming to the top.
• Taste every now and then for salt, pepper and perhaps another stock cube.
• The colour must be rich darkish red (mixture of the beef and the tomato) and the smell will tell you that it’s ready.
• Set aside, but remember that when you actually make the lasagne the sauce must be warmish. Do not use sauce which has directly come from the fridge to make lasagna. It becomes thick and you cannot spread it properly. ADVISABLE to make the bolognaise sauce beforehand, because lasagne is a long process, but remove from the fridge well in time and heat slightly before applying to the layers of the lasagna.

Béchamel Sauce

Ingredients

• 50gr butter
• 50 gr flour
• 1 litre of full cream milk – warmed so that you can JUST put in your finger into it (NOT BOILED) – Milk available at Elena’s Deli – Cheaper and better milk.
• Salt, pepper and nutmeg

The secret to bechamel is in the very careful process

How to make

• LOW HEAT STOVE. But not too low otherwise it won’t set (maybe a three setting). Judge your own stove…
• Melt the butter in a GOOD even saucepan, which should have no bumps.
• Add the flour gently, little by little, stirring continuously to ensure no lumps.
• Mix thoroughly to an even texture. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste. Rather too little, because you can add more towards the end of the process. There is nothing worse than a béchamel that is too salty.
• Take your heated milk and add VERY LITTLE at a time, continuously stirring into the flour and butter paste. NEVER STOP STIRRING YOUR POT AND YOU MUST STIR ONLY IN ONE DIRECTION.
• Keep going slowly with your milk until all the milk is added.
• Keep stirring and cooking until you see and feel that your sauce has thickened and you see the beginnings of the now thick sauce wanting to start bubbling.
• Remove immediately from the stove and give it a good last stir, because there is always a tendency for the thickness to go to the bottom.
• If you are ready to use the béchamel immediately, spoon your sauce directly from the pot you cooked it in, onto your layers of lasagne, BUT if you intend using it later, decant it into a casserole or glass bowl and cover the top with glad wrap, BUT PUT THE GLAD WRAP DIRECTLY onto the béchamel. Pat the wrap down fully and evenly to seal the top layer of your sauce. This stops the sauce from forming a crust. Then you can refrigerate or let stand for later use.

Making the lasagna

(Ready-made lasagna can also be bought from Elena’s Deli, but there’s fun in making it, when you have the time)

Make sure you have all your ingredients and sauces etc, ready and placed on your work table.

1. Make your pasta as per home-made pasta recipe – 100 grams flour to 1 egg, pinch of salt, spoonful of oil and a touch of water if too dry. Mix until smooth and yellow. Leave to rest for an hour, covering it with a cloth. Roll out or use machine to a 6 or 7 (1 or 2) thinness. (The thinner, the better). Calculate ½ an egg person/ portion. You can also purchase ready-made pasta already sliced from Elena’s Deli.
2. Once stretched into long pieces, cut into 10 – 12 cm pieces and place on a well-floured surface (so they don’t stick to each other). Keep each piece separate from the other.
3. Once you have about 5 pieces, place them individually into a pot of salted boiling water. You can cook about 3 or 4 at the same time. While they are cooking and softening, you can carry on stretching other pieces, thus doing two jobs at once.
4. Once they are soft and rise to the top of the pot, remove them one by one with a strainer or spoon that has holes. Place them on a clean dry dish cloth. Pat them dry and then put them into your lasagna dish, which has to be oven proof. Do not overlap the pieces. BUT YOU MUST PUT A TOUCH OF OIL AND SOME BOLOGNAISE SAUCE ON THE BOTTOM LAYER OF YOUR DISH to shield the pasta from burning underneath.
5. Then start with your layers – place butter in little blocks, together with a bit of grated parmesan and bolognaise sauce.
6. Layer two: Bechamel and mozzarella, and so you go on, layer by layer until the dish is almost full.
7. Your last layer must be sauce, parmesan and little blocks of butter, TOGETHER with a little bit of mozzarella. No béchamel on the top layer because it burns.

So essentially you are doing three things:

• Rolling the pasta in thin sheets of 12 cm in length
• Boiling up the pasta and drying it, then placing in the dish
• Building up the layers as per above.

Place in oven at 180 degrees until the dish bubbles slightly, is crisp and golden brown on top and well cooked through all the layers. Serve immediately and ENJOY!

Tips:

Speed and consistency of quantities is important.  Don’t mix béchamel layer with sauce layer, because then it’s a ‘mush’.

Speed is important for the pasta layers. If the cooked pasta stays too long, it sticks to the cloth, and then starts to break up and is difficult to remove and work with.

BUT, don’t worry if the pieces are slightly broken when you remove from the boiling water.

Good luck and enjoy!