Lasagna Insanity

Some time ago, I realized I had never actually made a lasagna myself.

This seems odd, given the fact that I love lasagna, and cook so much. I had this thought about five months ago, and then it sort of sat there in the back of my mind since then.

Then I had to make ricotta cheese a couple of months ago with some milk that was heading south. That sat in the freezer until I thought, "Hey, doesn't lasagna have ricotta cheese in it? I could make lasagna with that."

I also had two packages of ground bull meat and the last quart jar of roasted tomato puree from the garden last year. This all seemed to me to be the ideal start to a really good lasagna.

And THEN I thought, "Well, if I'm going to have all these homemade ingredients in it, I might as well just make the pasta, too, right?"

Yes, this is really how I think.

I looked up several recipes for lasagna with homemade pasta, which is when I discovered that traditional Italian lasagna doesn't actually have ricotta in it. Or mozzarella. Instead, it has a bechamel (white sauce made with butter, flour, and milk) layered with the meat sauce.

I've never had this kind of lasagna, and also didn't have a lot of mozzarella on hand (or rather, asadero, which is my mozzarella substitute), so I decided I would try it.

I used this recipe for the meat sauce and bechamel (described by the author as "a beast of a recipe"--indeed), and for the first part of the pasta making in a food processor. For the rest of the instructions for the pasta making, I used the description in my absolute beast of a book, The Old World Kitchen: The Rich Tradition of European Peasant Cooking, by Elizabeth Luard*. That had instructions for rolling the lasagna noodles by hand, which I had to do because I don't have a pasta machine.

I made the bolognese (meat sauce) on Friday, which required several hours of simmering. Because I had four pounds of ground bull, I actually made a double recipe of that, which is a LOT of bolognese.

I made the rest of it on Saturday. I decided to make enough for my 10"x15" Pyrex baking dish, so I made 1.5 of the recipe parts. This is also a LOT of bechamel sauce. And honestly, stirring the bechamel for so long while adding the milk in small increments was sort of painful for my hand and arm.

Then I compounded the hand and arm excercise by rolling out all the pasta with my rolling pin. It has to be really thin, and that's a lot of pasta. It required some pretty steady, intense pressure to get it rolled out thin enough. And THEN, I had to grate all the Parmesan. I was actually sore the next day. Those Italian peasant women must have had arms like Arnold.

Anyway.

I finally got all the parts made and ready for layering.

I had rolled the four pieces of pasta out on their own pieces of parchment paper, so I could move them and stack them that way. Worked really well.

I had some help with the assembly.

Of course.

I had just enough for four layers in that pan.

Ready to bake.

I did not, however, bake it on Saturday. I figured I would enjoy it more if I had a break to forget all the work that went into it, so it just went into the refrigerator until Sunday, and we had it for our Sunday dinner.

That was a good call.

So the big question: Was it worth the literal hours it took to make?

Not really. 

I mean, it was delicious, and I was surprised at how good the bechamel was with the meat sauce. A. also really liked the homemade pasta in it, which was much softer and more delicate than storebought. I also liked how light it was in comparison to the typical American lasagna that is so loaded with cheese.

But I think I still like the cheese in the American version. Maybe just not so much of it.

I have more bolognese from the giant batch that I froze, so I think I might make another lasagna sometime with storebought noodles, still the bechamel (I had a bunch of that leftover, too, which I froze), and some asadero cheese in it. Then I can compare the American and the Italian versions.

Oh, and you might notice that although this all started because I had ricotta in the freezer to use, I didn't actually use it in the lasagna. So instead, I made an Italian cheesecake with it. Which we ate after the lasagna, of course.

So the final verdict: I'm glad I tried it, but I probably won't do it this way again.

* This is such a great book. So detailed and comprehensive, and her voice throughout is very engaging. At the end of the two-page pasta recipe detailing how her friend Michaela in Italy made this lasagna in her own kitchen, she said "Michaela would be proud of you." I was certainly proud of me, and I'm sure Michaela would have been, too.