SweetPea and 4 Pods: Lasagna

Everytime I ask...

Me: What do you want for dinner?
Paolo: Lasagna
Me: No, seriously.
Paolo: Lasagna

Our lasagna, has lots of meat. Paolo's favorite. Mine too!

I prepare 4 things for layering, the meat sauce, the bechamel sauce, the three cheeses and the lasagna noodles.

Ingredients:

San Remo Instant No Cook Lasagna noodles

1 cup grated cheeses of Mozzarella, Cheddar and Parmesan (I used pre-shredded Perfect Italiano Pizza Plus cheese and Eden cheddar cheese)

extra butter

Meat sauce :

1/2 kilo lean ground beef
1/4 kilo ground pork
3 cloves garlic
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, peeled and grated
1 small red bell pepper, roasted, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 Knorr beef cube
1 kilo tomato sauce
1/2 tsp nutmeg
10-15 leaves of basil, chopped

Bechamel sauce

2 tbsp ( 1 oz) butter
2 1/2 tbsp flour
2 cups milk
1/4 tsp salt
dash of nutmeg
dash of white pepper

First the meat sauce.

Brown ground beef and pork, breaking down the meat and allowing the oil to come out. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

I cook this first so I can remove the extra oil that comes out. Remove oil then add the Knorr beef cube and mix well. Set aside meat.

Using the same pan, place about 2 tablespoons of olive oil, then saute garlic until slightly brown, then add the onions. Cook for 2 minutes.

Next add the carrots and roasted red peppers. The carrots and peppers also naturally sweeten the sauce. Cook for 3-4 minutes.

Add the tomato sauce and return the meat mixture, mix then lower heat.

Let simmer around 6 min only. We need the sauce to be wet to cook the lasagna sheets. Anyway it will cook some more in the oven.

Add 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1/2 tsp salt (only), dash of pepper and basil, mix then turn off heat.

Next we make the Bechamel sauce or sometimes called White sauce.

Two tablespoons of butter is 1 ounce. In the big Magnolia Gold butter, you will see lines on the side of the wrapping. One line means 1 ounce. Use this as your guide.

Heat the milk in a separate saucepan or just microwave about 1 1/2 minutes (that's what I did) until warm, not boiling.

Ok, let's start the sauce. This is a little tricky to make because you have to keep your eye on this.

In a saucepan, melt the butter. Use low heat. Add the flour. Stirring constantly, 1-2 minutes. Do not allow flour to turn colored.

When it looks like this, remove pan from heat.

Add first 1/4 cup of the warm milk.

Stir steadily, making sure you have a smooth mixture free of clumps. When it starts to thicken a little, add another 1/4 cup of milk. Keep stirring

until it looks like picture above. Return to heat, still using low heat. And now add 1/2 cup of milk,

continuously stirring. As it thickens, add more milk until all milk is added. Consistency should be of light cream. This is a thinner version of the real bechamel sauce. I stress this because we need the extra liquid for the (no cook) pasta sheets to absorb.

Turn off heat and then stir in salt and a couple of dashes of nutmeg and white pepper.

Now we are ready to assemble the lasagna.

Preheat oven 190 C (350 F).

Grease a 9x9 or 10x10 inch glass dish with butter.

The make a thin layer of Bechamel sauce.

Next put a layer of lasagna sheets. Yes, you don't need to boil these sheets. That's why we needed the extra liquid from the sauces. It's for the noodles to absorb and cook in the oven. Cool, huh? A much appreciated shortcut.