Holidays, Lasagna and Plague

Alright, alright, I haven’t kept up with this. Not because I haven’t been cooking, or baking (because I have been. Lordy, I have been. Chocolate oblivion truffle torte. Cookies. Cinnamon rolls. Stew. More bread attempts. Shrimp fritters. White sauce chicken pasta. Abusing my roommate’s truffle oil.)

Mostly because Life(tm) happened. First I was sick, then it was finals, then it was the holidays so, I got busy. My apologies. But you’re not here for my excuses, you’re here for the food and bitching about it, so.

My roommate and I were hanging out (read: being dumb stoners) and were watching food videos and ended up on a lasagna kick. This was only enforced by a particularly amusing web-story gone wrong, so, we opted to try a lasagna recipe.

As follows, s/o to random reddit user on AITA:

I will try to give my lasagna recipe. I don’t typically measure spices, I go by smell/taste. So amounts are my best guess.

I start with my homemade tomato sauce. Dice one red onion and sweat it with some butter in a big Dutch oven. While that’s going, peel 6-8 cloves of garlic, and toss those in the pot. I like to toast my herbs and spices too, so I throw in a good amount of dried basil (1/4 cup?), oregano (1-2 tbsp), thyme (1-2 tbsp), rosemary (1-2 tbsp), whole black peppercorns (5-7?), freeze dried onion (2-3 tbsp?), and a good amount of salt. Measurements are estimates, use less if your herbs smell really potent and more if they’re a little stale. Even better if you can get fresh herbs!

Add 4-5 pounds of fresh tomatoes cut into chunks if it’s summer, or 3-4 cans of diced tomato + 1/2 small can of tomato paste if it’s not prime tomato season. I use whatever kind smell and look best at the store. If you’re using canned tomatoes, add a splash of balsamic vinegar or 1-2tbsp brown sugar for sweetness.

Turn the heat to low, and stir frequently until everything is mushy and a lot of water has seeped out of the tomatoes. It should look like very chunky stew. If you have a Parmesan heel, throw that in. Let it simmer on low heat for 1-2 hours. Take out the Parmesan heel, and use a blender or immersion blender to make a smooth sauce. (Pro tip, spread that Parmesan heel on some toasted sourdough, and dip it in your sauce for a little mid-cooking snack). Taste, and add salt, pepper, herbs, and garlic to your preference. I like a fairly sweet sauce, so I often add some balsamic vinegar or brown sugar. Let it simmer for another hour or so. Finish by stirring in a healthy dollop of creme fraiche or sour cream. Enough to slightly change the color of the sauce, but not enough to make it look super creamy or pale. I normally use about 1/3 of the smallest tub of creme fraiche.

While your sauce is finishing, brown 1.5 pounds each of ground beef and Italian sausage. I use grass fed beef as it’s leaner and has a stronger flavor. I also prefer a pork based Italian sausage with a good amount of fennel. I like to add some minced garlic to the meat mixture as well. Set aside, but don’t drain the liquid.

Cook your lasagna noodles. Fresh are best, but if you do boxes don’t use the kind that are “no cook”. I cook them a little less done than normal, just a hair firmer than al dente. You want the noodles to soak up some of the meat juices and tomato sauce.

In a big bowl, mix 24 ounces full fat ricotta, 1 cup shredded mozzarella (shred it yourself, and I prefer part skim), 1 cup shredded Parmesan (shred yourself), 2 eggs plus one egg yolk, fresh chopped basil (maybe 1/2 a cup?), salt, and pepper.

Layer your lasagna. Sauce, noodles, sauce, meat, cheese, sauce, noodles, sauce, meat, cheese, sauce, noodles, sauce, meat, cheese, sauce, noodles sauce, and cheese. Tent with foil, and bake at 350 for about 1.5-2 hours, until the cheese starts to brown a bit on the edges, and you can see the sauce thicken.

Remove the foil, turn your stove up to 425, and add a very thin layer of sliced burrata. Bake another 20ish minutes until the top is browned and starts to crisp. Enjoy!

It’s best served reheated after a day in the fridge, in my opinion. Gives the sauces more time to really get into the cheese and noodles.

Things we did not do:
-Have fresh basil
-Have enough ricotta
-Have burrata for the top
-bake for another 20ish minutes.

Things we did do:
-Make a fucking dopeass sauce for hours at a time while I’m half-dead with a head cold
-Learned how to make lasagna noodles (turns out, none of us had done this before, re: cooking them)
-Made garlic bread to go with it
-Determined that we wanna add the meat to the sauce next time to cook for an hour
-Saved the leftover sauce for the purpose of food later this week.
-Determined we need to have a heel of parm in it, too.
-Found more use for my balsamic reduction. Goddamn I need to make more use of that.