Homemade Lasagna
Contrary to popular belief, making lasagna at home is not difficult. Certainly there is a lot of assembly involved, and lots of ingredients to prepare; but none of the steps is difficult, and it is hard to make a bad-tasting lasagna. In fact, I think you would have to substitute several of the ingredients with inedible items, set your oven to 600 degrees and leave it in there for an entire day before you could make a bad lasagna. Okay, perhaps I exaggerate, but I do agree with Garfield’s assessment that lasagna just may be nature’s most perfect food, regardless of how you make it.
In making lasagna, you need to decide a couple of things. First, will it be a red or white sauce? Second, will you be using store-bought pasta or freshly made? Will it be vegetarian, a classic Bolognese (meat sauce), or something off beat like chicken or seafood? What sort of cheese will you use? Lastly, what time should I come over?
My very favorite lasanga is a white and Bolognese sauce combination with Mozzarella and Parmesan, but I am also partial to having some ricotta cheese in the mix as well. Regardless of the options you choose, the basic elements and method of preparation will be the same. Fortunately, almost everything you need to make lasagna is already posted in this blog, so I will be making a few links to previous articles today, and saving myself some typing!
Pasta
First, if you choose to make fresh pasta, check out my pasta post, and start early in the day to give the pasta time to sry a little. Make sure the pasta is thicker than you would make it for spaghetti or fettucini, as it needs to add some stability to all the layers of sauce and cheese, which will end up being a bit runny. If you do not want to go to the trouble of making your pasta, store-bought pasta will do just fine.
Sauce
Lasagna can have one or two different sauces; any more and it will be too runny. If you want a “red” sauce, which is obviously tomato-based, you can combine a basic tomato sauce with a more meaty spaghetti sauce. You can also make them seperate, in order to mix up the layers a bit as well.
If you decide to go with a white sauce, you should cut back on the amount of tomato in the spaghetti meat sauce (but don’t eliminate it altogether!), and add a generous amount of fennel seed. One of the great pleasures I find in eating lasagna is the occassional burst of licorice-flavored fennel! Also, with the white sauce, you can thicken it a little with some cream, which will make the end result a bit less runny. And don’t skimp on the nutmeg, either; I know it seems funny to add nutmeg to lasagna, but with the white sauce it works really well.
Cheese
I have made lasagna several times from scratch, but I have yet to make my own cheese to do so. One day I hope to, at least for mozzarella and ricotta. Both are unaged cheeses, which means you can use them almost as soon as the preparation is done. For now, I stick to store-bought. As for making Parmesan and Romano, I think I will leave that to the professionals!
Typically, if you want cheese in the body of the lasagna, you should use ricotta or cottage cheese. Mozzarella inside the lasagna is overkill, at least in my opinion; but as I said in the opening, it is really hard to ruin a lasagna, so if you want to add mozzarella in the middle, go for it!
I usually grate some mozzarella, and mix in some grated parmesan and/or romano for a tasty topping.
Assembly
Hopefully you have a nice big baking dish to put all this in; otherwise you now have a bunch of ingredients sitting around and nowhere to put them!
First, make sure the pasta is cooked; about ten minutes in fully boiling salted water is right for the thicker lasagna noodles. You want to have enough to do at least three layers, and perhaps four, per baking dish. (If you’re going to go to the trouble to make lasagna, you may as well make more than one!!)
Start with a layer of pasta on the bottom of the dish. This will help prevent loss of sauce to the bottom of the baking dish when you serve it up. Next, do a layer of your sauce; if you have two sauces, start with the thicker of the two, then add a layer of the next. The runnier sauce will mix with the thicker one, helping blend the flavors. Next, add a layer of ricotta or cottage cheese if you are using it. Start over again with the pasta until you reach the top or near the top of the baking dish. You want to finish with a layer of pasta, and then top it with your grated cheese.
Baking
I prefer to bake my lasagna for the majority of time under tin foil. This prevents the cheese on top from burning. I uncover the lasagna for the last 20 minutes of baking time, and then turn on the broiler to brown the cheese topping nicely for about 3 to 5 minutes.
How long to bake it? Again, it is hard to kill a lasagna, but you also don’t need to bake it for very long, especially since all the ingredients are already cooked anyway (aside from the cheese, and that won’t take very long to cook). The purpose of the baking is to allow all the ingredients to come together and mix together a little, so about half an hour to 45 minutes at 350 degrees is plenty of time. Make sure to let the lasagna cook down before cutting into it – about ten minutes, depending on the size of the dish.
As much work as lasagna can be, it can be a lot easier when you consider that many of the ingredients can be made ahead of time, especially the sauce(s). In fact, using leftover sauce is a great way to make a lasagna, and it can lead to some interesting variations. Next time you have something leftover, why not think about building a lasagna with it? Remember: there’s not many savory ingredients that don’t mix well with pasta and cheese! Also, if you come up with a good combo that you really like, be sure to tell me about it!
Yours in Good Taste,
Erik Christensen