Lasagna is a multi-layered casserole of pasta sheets with sauces - meat and béchamel. The homeland of this delicious and beloved dish is Italy. Before baking, lasagna is sprinkled with grated cheese, which makes it boast a wonderful cheese crust.
Cooking a real lasagna is not an easy task, but believe me, you will be delighted with the result! Cooking lasagna can be divided into several stages: kneading dough and cooking ready sheets, cooking toppings and sauce, baking lasagna in the oven.
Prepare the dough
Nowadays, no one is surprised by purchased sheets of ready-made dry lasagna dough. The dish will turn out much tastier, juicier and more tender if you make the dough yourself. It is not difficult - similar to making dough for dumplings.
For the dough you will need the following ingredients: 250 g of two kinds of flour, 4 eggs, a pinch of salt and 1 tsp of olive oil.
It is important that you first gather the flour in a pile, make a depression in the center, and break an egg in it and add olive oil - so the dough will be even tastier. The dough should be kneaded stiff, so it won't fall apart. It is just like cooking dumplings. After cooking, you can send the dough to rest for half an hour. Then roll out the sausage and cut into plates, two to three millimeters thick and about the size of a rectangular baking sheet. You can use a special pasta machine. By the way, the dough will not "grow" during baking.
Boil the dough
There is nothing difficult here at all - cook the sheets of lasagna, like pasta. Do not overcook the sheets! The readiness should be "al dente".
And if you're using pre-cooked lasagna sheets, you'll need 350g.
Lasagna filling
Interestingly, there are many lasagna toppings. Almost every hostess adds something different to the filling. However, there are three basic, basic fillings: meat (minced meat), mushroom and seafood (this kind tastes rather peculiar, but if you like seafood, try it).
We prepare the meat stuffing the way we do it. Stew stuffing with vegetables (skinless tomatoes, you can add a few grated carrots, onions for sure) for about twenty minutes. It would be good to start the vegetables separately, adding your favorite spices. The main thing is not to go overboard with spices - the taste of the lasagna should not be lost.
Ingredients for the meat filling:
1 kg of quality ground beef;
1 kg of good quality ground pork;
100 g of smoked bacon;
4 medium carrots;
2 medium onions;
4 stalks of celery;
2 tbsp. tomato paste;
800 g canned tomatoes in their own juice;
Rosemary (a couple of sprigs or a couple of pinches of dried).
Take a large, high skillet. Dice the bacon into small pieces and fry it in a hot pan with a spoonful of olive oil and chopped rosemary until crispy, 2 minutes. Add the minced meat, lower the heat to medium and fry for 10 minutes, breaking up the minced meat pieces until all the liquid has evaporated.
Chop the onion, carrot and celery into small cubes, add to the mince and braise until the vegetables are soft, about 15 minutes. After a quarter of an hour add the tomato paste, canned tomatoes with juice, crush them with a fork, and rinse the jars with water and pour into the pan.
Reduce the heat to low and simmer the sauce for two hours, stirring occasionally.
Mushroom stuffing. The only difference is that here mushrooms are used instead of minced meat. Especially like to add mushrooms. For vegetables in the mushroom stuffing opens up more room - you can add eggplant and bell peppers.
Seafood stuffing. The most delicious seafood stuffing will turn out if you mix squid, shrimp and mussels in equal proportions and boil them before stewing. Of course, you can also use fish, but in that case you do not need to boil it. Then the seafood is stewed with a little water and tomatoes.
Fruit filling. Yes, yes, there is such a lasagna! This, of course, is not a classic recipe, but it has the right to life. Any fruit, berries, nuts will do.
Choose the sauce and cheese
Italy's favorite cheese is parmesan, and there's no arguing with that. For lasagna, it is customary to use two cheeses - Parmesan and something more delicate, such as mozzarella. In general, any combination of hard and soft cheeses will do. You can sprinkle either each layer or just the top one.
A traditional sauce is béchamel - it's not difficult to make. Fry 2 tablespoons of flour in 50g of melted butter, add 500 ml of cream in a thin stream and cook for 2 minutes. Stir the sauce until a homogeneous consistency. You can add nutmeg and salt and pepper.
Do not skimp on the sauce, there should be a lot of it, so that each layer is soaked and is juicy and tasty.
Bake the lasagna
Well, here it is, in fact, the moment for which we all gathered here: the dough is ready, the filling is cut, the sauce is waiting - it's time to assemble our lasagna and send it into the oven.
There is nothing difficult to assemble - grease the mold with olive oil (mandatory!), put a sheet of lasagna dough on the bottom. On top - the stuffing. Then comes the sauce (and do not spare!), finish the layer with grated cheese. That's it! There can be as many such layers as you like, until you run out of stuffing. At the end, cover the lasagna with the last sheet of pastry and sprinkle generously with cheese, so that during baking you get a crunchy cheese crust. Now that's it - the only thing left is to put our masterpiece in the oven at 190 degrees for about 45 minutes and it's done! You can sprinkle the finished dish with chopped herbs - nice and fresh.
Lasagna - a great option for the holiday table, and if you approach the matter with a desire, the preparation of this smart, tasty and hearty dish will bring only pleasure, and all the guests and household will remain in complete delight.
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