The family lunch
The hallway smells like something good. Coats get dropped, someone’s already laughing, and the table’s set more or less how it always is. There’s talk, there’s teasing, seconds, thirds—no one’s in a rush. It’s loud, a bit messy, and exactly where you want to be.
Dish
Homemade lasagna
Ingredients
500g 00 flour, 5 eggs, olive oil, 600g pork and veal mince, 375mL white wine, 375mL chicken stock, 2 carrots, 2 celery, 1 onion, 1 or 2 passata, 1 can tomatoes, 75g butter, 500mL milk, nutmeg, 75g all purpose flour
Recipe
- Add flour and eggs to mixing bowl and mix
- Once mixture is ready, place on bench and knead into ball
- Place in fridge for 1-1.5hr before rolling sheets
- Thinly slice and dice onion, celery and carrots and sweat with olive oil until soft. Be careful not to burn but take your time in this process – approx. 15/20 mins (it will pay off later)
- Slowly crumble mince into mixture with your hands and cook off all meat juice
- Once meat juice is evaporated, add a healthy dash of white wine (half a bottle, which will leave you half a bottle to enjoy while cooking)
- Once alcohol has burnt off, add equal amount of chicken stock, and reduce volume in pan (you can add balsamic vinegar and thinly sliced anchovy at this point for more depth in Bolognese)
- Add 1 or 2 passata jars, and a tin of your favourite Italian tomatoes
- Season with salt and pepper and leave mixture on low for 2.5 hours
- In a saucepan add a healthy knob of butter (75g)
- Add a dash of milk to butter and thicken with flour (approx. 75-100g)
- Slowly add another 400ml of milk over the next 10 mins while stirring with whisk gently and continuously. Add a sprinkle of nutmeg
- Layer Bolognese, then bechamel, then pasta sheets, and continue until all used, finishing with Bolognese and bechamel on top
- Place a bay leaf on top, season generously and put in oven at 180 deg C until cooked
