| Greg's lasagne al forno |
| Greg's home page |
| Cooking main page |
| Recipe index |
| Cooking times |
| Noodle cooking times |
| Spice pastes |
| Weights and measures |
| Food suppliers |
| Greg's diary |
| Copyright info |
| |
|
|
Lasagne al forno is the prototypical way to prepare lasagne. It's surprisingly complicated: apart from the lasagne themselves, you need a meat filling (ragù bolognese), besciamella (which for some reason is usually called by the French name sauce béchamel) and salsa di pomodori.
On this page I'll limit myself to the details of how to put the bits together. The first question is: what kind of pasta? Yes, it's lasagne, of course, but there are at least four different ways to get it:
I make my lasagne in an oven dish 33x26 cm in size and about 8 cm deep. This is enough for a total of about 6 layers of cooked fresh pasta or 5 layers of dried pasta, and that's what I've accounted for here. That corresponds to between 8 and 10 servings.
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 100—150 g | chicken liver | 1 | ||
| 1.2 litre | sauce béchamel | 2 | ||
| 0.5 square metres | lasagne | 3 | ||
| about 1 kg | ragù bolognese (see note below) | 3 | ||
| 350 g | salsa di pomodori | 3 | ||
| grated parmesan cheese | 3 | |||
| butter flakes | 3 | |||
The quantity of pasta is approximately what comes in the 375 g pre-packaged “fresh” lasagne that we can get at our local supermarkets. It has 8 sheets that by chance are the same length as the dish and ⅔ the width, so I cut two of them into halves and make 5 layers: 4 with 1½ sheets, and the fifth with two sheets.
Ragù bolognese is usually made with chicken livers; I prefer to keep them separate and chop them coarsely, then add them to the layers along with the ragú, rather than mixing them in with it. Exceptionally, I don't weigh the ragù, since it's difficult to spread it equally if it's weighed.
Fry the chicken livers in butter and allow to cool. Chop into small cubes.
In the past I wrote:
If using “instant” lasagne, add another 200 ml to the sauce béchamel to make up for the moisture that the pasta will absorb. If using “no-cook” fresh pasta, add 50 ml.
But on 11 February 2024 I did that and ended up with a result that was far too liquid. Maybe I should try without additional liquid next time.
Use an oven dish about 30x30 cm. Spread a thin layer of béchamel on the bottom of the oven dish, then repeat the following six times:
Place a layer of pasta across the entire surface.
Spread a thin layer of béchamel over it.
Spread a layer of ragù over the top.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Add some chicken liver.
Spread another layer of béchamel. The béchamel must touch the pasta from both sides.
Before the next step, ensure that the surface of the béchamel is dry, either by leaving it for five or ten minutes, or by putting in an oven pre-heated to 180° for 5 minutes. This ensures that things don't get messy in the next step:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Spread the salsa di pomodori over the top:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Spread parmesan to taste, add butter flakes and return to the oven and cook for about 40 minutes. It may dribble, so put a pan underneath. The dish is ready when the surface has the right colour.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
The quantities above look to be too much, but in fact they're correct. The quantity of chicken liver depends on your taste, of course.
For some reason, the US name for this pasta dish is lasagna (singular) and not lasagne (plural). That's not the case in Italian or other English usage, and even in the USA you don't hear of spaghetto or macarono.
| Cooking home page | Recipe index | Greg's home page | Greg's diary | Greg's photos |
