One Meat Lasagna and one No-meat Lasagna.
(Together because some things were conveniently used in both of them.)
First of all, you must roast the meats. Yes, meats. Beef and pork. One roast of each. I put them both in my dutch oven along with a can of crushed tomatoes, several smashed cloves of garlic, and roasted all that, covered for 12 hours at about 210F for 12 hours, yes I did. Then I let it cool completely before pulling the meat apart, feeding all the fatty parts immediately to the waiting dogs, and generally making up two bowls of torn up meat, on beef, one pork, perfect for putting into a lasagna or other sauce. I had never done this before, and was a little skeptical of the whole idea, but it worked out just fine.
But wait! We are not done with the meat part yet. I also got two packages of locally made, fresh Italian sausage, one normal, one hot, not in casings. I cooked up each of them on the stove, browned nicely, and now I had two plates of sausage to go with my two bowls of meat.
The tomato sauce needed to get going. The recipe is on Lasagna Stories, but the basic idea is olive oil, onions, garlic, a lot of tomato of some kind (crushed, diced, both in my case, or fresh if you are like that), cook cook cook, basil basil basil, a big splash of red wine, a handful of sugar, a little salt, hot pepper flakes. That's it. Add a small can tomato paste if you want the sauce to be a little richer. I did. Cook cook cook, until the sauce has taken on a slightly roasted color.
Two lasagnas, remember, so when the sauce was done, I put about half, maybe less of it in a separate pot and added cream. Yes, I did. I added heavy cream, as Maria taught me to do a good twenty-five years ago now. People devouring my cream-sauce lasagna sometimes ask me if I am Italian.
Then, as instructed by phone by Maria, I sliced up red bell peppers and an onion (could have been any color of pepper), and sauteed all that in olive oil and garlic, and added just a small splash of balsamic vinegar at some point. She didn't mention anything like that, but I like the balsamic with the red peppers. Not much at all. Maybe I put a tiny bit of salt and pepper in this stuff. Cook cook cook, slowly, no burning just carmelizing. I used a cast iron skillet, which works great for this sort of thing.
This pepper onion stuff is the guts of the no-meat lasagna.
I also put cream in the other pot of sauce. And I strained and then reduced the tomato broth from the meat roasting pan, and put that in this sauce for the meat pasta. I didn't know what else to do with this stuff that clearly had a great deal of meat and tomato flavor. So I did that. Remember. Only put that in the sauce for the meat lasagna.
Then I took another bowl (there is a stack of stainless steel bowls in my kitchen, if you were wondering about all these bowls) and put a handful or two of each of the beef and pork, and some of each of the sausages, and then put in enough sauce to kind of hold it all together.
This is the guts of the meat lasagna.
Ricotta cheese!!! Maria instructs me to add an egg to every lb of ricotta, but I only do that sometimes. For the ladies, I didn't think they needed that extra layer of richness. So I put a whole bunch of pesto in the ricotta, mixed it all up, and called it good.
There are no amounts here, because I have no idea what the amounts would be. There was lots of everything left over, since I was overestimating wildly to make sure there was plenty for the crowd, but I think I will be able to make at least on more lasagna with all the leftover ingredients. You can make your own estimations a little more carefully.
I can tell you though, that I used all of a very large container of whole milk ricotta, from Costco. Yup, I emptied the container right into the bowl.
Here is the surprise: Use a combination of grated cheese, not just mozzarella. I used Mozzerella, Fontina and Fresh Asiago. I was tempted to try included some of the extra sharp white cheddar I am so devoted to, but I didn't think it was time for experiments. I was starting to have to watch the clock to make sure I got the lasagnas in the oven in time for dinner for the ladies at 7:30, which is a good half hour, or two hours, before I usually get dinner on the table.
In a very big bowl I put two or three cups of each of the shredded cheeses and tossed well to blend them. They all look alike, so you just have to toss toss toss and hope they are mingling. Not that it much matters.
I had aged asiago on hand, which served for the hard cheese. And a bag of fresh baby spinach leaves. And a bag of julienned sundried tomatoes.
And of course, a pound of lasagna noodles, which I did not pre-cook at all. Maria assured me it would be fine, as long as you have enough sauce.
I was making two lasagnas in traditional lasagna pans. If I had made the extra deep lasagnas Maria is making these days, I would have needed two pounds of lasagna, and I would have used up all the ingredients. But for the ladies, I decided a normal sort of lasagna would be more welcoming, less intimidating. I am absolutely going to make the extra deep lasagnas for the next crowd of guys I cook for, since the extra depth gives so much more room for fun layers. Ah well.
OK. Now I have all my parts: Lasagna noodles, meat mixture, vegetable mixture, spinach, pesto, ricotta, soft grated cheese, hard grated cheese, sauce. All that takes up a lot of counter space, so you might want to plan ahead. I was stacking bowls on top of each other to make room for the lasagna pans. I put a paper towel over the meat, and put another bowl on top.
Now to begin the layering:
I think I remember Maria telling me to put butter in the bottom of the pan, but couldn't find the instructions I had written down, so I did not do that. But butter is always a nice addition.
So I started with sauce. A layer of sauce on the bottom of the pan. Just enough to moisten, really, so the pasta is not the very very bottom thing.
Then pasta.
Then the ricotta pesto mixture, placed about and smeared around the pasta. She said I could use a pastry bag for this, but I didn't.
Then, for the meat lasagna, a layer of the mixed meats and sauce. For the no-meat lasagna, a layer of the pepper and onion stuff.
Then a layer of sauce, and plenty of it.
Then a layer of the grated cheese mixture.
Then a very spare layer of the hard cheese.
Then pasta again.
Then ricotta again.
Now, on both lasagnas, a layer of fresh baby spinach, to which I had done nothing. I thought about sauteeing it quickly with some garlic, but didn't. Like I said, the clock was running out.
Now I was running out of vertical space, so I put sundried tomatoes all over with the spinach. On one of them, thinking ahead, I placed the tomatoes directly on the ricotta, which was easier, and made me more confident that there would be sundried tomatoes in every bite. In any case, spinach and tomatoes.
Then more sauce!!
Then a layer of the grated cheese mixture.
Then a final layer of the hard cheese.
The end.
Pat them down so they are in the pan as much as possible, and then put them in the oven at about 325 for an hour. They will make a big mess in your oven, which is a good reason to have deeper lasagna pans. But it will be worth the trouble to clean your oven.
Let the lasagnas rest for 15-20 minutes before cutting into pieces of heaven, and putting the pans out for the crowd to devour.
Make a not too complicated, dark green salad and very garlicky garlic bread, too, and be sure to put out bottles of red and white wine, and sparkling waters and sodas.
Oh! At the last moment, it occurred to me that there hadn't been alot of vegetables in the building during the decoupage adventure. So I threw frozen stir-fry vegetables in a cast iron pan with a little little bit of olive oil, and let that cook up. I hate vegetables, and am always surprised when people just scoop them up and eat them. But they did. Big old clean plate club on Saturday night. Sweet ladies, all took seconds and asked for recipes. So polite.
So, you know, there are a lot of people who would just as soon not eat meat, but are much more interested in not eating eggplant or okra or mushrooms, or whatever slimy vegetable or fakery someone has substituted for meat. One beautiful lady was looking at the "no-meat" lasagna and murmured wistfully, "I suppose that means it has eggplant." Oh no! I replied. No eggplant or mushrooms, or anything unlikely. Just the things you would expect in a lasagna, and just not meat. She was thrilled and dove right in. Good thing I was standing right there.
(I get teased/harrassed for being a finicky eater. But since no one is more finicky than I am, it is almost never that someone finds something they don't like in the food I make. Hence, the clean-plate club on every occasion. Nothing not to like. I still worry endlessly, though, that someone won't like something, won't be able to eat something, and if only I had known I could have made it differently...)
Desert was somewhat neglected, since I was pretty sure no one would have room. I did make cannolis in pre-made shells, but mostly I dashed to the amazing Christopher Elbow chocolate shop and bought a selection of the beautiful, decorated and divine chocolates, which made all the ladies gasp when the cover came off the box. Amazing, and like I said, divine. You must get some.
