Homemade Lasagna

shot with a Canon Eos Rebel

I say homemade because I made the lasagna pasta too. Now this wasn’t my intention but when you’re half way through making the lasagna only to find out you don’t have any pasta sheets in the cupboard you tend to have to think on your feet. (The astute amongst you will ask ‘why didn’t you just have spaghetti Bolognese?’ Well believe it or not I didn’t even consider that as an option) to make your pasta follow this link, I don’t need to write it out again.

I always find that people put too many ingredients into the Bolognese sauce, you don’t need courgette and mushrooms, and I’ve seen sweetcorn and broccoli in there before as well, no need. All you need to do is finely DICE a carrot, a stick of celery and a couple of shallots or an onion, I say dice because it works a lot better when everything is all the same size. Brown off the veg in olive oil with seasoning and sugar to help the onion along, also give the tomato some extra sweetness later on. When that’s done remove it from the pan and fry the mince with a beef stock cube to bump up the flavour and then add the veg back in. use a carton of own-brand passata from the supermarket (it costs less than chopped tomatoes and it’s thicker) add a small glass of water and let it cook out for 30 mins to an hour on a mid to low heat.

For the cheese sauce, if you haven’t made one before you can use a packet but seeing as I went to the trouble of making my own pasta I’m pretty sure you can boil three ingredients. Heat about 25g of butter in a pan till bubbling then add 25g of plain flour and mix. You’ll need to cook the flour into a paste (a roux) and keep cooking it or your sauce will taste like flour and nothing else. I find it’s best to keep it on a low heat and lightly whisk it from time to time. After about 4-5 mins you need to add three quarters of a pint of milk. This can go two ways, some people prefer to add a little bit of milk at a time and whisk continuously, others tend to add all the milk and whisk to make sure there’s no lumps. Either way works fine but you’ll find the longer you keep it on the heat the thicker it will get so keep it on a low heat and keep adding milk if you need to then add a handful of grated cheese (your choice) and whisk again.

Layer up your sauce, pasta, cheese sauce, pasta, sauce, etc until the last layer is cheese sauce and grate some cheddar over the top. If you’ve used fresh pasta you need to bake it for about 10 mins, if you’ve used lasagna sheets give it 35mins to be safe. 

word to the wise - Supermarket value pasta has the same ingredients as the expensive pasta so don’t spend more than you need to, it's all the same. Pasta simply means paste a.k.a flour and water.