Lasagna with Fresh Pasta, Bolognese and Pecorino Cheese Sauce

I've been working on this lasagna recipe for years it may be the best thing I make but I only do it for special occasions and in large quantities because it's an astounding amount of work I spread out the labor across three days day one I make my very non-traditional bolognese sauce I have a whole video on this but here is the short version a pound of carrots and a large red onion go in the food processor and then a pound of chicken livers yes chicken livers fry the veggies in a big Dutch oven then dump them out put in three pounds of ground meat to whatever you want cook it on high heat stirring aggressively with a wooden spoon to break it all up after 15 or 20 minutes the water will boil off and you can fry the meat in its own fat until it's brown dump in the chicken livers and a little can of tomato paste and the second it looks like the bottom of the pan is gonna burn pour in a whole bottle of white wine and scrape the bottom clean vegetables go back in then three big cans of crushed tomatoes this is optional but I like a big spoonful of liquid chicken bullion reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for three hours stirring every now and then during the last hour throw in some dried herbs pepper and a bunch of balsamic vinegar yes my recipe is pretty acidic but I think that's what makes it taste so good inside a lasagna where all of the other flavors really need some brightening when three hours is up taste it and add salt more vinegar or anything you think it needs that makes about twice what you will use in the lasagna we can freeze the rest later but for now I just left the pot cool down and throw the whole batch in the fridge first job on day two is to boil about 8 ounces of spinach which is one bag or one half of one of these bins cover it up so it'll steam and get a bowl of ice water ready stir it around and when it's all just wilted down after maybe 2 minutes of cooking pull it out into the ice water that spider strainer I've got there is really useful for this whole recipe by the way you'll see why shocking the spinach in the ice water will set the color green it'll stop it from going brown you do not need a food processor to make fresh pasta dough but it makes it real easy crack in four eggs a teaspoon of salt and two cups of flour then a whizz it up this is more egg than you would normally put fresh pasta why because eggy pasta stays firm even after it bakes in the lasagna it doesn't go mushy you're looking to see this come together into one giant ball and dump it out onto some plastic wrap your dough may be more or less sticky it doesn't matter we're gonna adjust the flour content when we roll it out that's the yellow dough now we're gonna do it the green dough squeeze as much of the water out of the spinach as you can and then put it in the food processor with just three eggs this time the spinach is equal to the moisture of one egg teaspoon of salt then give it a preliminary whizz just to get the spinach cut up then comes two cups of flour like before and whizz it up like before until it comes together into one big ball wrap up the dough's and throw them in the fridge for at least a half hour if we tried to roll them out now they would just fall apart they need to hydrate while we're waiting we will make our cheese sauce stick of butter goes in a big pan medium heat goes on and while it melts I will chop up as much garlic as I can stand to peel that's about a whole head then whisk in enough flour to make a thick paste no more than a cup that is a roux it will thicken our sauce garlic goes in then we whisk in a half gallon of milk a little bit at a time you put in too much it'll slosh right out of the pan as you stir once all the milk is in pull the pan off the heat and let it cool until it stops bubbling now comes the star ingredient a whole 7 ounce block of pecorino cheese you could use parmesan but I think the acidity of a sheep's milk cheese really cuts better through this sauce just grate the whole thing in if you did this while the sauce was still boiling the cheese would go grainy it must be off the boil whisk it in and don't worry if it doesn't go totally smooth it's all gonna melt in the oven give it a taste the cheese is super salty but I'm gonna add even more salt I want this sauce to be the primary source of salt for the entire lasagne I am making it too salty deliberately okay now we'll fill up the biggest pot that we've got with water throw in some big pinches of salt and turn the heat on high here is my standard 6 inch wide pasta roller you can get these for 25 bucks it's secured to the counter with a C clamp that came with it here's our first dough ball I'll dust it with flour so that I can handle it and I'll cut it in half you could roll the whole thing out at but if you're new at this I recommend one half at a time I'll smoosh it out into a rectangle dust it with plenty of flour then run it through on the thickest setting that's kind of raggedy I'll fold it up dust it and run it through again then fold it dust it then run it through again and then again we are not shaping the dough yet we're just kneading it and we're making sure that it has the right amount of flour if it's too wet it won't roll smooth so you just add flour and pass it through until it does roll smooth now we're ready to shape it just reduce the thickness by one or two clicks and send it through reduce the thickness by another click or two then send it through this is way easier if you have another person to help you feed it into the machine it's also easier if you're not trying to keep your big stupid body out of the shot for lasagna I take this down to the second-to-last setting if it's super thin it'll go mushy when it bakes now's the time to think about what you're gonna bake this in I use these eleven by nineteen inch disposable pans because I don't have a real pan that's big enough we want to cut our pasta as long as the pan is bearing in mind that it will expand a couple of inches in length as it boils that basically means I need to cut these as long as my 17 inch cutting board and I find that it's really easy to cut pasta with kitchen scissors they don't make the cleanest edges but nobody's gonna see these edges I'm cutting each sheet about 17 inches long then cutting it up the middle into two ribbons they don't have to be perfect at all here's the most giant bowl I've got filled with ice water then quickly before they stick to each other will lay the pasta ribbons into the boiling water when they puff up and float aggressively to the top they are done that was just two minutes into the cold water they go to stop the cooking if you don't do that they'll go gummy here's almost every kitchen towel that I've got laid out on my table we'll pull out one noodle at a time swipe the water off and lay them side-by-side on the towels then I'll take another towel and dry off the top facing sides they don't have to be bone-dry but if they're soaking wet they'll start to dissolve and they'll make the lasagne runny now we go back and do it all over again with the other half of the yellow dough when you get more confident at this you can roll out one whole batch at a time especially if you had a second pair of hands helping you replenish the ice water boil for two minutes shock them to stop the cooking dry them off on the towels now let's roll out the green dough hmm that lacks contrast much better a little bit of flour cut it in half smoosh it into a rectangle and feed it through on the widest setting yeah that means this dough needs more flour we'll just dust it and feed it through dust it and feed it through this is why we didn't need to be precise about our measurements when we made this dough it will simply absorb all the flour it requires as we need it and it will tell us when it's had enough by rolling out smooth in one piece if you don't want to see any remnants of actual spinach in your pasta there are recipes out there that basically just have you extract the chlorophyll from the spinach and then put that in the dough I like to see the little pieces of leaves in there that way we can all pretend that we're eating a vegetable when we have our lasagna cut this into 17 inch ribbons as before boil and shock as before dry as before then do the other half man I love fresh pasta it tastes nothing like the dried stuff it's amazing gotta make ourselves some room lay down a sheet pan to help us lift that flimsy foil pan around then oil up the foil to keep the lasagna from sticking and lay in our first layer of pasta if some of the noodles break apart it really doesn't matter and it doesn't matter which sauce you put in first though it does help if the cheese sauce is warm otherwise you won't be able to smooth it out into a thin layer now we do a layer of green pasta and a layer of our bolognaise which I've left out at room temperature for a bit again if it's really cold you won't be able to spread it nice and thin and you get the idea just build up as many alternating layers as you have pasta and sauce to spare I got in seven layers then on the very top layer I just dab a little of the Bolognese and a little of the cheese sauce just streaks of both of them on top it goes into a 400 Fahrenheit oven for 20 minutes out it comes and that looks not very different at all and not that good don't worry we're not done with it yet that was just the first bake let it cool down but if you're hungry now pull out a little pan melt in some butter and fry off whatever scraps of that you have left over a little bit of cheese on top little red pepper flake very nice throw the lasagna in the fridge and here we are on day three the day we actually eat is gonna be the easiest day which makes this really good for dinner parties so the hard part is behind us I'm just prepping some garlic and shallots to make a quick tomato sauce fry those in oil with a big squeeze of tomato paste then in go to 28 ounce cans of crushed tomatoes and a splash of white wine if you've got it season that and simmer it for a half hour stirring frequently during which time we will grab a pound of mozzarella or whatever kind you like and roughly grade it up here's our chilled lasagna and I'm gonna cut this into 12 pieces that's a really big portion if you're gonna eat this with anything else I would do 15 pieces or even 18 get a baking sheet and don't do not put foil down like I did the lasagna will stick to the foil it's just that my baking pans are really oxidized I need to clean them and I haven't yet oil up the pan then lift out a piece with a spatula look at that nice clean cut you get by cutting it cold if we had cut this while it was hot the pieces would have come out looking like pizza the hut cover up the top with grated moths and in it goes 400 degrees on the convection setting if you've got it that'll really help brown everything I'm just doing one piece for demonstration purposes but you could do the entire lasagna spread out across two or three sheet pans just keep the pieces as separated as possible we want the hot air to circulate all around each piece give it 20 minutes to heat everything through if the cheese isn't browning enough flip on the broiler at the very end that's what I did and out it comes I'll test my red sauce for seasoning need some salt then I'll put a thin layer of sauce on my plate and float the lasagna on top tear on some fresh basil and with this two-stage baking method every piece is an edge piece also baked pasta dishes are generally better the second day anyway the tomato sauce on the bottom really ties the whole thing together I'm not going to tell you this is worth the work or worth the wait that is for you to decide according to your value system but I am telling you that's the best lesson I've ever had and it may be the best thing I've ever made

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 3,623,371

Rating: 4.9088025 out of 5

Keywords: lasagna, bolognese, cheese, sauce, tomato, layers, pasta, fresh, fresh pasta, spinach, green, green pasta, dough, roll, pecorino, mozzarella, baked, bake, basil, impressive, party, dinner

Id: xER7YhsZcQ0

Length: 11min 10sec (670 seconds)

Published: Thu May 02 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/elboydo]

Reckon you could freeze the first bake pieces then do a second bake later?