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I had heard of Mario Batali’s Lasagne many times, in many circles. Saw the recipe online a few times. Glossed over it in his cookbook. It always seemed intimidating, if not labor intensive. But I recently got into the habit of making pasta from scratch, likely the direct result of receiving the pasta attachment for my Kitchen Aid for Christmas, so I felt like a big chunk of what concerned me from a time and effort standpoint was going to be taken care of by a giant motor encased in porcelain enameled steel.

I was wrong. But it didn’t matter. Because the final product was so much better than I ever could have expected. And it was mine, all mine….and not a single ounce of it came from a box (pretty much).

Now, I’ve made lasagne before. Noodles layered with red gravy, Italian cheese blend, ricotta, maybe a little garlic and Italian seasoning. It’s a layup…a go to dish for a novice that despite it’s intensive assembly, is made up of components that can be purchased in their “ready for lasagne” form. Hell, you can even get no-boil noodles. A purist, in the most Americanized (read bastardized) Italian form, might tell you that what I am about to explain to you is not lasagne. There is no tomato sauce. There will be no introduction of ricotta cheese. There will, in fact, be no cheese at all outside of liberally sprinkled parmasean.

Call it what you want, just don’t call me late for a giant bubbling hot square of it.

INGREDIENTS:

5 cloves garlic

2 medium onions

4 ribs celery

2 carrots

1/4 cup olive oil

2.5 lbs ground turkey

4 ounces uncured bacon, small dice

1 cup dry white wine

1 cup whole milk

6 ounces tomato paste

1 tsp thyme

5 tbsp unsalted butter

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

3 cups whole milk

1-2 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp freshly-grated nutmeg

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for kneading

5 large eggs

1 cup fresh spinach leaves

8 oz. parmasean cheese

First, we get the bolognese rolling. A rough food processor slicing of the celery and carrots, a hand dice of the onions, and a mini-chop to mince the garlic

….and were off and running.

We give the veggies a light carmelization, about 5 minutes. By the way, I’m doing this all in a cast iron dutch oven, because I got a new one of those for Christmas too.

Then, against everything you were raised to believe with regards to cooking meat, you add the ground turkey and the bacon to the vegetables. Yes, you put raw meat in with cooked vegetables. That’s how grandma did it. That’s how Batali does it. Just do it. It results in a much stronger bond between the meat and vegetables. At least it seems that way. I mean, the vegetables literally cook the meat.

At this point, I went over and started working on the pasta. I blanched some spinach, chopped it up into very small pieces, added it to the eggs, and made the pasta dough using the paddle attachment on my kitchen aid. Sacriledge? Perhaps. I just don’t have the time for the flour volcano with the cracked eggs in the well on the top…hand manipulating the pile over and over until I’m left with an ultimately inconsistent dough. The machine = consistent. I covered the dough balls with plastic wrap and went back to the sauce. BTW…I had been randomly stirring it the whole time.

Once the meat is browned, throw in the milk, wine, tomato paste and thyme…

Bring everything to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium/medium-low and let it simmer for about an hour. By the time you roll the pasta out and make the bechamel, it will be done.

So ya, roll out the pasta. The amount of dough you just made must be divided. Cut it in half three times, and you should have eight equal portions. Ya, this is gonna take a while. The rolling process is really a kneading process, and will result in a more uniform green with each pass through the roller. Start at the widest setting, and pass a ball of dough (squashed down or rolling pinned so it will fit) through the roller at least five times, folding the dough in half with each pass. Then move down a setting, and pass it through the roller at least 2 times, again folding it in half each time through the roller. Repeat until you get to the smallest setting. Then repeat for each portion of dough. Please note that you are gonna have dough sheets all over the place. For organizational purposes, have some floured parchment paper on several sheet pans, tables, etc. You can cut the dough if you have to to keep it manageable. Just be prepared BEFORE you start rolling.

Moving on to the bechamel, or besciamella if you want to be all Italian and what not. Melt 5 tablespoons of butter over medium heat in a giant cast iron skillet (or just a saucepan). In another pan, put 3 cups of milk on medium high heat for light scalding purposes. You don’t want this milk to boil, so keep one eye on it. To the butter, add in 1/4 cup of flour and stir like a crazy person. This is a roux.

Don’t let it burn. One black spec and you should start over. Keep stirring like it’s your job for about 5 minutes, and just as the milk in the other pan is about to boil, remove it from the heat. Add the hot milk, a ladle or two at a time, to the roux. Bring the concoction to a boil each time, stirring constantly, then add another ladle or two. Repeat until you’ve incorporated all the milk into the roux. Then turn the heat to low, at the salt and the nutmeg, and leave it alone for 10 minutes while it becomes besciamella. Transfer it to another vessel and cover it.

Time to boil some hand crafted sheets of pasta… Get your two biggest pots, fill one halfway with water and get it boiling on the stove. Fill the other halfway with water and ice. Boil the pasta, several sheets at a time (but don’t overcrowd) for about two minutes. Remove it using something with a light touch (I used a slotted serving spoon) and move it to the ice bath. Drain, and lay it out flat on some clean towels to dry a bit. It’s not a huge deal if some of them tear a bit or stick together a bit, just do your best to keep them together and single-ply.

Time for layering! Finally you’ll feel like you’re making lasagne! Put the oven on 375, and get yourself organized. Pasta, besciamella, bolognese, and parm should all be within easy reach of the lasagne pan. Start with a layer of bolognese and parmasean cheese at the bottom of the pan.

Cover it with a layer of noodles. Add a layer of besciamella on the pasta. I used a pastry brush to spread it out to make a somewhat thin coating on the pasta.

Then add more bolognese, then parm, then noodles. Repeat until you are out of stuff or out of room. The top layer should be pasta, being sure to almost seal the edges, then besciamella, then copious amounts of parm.

Bake for 45 minutes to an hour…until the top cheese crust is browning nicely (but not burnt!) and everything is bubbling out of every open crevice.