Day 16: Lasagna
I’ve never made Lasagne before, but I’ve made Bolognese and white sauce so I thought “how hard can it be”? It turned out to be a harder than I thought.
Bolognese ingredients
- olive oil
- 1 large onion, finely chopped
- 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 1 small red chilli, finely chopped
- 1tbs of dried basil
- 3 tbs of dried oregano
- grated nutmeg
- 1kg minced beef
- 2 tins of chopped tomatoes
- 300 ml red wine
- sea salt
- freshly ground black pepper
To make the bolognese, heat the olive oil in a pot over medium heat and sauté the onion, garlic, chilli for 4–5 minutes, until soft and lightly caramelised. Add the meat and continue to cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. Add the herbs and continue to stir until the meat is well browned and broken up finely (about another 5 minutes). Add the tins of tomatoes and wine and boil to reduce by half. Add the salt and pepper. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer gently, stirring occasionally.
This was way too much liquid, it took ages to reduce. I should have just done my standard Bolognese! It would have been a lot quicker.
Cheesy sauce ingredients
- 60g butter
- 100g cheddar cheese
- 100g parmesan cheese
- 3 cups of milk
- 1/3 cup of flour
- salt & pepper to taste
To make the cheesy sauce, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat and add the flour. Stir rapidly as the flour is added until the mixture forms a smooth thick paste. Pour in the milk, stirring rapidly. Add the cheese and allow to melt.
The thick paste and milk ratio was wrong. It needed more flour/butter mix at the start.
Put the lasagne sheets on the bottom and add 1/3 of the Bolognese. Add the sauce on top of the Bolognese. Repeat these layers twice.
I selected a dish that was the wrong size and somehow I only got 2 out of the 3 layers. I had a much smaller dish which I got 1/2 filled with what was left.
Bake at 180C for 50 minutes.
Unfortunately this is how it looked like at less than 30min. I just don’t get how to use my oven (there are no instructions).
To add insult to injury, after all that it was cooked at the size only but not cooked in the middle.
All in all an unmitigated disaster and I was in a seriously bad mood by the time I eat it. The husband said the flavours were awesome though.
