This is very likely the last chilly weekend in San Antonio - I wouldn’t bet my mortgage on it, but I’d place $50.
Throwing a dinner party for a couple of friends, I am making lasagna and the others are bringing salads and desserts.
My lasagna is pretty white-person standard - my recipe for this batch can be found at…
… which is a pretty good basic lasagna recipe. I have given some thought to making it Tejano style, some enchilada powder, maybe diced jalapeños, but since that’s not what I announced, going to stick with the basics.
Follow along as I whip this bad boy into shape and tell us all your lasagna tips and tricks, secret spices, more!
Browning the meat, draining excess grease. Dinner isn’t until 7pm, but I’m starting early in case my base meat sauce is too liquidy - will give me extra time to properly reduce it.
Points noted, W/E. Have followed this recipe before with much success, but not in the last 7 years - I used to cook this with Sophia before she went vegetarian, haven’t made one since. This is a different source for the same recipe, so I wonder if there are differences. Don’t have the book anymore, so we will see!
And in my family we usually add some hard boiled egg, but that is probably the habit of 1-2 hills in Italia passed down to us.
I just realized, what cheeses are you using? The 3 she recommended?
If so, remember ricotta is the real cheese for Italian baked dishes, not cottage. It is just such a different (and in my opinion) superior taste.
We pretty much never eat the lasagna the same day I make it - I like to let it sit overnight, the flavors meld during that time and it’s always better the next day.
I don’t use ground beef in mine, just spicy Italian sausage if I use meat at all.
It’s kind of a ‘kitchen sink’ food here - if I have some vegetables I want to use up, those will go in the sauce (usually green stuff like chopped spinach or peas, occasionally carrots, mushrooms are always nice). Cottage cheese is right out, though. Besides ricotta, mozz and parmigiano are what I usually use, though I may throw in a little pecorino if I feel like it.
I have an herb garden so I’ll use fresh basil. I actually prefer dried oregano over fresh, though.
I’m one of those bechamel as the white layer folks, but I do enjoy some ricotta from time to time.
Over the summer I made lasagna once a week until the kids eventually got tired of it. It’s great to assemble and put together for my wife to throw in the oven for dinner if I’m out working that night. And leftovers! It does taste better after a day in the fridge, I must say.
Pretty easy stuff to make, just takes a bit of time to cook down that bolognese sauce.
I haven’t tried making a vegetarian one, but I bet something with mushrooms as the “meat” layer would work great.
Not me. I love that custardy ricotta layer. And I prefer it to be larger in proportion to the meat layer than vice versa. I don’t like it drowning in tomato sauce either.
My mother used to say every village had a different recipe, and each was sure theirs was the best. Like most Italians, her family was very strict about what does and does not go into lasagna and “gravy” (spaghetti sauce). I was appalled the first time I saw a recipe for lasagna with hard boiled eggs in it, but of course, Italians from other regions would be horrified at a recipe that didn’t have hard boiled eggs. I’m learning to be less rigid.
Yes! And texture! When I first moved to a small town in Montana eons ago, none of the stores sold ricotta. I called my mother. She was nonplussed, as she’d only lived in Italy and Chicago. Then she remembered some (non-Italian) people used cottage cheese. I bought small curd. Gross. And the texture was totally wrong. Inspiration! I’d put in the blender to change the texture. Still wrong. I didn’t make lasagna for three years, when local stores finally carried ricotta.
JohnT, love the photos, and I’m looking forward to the rave reviews from your guests.
Definitely not drowned in sauce. The bolognese layer is like sloppy joe in texture/thickness. I never was much a fan of lasagna until I discovered the bechamel version about twenty years ago.
Sometimes I can’t find ricotta, or more likely, I forget to buy some. In that case I mix cottage cheese with an egg, and throw in some parmesan cheese. I never seen to make enough for a decent layer like @carrps likes.
That’s how my mom first made it back in the early 60s with some chopped parsley mixed in. We moved on to ricotta soon after. There was an Italian deli not too far from us where we could get it, because back then it could be hard to reliably find ricotta in the supermarket.
When was this? You got me thinking. When I was very small, we did most of our shopping at a supermarket owned and run by an Italian family we knew. Of course, they had ricotta. A little later, we shopped at Jewel, National, or Piggly-Wiggly, with occasional trips to Guido’s, a local supermarket chain owned by Italians. Did Mom get ricotta at the non-Italian supermarkets, or is that why we went to Guido’s?
I came here mainly to make the point about ricotta instead of cottage cheese, but I see it’s already been made several times and you’re onto it! It’s really an important difference.
Personally – and this is just a personal labour-saving shortcut when making lasagna or spaghetti or whatever – I’ll use a good commercial pasta sauce instead of making sauce from scratch. I’ll grant that good quality authentic commercial pasta sauces are hard to find – I dislike most of them – but I’ve found two good ones, one of which is available nearby.
On another strictly personal note, because I’ve been reducing my meat intake as I get older, especially beef, if I were making lasagna I’d use much less beef and if there’s sausage in the lasagna I’d even consider no beef at all. But to each his own!
NYC & NJ for me, so ricotta was always available. I think I knew about ricotta before cottage cheese. NJ is the most Italian-American state and obviously NYC has a very large Italian population also.
