The second trip down YouTube way bought my second variation on the lasagne. I was watching a buzz feed video of Italian women satisfyingly criticising the American-Italian restaurant chain Olive Garden. One woman's review of the lasagne explained that her way included arduous layering and the intruguing idea of small meatballs. I thought this was a lovely little tweak, and adopted for my own. Thank you very much, 'Italian Grandma'.
To serve with this, I make two salads: thinly slice two large white or candy red onions along with 6 medium tomatoes or 4 big beef ones and macerate them in 300ml virgin olive oil, the juice of 1 lemon, salt and finely chopped parsley then arrange on a dish. For the second it's just lettuce with a dressing made on the side (allow guests to serve their own dressing) that's loosely based on a Caeser salad, being garlic infused oil, dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce and cider vinegar.
Do also note that the meatballs paddling in their rich sauce makes for a great a companion with a steaming bowl of tagliatelle or linguine.
1)Finely chop 3 large white onions and 3 sticks of celery, saute 3/4 in olive oil and set the rest aside for meatballs. Add 6 garlic cloves to that, and an easy way of doing this is putting the whole clove in a garlic crusher, unpeeled and squeezing the juice out one at a a time. Or just blitz all of the above in a processor. When nice and soft, add a good 3 tbsp tomato puree, 1 tbsp oregano, 3 tins of tomatoes remembering to swill them about halfway with water, a beef stock cube, 3 tbsp redcurrant jelly or another sour jam, a pinch or more of dried chilli flakes and a good few shakes of Worcestershire sauce. Let simmer for a good while, tasting, adding salt pepper and sugar until it's right for you, then simmer gently whilst you make the meatballs.
2)Add 1k minced beef to the set aside onions and celery and add lots of salt and pepper, grated parmesan, dried oregano, Worcestershire sauce, 2 eggs and 3 tbsp or so semolina or decent breadcrumbs. Don't be hung up on quantities here, just go by the idea that you need less of everything than you think. Make tiny meatballs out of this, really no bigger than a tsp then plop them gently into the sauce. Vary this mixture how you like, minced lamb works here but you could sprinkle some dried mint in, or use sausage meat and beef or plonk a bit of veal in- generally, if it's minced it's suitable. They only need a short precook. If you have some time that should be spent doing something useful, make more meatballs and freeze them on a tray before transferring to plastic bags, they need no thawing before you plop them in their hot tomato jacuzzi.
3)For the cheese sauce set the milk to heat early as then the whole sauce cooks and thickens faster. However, it may be more runny than you think it needs as I don't precook the lasagne , I use the liquid from the sauce to do it whilst it's in the oven. Heat 2 pints of milk and infuse with a rind of parmesan, if you don't have one just remember to keep them in future and store in the freezer. In the meantime, combine 50g butter and 3 tbsp flour, a pinch of white pepper and mustard powder over low heat and then gradually add the milk and cook until the thickness of single cream, then add a good grate of fresh nutmeg. Stir constantly and have over a low heat. Take off the heat and stir in a mix of really nice cheeses, use predominantly a strong cheddar but for flavour add Swiss cheese and even blue and soft cheese.
4)To assemble the lasagne (this makes two) go for about 4 layers, tomato sauce and meatballs, cheese sauce, raw lasagne sheets and repeat. Top with grated cheese and semolina before leaving to cool, wrapping in foil and leaving in the fridge. You could make this on the night, but, let's be honest, it's quite a chore so it makes sense to do this the day ahead. Either way, bake at 200 for 45 minutes (shorter if you're cooking straight away).
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