Hiya Natali!
Ok - so you want to know how to make Jon's Lasagne?
Well it's based on a recipe from my Mum but I get a bit more involved with the naughty parts... The following quantities are approx and based on making a big one for 6-8 people.
Ingredients
1 kilo Minced Beef - the best you can buy
10 rashers of good quality Streaky Bacon
2 large Onions (1x red and 1x white)
2 large Red Peppers
4 fat Cloves of Garlic
2 tins of Chopped Tomatoes
1/2 tube of Tomato Puree
1 bottle of decent Red Wine
10 sheets of Egg Lasagne
1 Beef Stock Cube
Olive Oil
Steak Seasoning
Fresh Oregano
Salt and Pepper
Cheddar Cheese and Parmagianno
125g Butter
75g Plain Flour
2 Pints of Milk
3/4 Pint of Single Cream
Ground Nutmeg
Open the bottle of wine, pour yourself a glass, put on some good tunes and survey your ingredients. The lasagne will and should take a couple of hours out of your day, so enjoy it.
Chop the onions, garlic, bacon and peppers and pick the best leaves from the oregano. Get it all ready...
Take a nice big, deep pan and pour in a healthy amount of olive oil and heat it up on a low-medium heat.
Soften your finely chopped onions in the pan. Then add the finely chopped garlic - don't add it first or it'll burn.
To this lovely oniony mess add the bacon that you've cut up roughly with kitchen scissors and grind some black pepper in for the hell of it.
Add the red peppers and keep mixing it so nothing sticks to the bottom.
Have some more wine, feel like a chef, but remember that you need 3/4 of the bottle for the mix, so don't get too carried away. Also you shoudn't be drunk when your guests arrive. Bad look.
Now free up as much of the base of the pan as possible and feed your minced beef into the pan. Turn up the heat (if you can't stand it, you know where to go) and mix it all together making sure that the mince is browning. When you're happy that the mince has started to turn, then pour in some more olive oil, add both tins of chopped tomatoes and stir in half a tube of tomato puree.
Now you should have a nice meaty tomatoey mess. If it's bubbling, then the heat is currently too high, so turn it down a little for the next stage.
You'll have a beef stock cube dissolving in just under 200ml boiling water - this is stand by fluid in case you've drunk too much wine. Keep it to the side while you stir in, little by little, loads of red wine. Add plenty of the steak seasoning, plenty of black pepper, a little salt, throw in the oregano leaves, stir in some more wine, add some stock for the hell of it because you've made it after all and there's no point wasting it. Turn the heat up a bit and make it bubble and simmer. Add some more wine and don't worry too much if it looks full of liquid as much will reduce. So add some more wine and more steak seasoning and black pepper.
Oh my god you're a chef! Look at your bad self! Make sure you have good tunes on...
Now let this simmer for 20 mins with the lid ON. Then another 20 mins with the lid OFF. Stir occasionally to keep the bottom of the pan moving. You don't want to reduce too much of the liquid, so if it becomes too dry, make sure you're looking at some stock or some wine somewhere.
Now, what are you going to do for 40 minutes? Make the bechamel sauce - that's what! Now this is still a work in progress for me as I always think it's too thin and then it thickens without the need for more flour and I find that I've added too much flour and then too much butter. So here, obey the amounts. Oh - and make sure you have plenty of ground nutmeg. If you haven't, then you may as well go and buy a ready made lasagne from Tescos and serve that! Loser! Do it properly...
So - the bechamel sauce:
Chop the butter (half a solid pack of actual butter) into smaller segments and heat that up over a medium heat in a fairly large saucepan. Add most of the milk (yes it is a lot) and then the flour. Whisk this over the heat for about ten minutes and see what happens. Ultimately you need it to be quite thick, so if it's not happening, take it off the heat and let it sit for a moment then whisk it off the heat and see what happens. Once it has started to thicken, THEN add the cream and then keep stirring in plenty of ground nutmeg - more than you think - and also a generous amount of black pepper. Yum yum yum. More nutmeg - I'm serious.
Don't forget that the meaty sauce needs 20 mins with the lid off as well as on. Well done.
Soon you'll be ready to start building your lasagne. If the bechemal sauce is ready and nice and thick then take it off the heat and let it be until the meaty sauce is ready. In the meantime, start passing the sheets of lasagne through a bowl of hot water and place them on a teatowel, ready for the build. Bring out the huge lasagne dish that you have somewhere for occasions like this.
Now line the bottom of the dish with a healthy amount of meaty sauce; then a layer of bechamel sauce. Now trim the lasagne to fit the dish and make a nice firm layer over the sauce. Repeat the meaty sauce and bechamel sauce process and add another layer of lasagne sheets. Repeat once more and then on the last layer of lasagne sheets, just add all the rest of the bechamel sauce up to the lip of the dish. Top with the cheddar and parmegianno that you've grated and mixed.
Now find someone and show them because believe you me it looks AWESOME!
Then put the whole damn thing in a pre-heated oven at 160 for about 45 minutes.
Let it sit when you take it out. You can spend this time looking at it. Serve with salad, garlic bread, friends and the red wine that they've brought.
Enjoy!
Lots of love,
