Lasagne alla Bolognese

Lasagne is layers — pasta, ragù, béchamel, repeated. Skip the béchamel and you have baked pasta with sauce on it, which is a different and lesser dish.

The ragù takes time and cannot be hurried. Everything else is assembly.

Serves 8
Ragù: 2 to 3 hours

Ingredients

For the ragù

1 lb ground beef
1 onion
1 carrot
1 stalk celery
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons olive oil
6–7 tomatoes, peeled and chopped, with their juice
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 cup whole milk
1 cup red wine (optional)
2 sprigs rosemary
1 bay leaf
Salt and black pepper

For the béchamel

4 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 cups whole milk, warmed
Pinch of nutmeg
Salt and white pepper

To assemble

10 lasagne sheets
1 1/2 cups grated Parmesan
10–15 mushrooms, sliced (optional)

Method

Make the ragù

Finely dice the onion, carrot and celery. This is the soffritto, and it is the base of the sauce. Chop it finer than feels necessary — it should melt into the ragù, not sit in it as identifiable vegetables.

Heat the olive oil in a heavy pot and cook the soffritto slowly for 10 minutes, until soft and sweet. Do not brown it.

Add the ground beef and cook until well browned. Let it sit undisturbed for a minute at a time so it colors rather than greys.

Add the garlic and cook for a minute.

Pour in the wine, if using, and let it cook away almost completely.

Add the milk and let it be absorbed. This is a Bolognese tradition — the milk tenderizes the meat and rounds out the acidity of the tomatoes. It sounds wrong and it works.

Add the tomatoes with their juice, the tomato paste, rosemary and bay leaf. Season.

Simmer uncovered on very low heat for at least 2 hours, ideally 3. Stir occasionally and add water if it dries out.

The long cook is the entire dish. At one hour it tastes like mince in tomato sauce. At three hours it tastes like ragù.

If you are using mushrooms, sauté them separately and stir them in at the end. Added at the start they disappear and release water into the sauce.

Make the béchamel

Melt the butter in a pan. Add the flour and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes until it smells nutty but has not colored.

Add the warm milk in a slow stream, whisking constantly, until smooth.

Cook until it thickens to the consistency of a pourable custard. Season with salt, white pepper and a pinch of nutmeg.

It should be loose, not stiff. Thick béchamel makes a dry lasagne — it needs to be pourable so it soaks into the pasta as it bakes.

Assemble

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

Start with a thin layer of ragù on the base of the dish. This stops the bottom sheet sticking and drying out.

Then layer: pasta, ragù, béchamel, Parmesan. Repeat, finishing with béchamel and a generous amount of Parmesan on top.

Aim for four or five layers. Both sauces should reach the edges — dry corners are where lasagne fails.

Bake

Cover with foil and bake for 25 minutes, then uncover and bake for another 15 to 20, until the top is browned and bubbling at the edges.

Rest for 20 minutes before cutting. This is not optional. Straight from the oven the layers slide apart and you serve a heap; twenty minutes and you can lift clean squares.

Chef’s notes

If you use no-boil pasta sheets, make the sauces slightly looser — the sheets take moisture from them as they cook.

Better the next day, like most things built on a long braise. Assemble it a day ahead, refrigerate, and add 10 minutes to the baking time.

Ginger