My first lasagna experience was at a childhood church picnic. The sauce was unseasoned tomato sauce straight from the can, the meat was plain ground beef, and the cheese layer was cottage cheese. So lasagna immediately went on my hate list, and I was living on my own and lunching at a little family-run immigrant Italian style restaurant in downtown Los Angeles some ten years later before I encountered lasagna again and realized the extent to which I'd been duped.
I've been fascinated with the dish ever since.
And discovered that there are a million different ways to make it. It took me years, though, to get away from using what I normally made for a spaghetti sauce such that my version of lasagna was simply a different construction of noodles and sauce with two cheese layers. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it both can and deserves to be a dish with it's own unique personality, and these days my forays into lasagna making have really been more about exploring and enjoying the diversity of other possibilities. And so a few weeks ago I was sitting in a doctor's waiting room and perusing a several years old copy of a Gourmet magazine and fell into deep lust over a recipe called Lasagna Bolognese. I brought the key elements home in my head and yesterday afternoon made my own version of that which turned out to be the most elegant, the most subtly complex lasagna I've ever had.
Thankfully, I took notes. And a picture:
The magic in this dish is the nearly one quart of besciamella (nutmeg spiced white sauce) that is not only the topping for the lasagna, but the moisture absorbed into each layer of fresh (make your own or purchase) lasagna noodles. There is no ricotta, only a sprinkling of parmesan on each layer which infuses the pie with a nutty pungence. Delicately thin fresh pasta of your own making should may result in five to seven layers, but if you use storebought (as I went out for yesterday afternoon, the extra hour on my feet to make my own would have killed me) your noodles might be a tad thicker and restrict you to five layers in a 2" deep pan. Your pan should be approximately 9 x 12 or 13, and the finished pie will serve 6 - 8 (the piece shown above was 1/6th).
For the meat sauce/filling:
EVOO and butter
2 carrots, finely diced
2 celery ribs, finely diced
1 medium onion, finely diced
five cloves garlic, minced
About 3 ounces pancetta
1 lb ground veal
1 lb ground pork
3 ounces (half a typical can) of tomato paste
1 cup whole milk
1 cup dry white wine
3 basil leaves, finely chopped, or 2 pinches dried
salt and pepper to taste
For the besciamella:
5 tblsp butter
3 tblsp flour
3 cups whole milk
1 tsp salt (or to taste)
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
Also:
1 cup grated parmigiano reggiano
2 tblsp olive oil
First, make the meat filling. Put enough butter and olive oil in a 6-8 quart pot (Dutch oven is perfect) to sweat the vegetables until tender, about ten minutes. Then add the ground meats and pancetta and cook until the meat cooks through and begins to crumble. Break up any lumps and add the milk, wine, basil, pepper and tomato paste. Simmer for at least one hour, then salt to taste and allow the sauce to reduce if neccessary, uncovered, to make a thick, but not dry, sauce.
While the meat filling is cooking, prepare the besciamella per classic white sauce methods: make the roux (melt the butter, add flour), let it cook for a few minutes, then add hot milk (scald it first and it won't form so much skin), nutmeg and salt. Simmer on low heat for about ten minutes to completely cook the flour, then set aside.
Blanch the pasta: bring a large pot of water to a boil and add 2 tblsp of vegetable oil to help prevent sticking (purists will tell you that this is an unneccessary step if you don't crowd the pot, but I've always found it useful). Drop in a few leaves of pasta at a time and fish them out in a minute or less, laying out on towels to drain and dry.
A note about pasta quantity: My pasta sheets were longer than my pan but half a sheet was about the width, so I cut the sheets in half and planned to use three overlapping pieces per layer. I ended up with four layers needing 12 pieces.
Assemble the lasagna: put a ladle full of meat sauce on the bottom of the pan with 2 tblsp EVOO and about two tblsp of parmesan. Top with the first layer of pasta, then cover the pasta with a ladle (about half a cup) of the white sauce. (You basically need to reserve one cup of white sauce for the topping and divide the remainder among the number of layers you expect to make.) Now top the white sauce with the meat filling: if you're making five layers of pasta, then distribute one fourth of the sauce now), and two more tablespoons of the parmigiano. Repeat, topping the last layer of pasta with the final cup of the besciamella and the remaining parmesan. If you like (I liked), sprinkle more basil on top and black pepper.
Bake lasagna uncovered at 350 until golden and bubbling, about 45 minutes if you bake it immediately after assembly when the ingredients are room temperature or warm. It will take more time if the lasagna is chilled before baking. Allow the pie to rest for 10-15 minutes before cutting.
We enjoyed this with a 99 Monti Barbera from Italy.
Their preface is spot-on. "Refined...gorgeous...silky...ethereal"--yes that's exactly what we experienced!
. I said you don't even like lasagna because of the ricotta cheese. He said all the lasagna he's had in England is tomatoey, with pasta noodles and stringy cheese, but no ricotta, and that's how he likes it. Sheesh! I thought the tomato might be an issue, so I even added a whole can of tomato paste rather than half. Maybe next time I will put a layer of marinara on top instead of the bechemel to give him the illusion of a tomato based lasagna 
. The other thing, besides how great it tasted, was the fact that it cut and presented beautifully on the plate. Normally, my lasagna is a mess after it's been cut and plated. Not this lasagna...it looked like a perfect meat napolean!