Lasagna is an Italian dish made from thinly rolled layers of dough, toppings, sauce and cheese. At the moment, quite a few different recipes for this dish have been invented. Depending on the chef, the filling, the type of cheese and the lasagne sauce depend. The filling of this dish is usually made from meat. But this is optional. You can use mushrooms, vegetables, seafood, as well as fruits and berries. There is also sweet lasagna. But now we will look at how to cook a regular Italian lasagna.
First you need to take a thinly rolled dough, which is called pasta. It can be purchased at the supermarket. But before using, be sure to pay attention to how to cook it correctly. Maybe it just needs to be soaked in water, or maybe boiled. If you have to boil the pasta, then be sure to add two to three tablespoons of olive oil to the boiling water so that the dough does not stick together. The finished pasta should be crispy and elastic. But it is not necessary to buy ready-made dough sheets. You can cook them yourself. To do this, you need flour from durum wheat. You need to drive four large eggs into it, add a teaspoon of olive oil and salt. After that, you need to knead the dough, wrap it in cling film and send it to the refrigerator for half an hour. After that, you need to divide the dough into several parts, sprinkle each part with flour and roll it thinly. The thickness of the resulting sheet of dough should be about two millimeters. After that, the pasta needs to be cut into wide strips.
Cheese must be grated. Parmesan and mozzarella cheeses are ideal for lasagna. But it is not necessary to choose only these types of cheese, you can take any cheese. Depending on the recipe, cheese should be sprinkled on each layer of pasta or just on top of the lasagna.
Meat should be scrolled in a meat grinder and stewed with onions and vegetables. Pour olive oil into a frying pan, heat it up and fry finely chopped onion in it. Next, the prepared minced meat should be stewed in tomato sauce or with finely chopped tomatoes. Make sure the stuffing doesn’t burn.
Next you need to prepare the sauce. The best sauce for lasagna is bechamel sauce. Its preparation is not difficult. Melt the butter in a small saucepan, add two tablespoons of flour. All this needs to be fried for several minutes, while stirring the whole mixture thoroughly. In another saucepan, bring half a liter of milk to a boil and add salt there. Pour cream into the fried flour in small portions. Remember to stir everything thoroughly so that no lumps form. The consistency of the finished sauce should be similar to sour cream.
For baking lasagna, you need to choose an even square shape. It is best to take dishes that are made of ceramic or heat-resistant glass. A cast iron mold will also work. It is better not to use metal dishes for cooking lasagna, then the dish will burn and not completely bake.
A little sauce needs to be poured to the bottom of the form, and then a layer of paste, a layer of minced meat and all this need to be poured with sauce are laid out. And so several layers. Each layer can be sprinkled with cheese, or you can only decorate the top layer with it. Pasta in the preparation of lasagna is better to lay out crosswise. This will keep the lasagna from falling apart and make it firmer.
Lasagna should be baked at a temperature of 200 degrees. Cooking time 20-30 minutes. Bake lasagna until golden brown. The finished dish needs to be cooled, cut into pieces, serve.