Sunday Gravy with yeah right: I may be clinically insane to try this – Everything from Scratch Made Lasagne

Before we get started today I have a couple of quick announcements; one, you are in for a very special treat next Sunday (no hints) and numero dos, we only have a couple more issues of Sunday Gravy before we shut down for the NFL season.

I know, I know but I’m an NFL fan too and goddammit I’m going to watch football on Sundays! That’s just the way it’s got to be. I may pop back in during the Vikings bye week and Pro Bowl weekend, but we’ll see.

The reason I mention this is if you encounter a recipe or two on these fun-filled posts that you want to attempt during the cool weather season you may want to bookmark some of these. I do have the benefit of living in a pretty fucking temperate town so I’m able to do some of these long, slow cooked meals without melting into a puddle of goo due to the high heat and humidity during the summer months. I realize that some of you other poor folks have to deal with the elements and I do sort of sincerely apologize but there’s a reason I pay the ridiculous rent that I do. It would be pretty tough to stay interesting during an entire offseason if all I gave were grilling recipes and Christ knows I’ve done my share of those. This fucking thing I’m making today would be a good Winter meal.

I’ve never had to do this before because I always want you fine folks to be inspired and challenged to make these meals but I’m giving a disclaimer here: Kids? Maybe you don’t want to try this at home. It’s truly fucking nuts and almost crippled me with my creaky ass knees having to stand in the kitchen for like 5 hours straight. Maybe just make the sauce and buy the noodles and the ricotta and shit. The sauce is fucking magnificent though so yeah make the sauce. Look at this baby!

That’s about a 5-6 hour bolognese sauce with about 4 pounds of various meat substances in it. Awesomeness!

This is a spin on the 2nd Sunday Gravy post I ever did from last year, the Mother Sauce.

Yessir folks. We’re making Home Made lasagne. And by Home Made I mean home fucking making almost every goddamn thing homemade.

What a fucking idiot.

I’ve made lasagne about 1100 times in my life – may be an over estimate –  including annually for a couple of decades at Christmas. I always start with a homemade sauce, the 5-6 hour or two day sauce. A couple of times I’ve made my own noodles even but never this.

It started simply enough, I hadn’t seen the oldest daughter, Eldest right and my two oldest granddaughters and my son-in-law in a few weeks so I told my daughter that we could make some lasagne and it would be pretty fun to make the cheese too. Remember this recipe? Well, this is the daughter who gave me the cheese making kit for Christmas and that linked recipe was my first attempt to make homemade ricotta and mozzarella. Problem was I should have invited her over to dinner that day to try some of the cheese from the kit she bought for me and then I felt like an asshole for not inviting her over.

I was going to fix that with some lasagne that had home made cheese and she and the girls could help and it would be really fun and cool! Then she said, why don’t we make the lasagne noodles from scratch too? See Eldest right knows I’ve got my badass Kitchenaide Mixmaster 600 in my kitchen with the optional pasta roller and spaghetti and fettucine cutting attachments.

She’s no dummy. So I tell her “Kick ass! We’ll be ALL from scratch and shit!” Date was set, dinner was scheduled and just like that I took on a serious goddamn cooking challenge.

Home Made Like a Fucking Boss Lasagne!

In what will come as a surprise to absolutely no-fucking-body this is a 2 day prep. And honestly I should have made it a 3 day prep, fucking dumbass. Day 1 involves making the sauce so let’s make some sauce.

You can use the link to the Mother Sauce but I made a variation on this one so let’s just do it all over.

Red sauce bolognese ala yeah right:

1 large (28 oz?) can of whole San Marzano (if possible) tomatoes

1 equal size can of tomato sauce.

2 15 oz cans of tomato sauce (just in case).

About 8-9 sweet Italian sausages. Yes sweet, not hot.

1 package of beef short ribs – boneless if you can, about  1 1/2 to 2 pounds

Olive oil 2-3 tablespoons or so.

1 large onion chopped

1 green pepper chopped with stem and seeds removed.

Shitload of garlic (8 cloves or so? Sure!) minced

Red wine of your choice, I used a French Cote Du Rhone.

Bunch of sliced mushrooms (optional only because I forgot to add them to the sauce this time.)

1 bunch of fresh oregano chopped

1 bunch of fresh basil chopped

1 teaspoon of red pepper flake (don’t be a nancy boy)

A whole lot of patience because this is about a 5 to 6 hour sauce to make.

Let’s do this damn thing!

First we’re going to sear off that batch of short ribs by adding a little olive oil to a big ol’ Dutch oven or large stock pot. Over medium-high heat brown the ribs on both sides (about 5-7 minutes) and season with salt and pepper.

Remove from the pan and place in a large bowl. Next we’re going to do the same thing with the sausages but we won’t season them with the salt and pepper. Again about 5-7  minutes.

Remove the sausages from the pan and let them hangout with the short ribs for a bit. Next we’re going to deglaze that pan with a healthy shot of that red wine, maybe 2-3 tablespoons. I always add the wine with the heat off of the burner to avoid flare-ups. Dump that wine in the pan and we’re going to deglaze and scrape up the meaty bits using a wooden spoon. Next go ahead and dump that wine and the meat bits over the ribs and the sausages. Wipe the pan out with a paper towel, put another 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the pan, turn the burner back on and let’s saute the onions and peppers. Season with some salt and pepper.

Cook the veggies down for about 7-10 minutes until they are tender and slightly translucent. Add in the garlic and cook JUST until you smell the garlic tantalizing your olfactory senses. Next add in the can of whole tomatoes. This is the fun part where you get to crush each tomato into the sauce spraying tomato juice everywhere and this is also when you forgot that you’re wearing a white shirt that is now stained with tomato juice. Son of a bitch! Also add in the short ribs and the sausages.

Heat until bubbly, then reduce the sauce to a simmer, partially cover the pan with a lid, just to keep the sauce from splattering all over the stove and cook for an hour.

Next step add the large can of tomato sauce to the cooking sauce and also add in the fresh basil and oregano about a teaspoon of each some salt and pepper to taste and the red pepper flake.

We’re just going to let this thing roll for about another 3-4 hours on a LOW simmer. Stir every 15 minutes or so and enjoy the tomato sauce splatters. After the 3-4 hours have elapsed you should notice some fantastic alchemy has happened to the short ribs as they begin breaking down and start to integrate into the sauce itself. It’s also around this time where I break up the sausages with the edge of my wooden spoon into bite sized bits. If you were to remember the mushrooms this is where you would add them. Simmer for ANOTHER hour and then turn off the heat and let rest for awhile before refrigerating overnight. You can use this last hour to skim the fat that floats to the top of the sauce then while the sauce is cooling down you can use the time to sample those slow cooked short rib and sausage bits because there is no way in HELL that you won’t. Here again the sauce.

If you were a sentient being who didn’t want to challenge the ever-loving piss out of themselves the next day you would have some store bought mozzarella, ricotta and lasagne noodles on hand and you would build a lasagne in layers and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 35 minutes until it’s bubbly and you would have an incredible lasagne. Life altering even.

I am not that sentient being. I’m a fucking idiot who has to do things the hard way. It’s a damn good thing I made the sauce in advance because the next day was a 5 hour grueling experience with an intensity level of the “Chopped” kitchen. Insane.

So next day dawns and what does my addled brain think up? Meatballs! Yeah we need some fuckin’ meatballs ovah heah! Moron. Like the 4 pounds or so of meat in that sauce is just not enough protein.

Meatballs.

Just a small batch this time.

1 pound of ground beef or ground pork

1/4 onion minced fine.

2 cloves of minced garlic

1/4 cup of freshly grated parmesan cheese

1/2 cup of breadcrumbs. I used panko.

1 teaspoon of fresh basil minced

1 teaspoon of fresh oregano minced.

1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flake

1/2 teaspoon of black pepper

1 teaspoon of salt

2 eggs

Add everything into a medium size bowl.

Mix well using your freshly washed hands. Form into meatball shape, I make mine about the size of a lime, not too big. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 25 minutes until browned. There you go. Some fuckin’ meatballs. I made another simple red sauce with one of the 15 oz cans of extra tomato sauce, about 1/4 of a minced onion, a couple of minced cloves of garlic and some more oregano and basil. I simmered this for about an hour and scooped a ladle full over the meatballs and just let them get to be a little intimate in the dish they were baked in. No additional heating. The extra sauce from that quick batch of sauce was added to the bolognese that we have now removed from the fridge and are slowly reheating.

The rest of this is going to be quick because I realized I’ve got a fucking bunch of words down already and also because the rest of the prep went by with a blur.

I’m not going to post the cheese making thing again because it’s mostly right here. The ricotta is basically a gallon of whole milk, a teaspoon of cheese salt and a teaspoon of citric acid heated up to exactly 195 degrees,

remove from heat, strain through a cheese cloth for a few minutes until it reaches it’s desired consistency and it’s ready. If you are using store bought ricotta like a sane fucking person add an egg, some grinds of black pepper and about 1/4 teaspoon of NUTMEG! and mix together. I did the same and it gave us this.

I did a much better job this time of getting the consistency of the ricotta right. The first time I let it drain too long and it became too dense. One thing about the home made version, it produces a real “milk” taste to the ricotta that you just don’t get in store bought. It really isn’t that hard, unlike the mozzarella and adds a whole lot to the lasagne party. The cheese making kit info is in the linked baked ziti post.

Around this time Eldest right and the two granddaughters arrived at the right residence and it was party time. The eldest granddaughter is 11 and is actually a big help around the kitchen. My original idea was to trick my daughter and granddaughter into making the cheese and I was going to do the pasta, Eldest right ain’t no dummy and she said “We’ll do the pasta!” Shit, so I made the ricotta.

Lasagne noodles.

Gonna be honest with you here I didn’t make these at all, my daughter did so I’m going to approximate what she did.

2 – 2 1/2 cups of semolina flour

3 eggs.

1 tablespoon of olive oil.

1 teaspoon of salt.

Actual photo of the prep station.

Make a well in the middle of the flour and using your hands incorporate the eggs and oil and salt until it forms a ball. Wrap the pasta in plastic wrap and let rest for 1/2 hour before portioning out and rolling with the badass Mixmaster 600.

My daughter did the pasta making and the granddaughter played pasta “catcher.” Finally it was time to assemble to lasagne. Goddammit, I was limping about this time.

Put a small amount of sauce in the bottom of your deepest baking dish, then a layer of the pasta, cut the pasta to fit. Next a layer of the bolognese and some cut up chunks of the meatballs. Next another layer of pasta. Next spread an entire layer of the riccota mix and a sprinkling of some freshly grated parmesan (or romano or parmigiano reggiano), another layer of pasta, a big scoop of some more sauce and meatballs and sausages and rib bits, and finally top with the mozzarella and another dose of fresh parmesan (I don’t have to get into that whole box of grated parmesan cheese thing again do I?) Bake in a 350 degree oven for 35 minutes until bubbly and serve with some garlic bread and a side salad. Also lots of beers and wine.

The beer glasses that you see in the photo are my son-in-law’s contribution. He is a home brewer who actually owns his own home brew supply company. He brought along a mini keg of black IPA that he had made. It was delightful.

What was that?

The mozzarella?

/sighs

I just didn’t have it in me to make the fucking mozzarella this time. I had all of the supplies and shit ready and well, fuck. I was just too goddamn worn out from everything else to make mozzarella cheese too. Oh well. Store bought mozzarella it is.

I know most of you probably have your own lasagne recipe or at least a favorite Italian restaurant that makes the kickass lasagne so I won’t go into all of the general description of the flavor but I will say this was the best lasagne that I’ve ever had. I had some leftovers and brought some to work to share and the three people who got to try it said the same thing. Two of the three now have the sauce recipe and the third one said “I will PAY you to make me a lasagne.” It really was incredible. The pasta and ricotta from scratch do make that big of a difference.

Next time for me?

I’ll make the ricotta and the sauce but I’m buying that store bought shit next time. I had to take a three day break from my morning walk/exercise routine just to rest the fucking knees. Just think? Thanksgiving is right around the corner too.

Thanks for reading as always and do give some or all of this a go. You’re gonna love that fucking sauce!

Manja Manja!