Best Lasagna Al Forno Recipes

LASAGNE AL FORNO

Lasagne Al Forno image

Lasagne, as everyone knows, is a dish of wide flat noodles, sometimes green from spinach (lasagne Verdi), sometimes with ruffled edges (lasagne ricce). The classic, austere version from Bologna alternates layers of lasagne with meat sauce (ragu) and bechamel. I am giving a more exuberant example below. There are many others, including the lasagne di vigilia, Christmas Eve lasagne, involving very wide noodles that remind the faithful of the baby Jesus's swaddling clothes. Lasagne (Lasagne is the singular but it is almost never use. Ditto for other pasta types: who would ever lapse into speaking of a single spaghetto, except in humor) is first and foremost a noodle, not a specific dish, It may be the primordial Italian pasta noodle, or at least the oldest known word in the modern pasta vocabulary. In one way or another, lasagne seems to derive from the classical Latin laganum. But what was laganum? Something made of flour and oil, a cake. The word itself derived from a Greek word for chamber pot, which was humorously applied to cooking pots. And like many other, better-known cases of synecdochical food names, the container came to stand for the thing it contained. And eventually, by a process no one knows with any certainly, laganum emerged as a word for a flat noodle in very early modern, southern Italy. If you are persuaded by all the evidence collected by Clifford A. Wright, you will be ready to believe that in Sicily, an Arab noodle cuisine collided with the Italian kitchen vocabulary and co-opted laganum and its variant lasanon to describe the new "cakes" coming in from North Africa. Would you be happier about this theory if you had evidence of a survival of an "oriental" Arab pasta in Sicily? Mary Taylor Simeti provides one in Pomp and Sustenance, Twenty-Five Centuries of Sicilian Food. Sciabbo, a Christmas noodle dish eaten in Enna in central Sicily, combines ruffled lasagna (sciabbo-jabot, French for a ruffled shirtfront) with cinnamon and sugar, typical Near Eastern spices then and now.

Provided by Food Network

Categories main-dish

Time 1h30m

Yield 6 servings

Number Of Ingredients 14

Ingredients

1/2 pound ground beef
1/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
4 cups tomato puree
6 ounces tomato paste
6 quarts water
1 pound lasagna
3/4 pound mozzarella cheese, sliced thin and then cut into 1/4-inch strips
1 1/4 pounds ricotta cheese
1 1/4 cups grated Parmesan

Steps:

In a mixing bowl, stir together the beef, milk, parsley, salt, and pepper. Form into balls the size of olives. Heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet and brown the meatballs in small batches. Remove from the pan as they brown and drain on paper towels. Set aside.
In the same skillet, add the onion and garlic and saute until the onion is lightly browned. Then stir in the tomato puree and tomato paste. Simmer for 15 minutes.
Bring 6 quarts of water to boil in a large pot.
Add the meatballs to the tomato mixture and continue cooking for another 30 minutes. Meanwhile, liberally salt the boiling water and add the lasagna. Cook until al dente, about 10 minutes. Drain in colander.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
In a shallow ovenproof pan, roughly 13 by 9 by 2 inches, spread a thin layer of the sauce (no meatballs). Then spread a layer of overlapping lasagna 1 strip thick (don't let the strips run up the side of the dish). Cover that with mozzarella slices and then 5 tablespoons ricotta. Sprinkle with the Parmesan and then spread on 1/4 of the sauce and meatballs. Begin again with a layer of lasagna and continue as above until all the ingredients are used up, ending with the Parmesan.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes. If the cheese on top hasn't melted, run under the broiler briefly. Then let the dish rest at room temperature for a few minutes before serving.

LASAGNE AL FORNO (ITALIAN BEEF LASAGNA)

Lasagne al Forno (Italian Beef Lasagna) image

A classic recipe for homemade Lasagne al Forno (Italian Beef Lasagna) made entirely from scratch. There's truly nothing more comforting than a hot bubbling baked lasagna made with homemade beef ragu, bechamel sauce, silky pasta and topped with melted mozzarella cheese! This traditional Italian recipe will be a comfort food favourite.

Provided by Emily Kemp

Categories Main Course

Time 4h15m

Number Of Ingredients 20

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil
1 cup carrot (finely chopped (1 large))
1 cup stalk celery (finely chopped (1 large))
1 cup white onion (finely chopped (1 large))
1 lb ground beef (mince) ((500g))
1 lb ground pork (mince) ((500g))
2.5 cups sieved tomatoes tomatoes (passata) ((540g))
3 tbsp tomato paste
1 cups red wine ((250ml))
6 cups beef stock ((1.5 litres))
2 bay leaves
1 tsp sea salt flakes and pepper
5 tbsp butter ((70g))
5 tbsp flour all-purpose ((70g))
4 cups full fat milk ((1 litre))
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 cup parmesan (freshly grated (70g))
1 tsp sea salt salt and pepper (or to taste)
1 lb fresh lasagna pasta sheets ((17 oz/500g))
2 balls mozzarella ((8 oz/250g))

Steps:

Finely chop the carrot, onion and celery and saute the vegetables gently in a large frying pan with the olive oil. Once the vegetables are soft add the beef and pork mince and cook until browned.
If there is a lot of excess fat in the pan, spoon some out. Add the red wine and reduce by half.
Once the wine has reduced, add the sieved tomatoes, tomato paste, bay leaves, 4 cups of beef stock (1 litre) and a pinch of salt and pepper.
Stir everything together and leave to simmer on a low heat for 2.5-3 hours uncovered. Add the rest of the beef stock half way through.
Add the butter to a saucepan and cook until melted and bubbling.
Add the flour to the melted butter and stir to form a paste. Let the flour cook for 1 minute.
Slowly whisk half of the milk into the butter and flour constantly whisking to avoid any lumps. Once it has started to thicken add the rest of the milk, nutmeg, parmesan and a pinch of salt and pepper.
Continue to heat the sauce whilst stirring until thickened enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon. Take off the heat and set aside.
Preheat the oven to 350F (180C).
To assemble the lasagne, spoon a small amount of ragu on the very bottom of the baking dish. Top with and even layer of lasagna pasta sheets (cut the pasta sheets to fit your baking dish).
Add a few more spoons of ragu so the pasta is completely covered followed by 2 ladels of white sauce.
Repeat the layers of pasta, ragu and bechamel sauce until everything is used up making sure to keep enough of bechamel sauce for the very top layer (you should have 4-5 layers of pasta).
Cover the top layer of the lasagne with torn mozzarella and then bake in the oven for 45minutes or until bubbling and golden.
Let it cool slightly for 5-10 minutes before serving.

Nutrition Facts : Calories 753 kcal, Carbohydrate 56 g, Protein 39 g, Fat 39 g, SaturatedFat 18 g, Cholesterol 120 mg, Sodium 740 mg, Fiber 4 g, Sugar 12 g, ServingSize 1 serving

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