Wilson Zhao
Alex's Lasagna

Ingredients

  • Things you should always have: 1 stick of butter, 1-2 white onions, 3 cloves garlic, S&P,
    • 1 white onion, >=8 cloves garlic, 1.5 cups chicken stock
  • Aromatics: A bouquet garni of bay leaves, thyme, rosemary, + whatever you want.
  • Roux: 75g butter/flour, 1L whole milk (half & half and regular milk works)
  • Pasta: 400g flour, 4 eggs, salt, olive oil
  • 1 big can of pureed tomatoes
  • 1 chorizo sausage
  • 1/4 cup deglazing solution (dry white wine/sake)
  • Your choice of cheese
  • Dutch oven

Directions

Red sauce

  1. Melt 4 tbsp of butter over med-high in a dutch oven. While melting, chop in chorizo sausage and stir in.
  2. Stir in ground beef. Burn it a bit for some fond. Some S&P.
  3. While melting, chop you mirepoix (cubed to 1cm cubes).
  4. Drain some of the fat as needed. Stir in mirepoix (takes around 5-6 mins for you to chop, so this is perfectly optimized).
  5. When things are about to burn, add a squeeze of tomato paste and deglaze w/wine.
  6. Stir in canned tomatoes and chicken stock.
  7. Add in 3 cloves of pressed garlic and bouquet garni. Bring to boil + simmer on low for a fucking while, the longer the better. (2-6 hrs)

Bechemel Sauce

  1. Roux: Equal parts butter and flour. Melt butter first in a medium pot and slowly stir in flour over medium heat.
  2. Add 1L of cream. Stir until the sauce sticks to the spatula/barely falls off (5m?)
  3. Add salt/freshly ground pepper/nutmeg to taste.

Pasta

  1. Make a pyramid of flour. Make hole on top for the eggs.
  2. Sprinkle some oil and salt. Kneed til uniform.
  3. Roll ‘em out with a pasta machine. Twice.

Assembly

  1. Layer in a square baking dish. Cut pasta to size. Layer with white sauce/red sauce/parmesan (or whatever cheese you want).
  2. Bake covered with aluminum foil for 400F for 45m. Uncover/broil for last 10-15.
  3. Enjoy. There’s probably 4k calories in here. To reheat, we found a steamer helped retain the moisture.

Pictures

Figure 1: Red sauce.

Figure 1: Red sauce.

Figure 2: Bechemel sauce.

Figure 2: Bechemel sauce.

Figure 3: Homemade egg pasta using a roller.

Figure 3: Homemade egg pasta using a roller.

Figure 4: Layering.

Figure 4: Layering.

Figure 5: Plated.

Figure 5: Plated.

Attempts

10/31/20

  • Used a small can of tomatoes and parmesan cheese. Not enough moisture/‘redness’ in the red sauce, hence upgrading to a big can of diced tomatoes.
  • The pasta was too thick. Rolling it twice would have better consistency, we only rolled it once because we were in a rush.
  • This particular version isn’t very cheesy, but we could add mozarella for a instagram-worthy cheese pull.
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