Daring Bakers: Lasagna!

Lasagna

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

We got to make our own spinach pasta (a first for me!) choose a tomato sauce (as i am veggie and the posted recipe seemed to have about 6 kinds of meat in it (slight exageration)

So first the pasta- I ended up using quite a few eggs as the measurements were tricky - in total about 4 bantam eggs, then i ended up adding more flour as well as things weren't coming together correctly. I made all my dough in the kenwood chef, as yes, I'm a bit lazy and that's what the machine is for!

Rolling out it seemed very hard to get to translucent, and I'm pleased with the final product, (not sure if it was too thick or not)

In any case I was very inventive in my pasta drying rack as you can see in the pics below!

Trying to show the translucence here. Ok yeah making your own pasta and sauce and bechmel isin't alot of work if you are only making one that day, but all three and it truly is daring!

I had to make some extra bechemel sauce as mine didn't last to make a nice topping but other than that the recipes were pretty easy to follow.

For my ragu, I made a modified version of this (for what I had on hand)

puy lentil and mushroom ragu (serves 8-10)
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 carrots, finely chopped
2 onions, finely chopped
300g chestnut mushrooms, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
250g puy lentils - I just dropped in the last~100g of green lentils I had
150ml red wine
1 tablespoon tomato puree
800g tin of chopped tomatoes
1 litre vegetable stock (i make mine with marigold bouillon powder)
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon dried oregano
salt & pepper
2 tablespoons chopped basil
heat the olive oil in a large pan and gently fry the carrot and onion until they begin to soften. add the mushrooms and garlic, cooking until the mushrooms are cooked through and starting to release their liquid.
add the puy lentils, red wine and tomato puree. stir well and let it simmer for a few minutes. add the tinned tomatoes, stock and herbs and simmer for 25-35 minutes, until the lentils are cooked and your ragu is nice and thick (you may need to add extra stock/ boil away any excess depending how long it takes the lentils to soften). season to taste and add the fresh basil.

This was delicious and really made for a special dinner (and lunch and dinner and lunch) for the two of us! I relaly reccommend trying it out yourself!