Mum's Lasagna

Comfort food necessity

Saturday 11th January

Last night got out of hand; too many pints, bottle of wine, ending with a larger whisky than was at all wise. It's time for some comfort food. I can do this recipe by heart, without thinking. The ritual of it is soothing when everything else in the world feels bad, and the end result is a big hug in a bowl.

Meat sauce

• Melt some butter
• Chop and fry two onions
• Roughtly chop three garlic cloves
• Fry until onions are browned or I am bored
  (At this point I would usually add bacon or lardons and grated carrot, but I forgot to add them to the shopping list this time.)
• Salt a small pack of mince with the highest fat content possible and add to pan
• Fry until cooked through
• Add a big squirt of tomato paste and fry off
• Add a wobbly beef stock pot and fry off again. I feel like this adds a depth of flavour, but who knows
• Pour a large glass of wine and throw it in. I poured another one for myself. Helps with the hangover
• Add a tin of tomatoes
• Fill empty tin with water and add
• Simmer until nearly dry and flavour is good/boredom sets in. Meanwhile, make white sauce

White sauce

• Melt one tablespoon of butter
• Add one tablespoon plain flour and fry until slightly browned
• Add one pint of milk, slowly, whisking in between slugs
• Turn up heat and simmer a bit without boiling, until slightly thickened
  (I added a bashed clove of garlic here to leach a bit of garlicky flavour into the sauce)
• Grate a bowl of mature cheddar
• Turn heat off under the sauce and let cool for a bit. I worry about splitting the cheese otherwise
• Add a bunch of the cheese, leaving enough left over to scatter on top at the end

Assemble

• Sometimes I use grated mozzerella here but this time I had two balls of fresh mozzerella, which I sliced and seperated into three mostly equal piles
• I definitely did the layers wrong here this time. Usually I look it up and do myself a little diagram, but I was slapdash here and realised towards the end that I had fucked it up. I'm going to look up a recipe now to get the correct method down

What I did tonight	Proper method
Meat sauce	Meat sauce
White sauce and mozzerella	Lasagne sheets
Lasagna sheets	White sauce and mozzerella
Meat Sauce	Meat Sauce
White sauce and mozzerella	Lasagna Sheets
Lasagna sheets	White sauce and mozzerella
Meat sauce (this is when I knew I fucked up)	Meat sauce
Lasagna sheets	Lasagna sheets
White sauce, mozzerella and remaining grated cheddar	White sauce, mozzerella and remaining grated cheddar

• Finish with salt, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil
• Stick in oven for 45 mins
• When golden, remove from the oven to set.
  *DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP! If you do, it's too sloppy, and the slices come out like shit*
• Put garlic bread in the oven and cook according to pack instructions, 12-14 mins
• When garlic bread is ready, slice lasagna and serve

Go home