Lasagna

Lasagna 

I first came across lasagna from famous "Garfield" cartoon, "Garfield" loves lasagna and can eat 100's of them :). Well its nothing but layers of pasta and sauces stacked together. Here is how you can prepare your own lasagna. All the things you need for making your own 100% home made lasagna is available on my blog.

What you need:
Lasagna sauce/Red sauce
Bechamel sauce / White sauce
Lasagna sheets/pasta sheets
Grated Parmesan cheese / mozzarella cheese / any other cheese of your choice
salt, pepper

Method:
I prefer cooking lasagna sheets before using them whether they are fresh or store bought. This makes sure that lasagna sheets don't soak too much sauce. Boil about 1-2 ltr of water and add some salt. Please note that you must be careful while adding sauce as main sauce also has salt in it. Once water starts boiling start putting lasagna sheets in boiling water (one at a time). They should be cooked within 2-3 minutes, discard water and let all water dripped away, you can sprinkle little oil on lasagna sheets to prevent sticking.

Grease up baking tin/glassware, put thick layer of red sauce at bottom and spread evenly. Then put layer of pasta sheets. Make sure you cover up entire tin. Now put layer of red sauce and white sauce. Sprinkle generous amount of cheese to for a cheesy layer. Then put layer of pasta sheet, then again red and white sauce and so on. Make sure that your last layer is of red sauce, sprinkle cheese on top and your lasagna is ready for baking.

Lasagna sheet layer covering bottom layer

Ready for baking

Cover tin with aluminium foil and bake for about 25 minutes in pre-heated oven on 180 degree Celsius. Remove foil and bake for another 5 minutes. Covering prevents cheese from becoming brown. Take out lasagna and let it cool for about 15 minutes. Cut out square portion and serve while its warm.

Just out from oven

1 lasagna served

Fresh pasta at home

How to make fresh pasta at home?

I tasted pasta pretty late, since then I was always wondering how do they make all kinds of pasta. So I tried pasta recipes. After that I wanted to make pasta noodles/pasta types myself at home and thus I finally searched videos for making fresh pasta at home. Here is my version for the same. Its pretty easy, yeah it does take little time but trust me its really worth to make and eat fresh pasta at home.

Simple thumb rule for making fresh pasta is using 1 egg for 100gms of all purpose flour. Eggs must be at room temperature or else dough would turn into disaster :)

Ingredients:
1 Large egg (Room temperature is a must)
100 gms all purpose flour
pinch of salt

  Egg in small well

Method:
Make sure your work surface is dry and clean. Put flour on work surface and dug a little well in it.
Break egg into this well and start beating up egg in same well with help of work. We don't want to beat it very well just make sure yellow and white is properly mixed. Start incorporating little flour at a time, and keep mixing. Mixture shall start thickening up, once this happens start kneading with both hands. Form a nice ball of dough, knead for about 15 minutes. Wrap up ball in cling film and keep aside for about half hour.
You can refrigerate (not frozen) it as well, just make sure dough comes to room temperature before working on it.

Dough resting in cling film

Your fresh pasta dough is ready. Knead dough for a minute or so and roll it down either in pasta machine or on work surface with rolling pin. Use some flour if dough is sticking to work surface. Roll it until its about 2mm thick, then cut in your desire shape. Thin stripes, thick stripes, lasagna sheets etc.

Fresh pasta cut in Lasagna sheets