My Italian Grandmother Adele taught me so many things in the kitchen and as a heritage, she left me with so many amazing recipes.
My family’s absolute favorite is Nonna’s Lasagna. Even though all of our children have moved out (except for our youngest), this is a recipe that gets them to come home for a lovely, family Sunday dinner!
Italian Lasagna (Nonna’s Lasagna)
Meat sauce:
350 g organic ground beef
3-4 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
5 cm piece of celery stalk
1 carrot
2 cans of crushed tomatoes (800 g)
3 dl water
1/2 cube of vegetable broth
1 garlic clove
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp black pepper
Fresh basil
50 g parmesan cheese
300 g mozzarella cheese
Béchamel sauce / White sauce:
50 g butter
3 tbsp flour
5 dl milk
1 tsp nutmeg
1 1/2 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
3 tbsp parmesan cheese
Start by dicing the onion and peeling and cutting the carrot into 4 pieces. Cook the ground beef, onion, celery stalk, and carrot in olive oil.
Add the crushed tomatoes, water, and vegetable broth, and season with ground black pepper, nutmeg, basil, and sugar. Let the sauce stew under a lid on low heat for 45-60 minutes.
Take out the carrots and celery, and season accordingly with salt.
While the meat sauce is doing its thing, start making the white sauce. Melt the butter in a pot, and mix in the flour little by little. Add the milk and make sure to continuously mix the sauce until it thickens, so it won’t stick to the bottom of your pot. Flavor with salt, black pepper, nutmeg, and parmesan.
Butter your lasagna form and place some meat sauce on the bottom. Place the first lasagna sheets on top of the meat sauce and pour meat sauce, white sauce, some mozzarella, and parmesan cheese on top. Make as many layers as you want, but with this recipe, you should have enough ingredients for about 3 layers. Repeat the process for each layer, but add some extra cheese on top of the last layer.
Bake the lasagna at 200°C for about 40 minutes.
Take the lasagna out of the oven and let it rest a bit before serving!
Lasagna is at its best fresh out the oven, but this one will taste fantastic the next day as well! 🙂
Abbracci,
Cristina
