Tara's Sunday Night Baked Lasagna (aka Lasagna Al Forno)

Alright, I let my diet fall by the wayside last night so that I could taste the dinner I lovingly prepared for my family. Holy sh** it was seriously delicious and amazing. Pardon moi, but there are no other vocabulary phrases to describe how good this is - and it's easy to make (to quote an old Guns and Roses song however, "All we need is a little patience.") So, I looked on-line to find a recipe and there weren't any I could follow without my palms and forehead sweating, so I pulled out two of my best Italian cookbooks for comfort and guidance: 1. The Umberto Menghi Cookbook and 2. Tony Danza's, "Don't Fill Up On The Antipasto" and simply combined the two and made it my own. 

Just a few things before you get cooking: You will need a meat sauce, a white sauce (I just used jarred Alfredo), and a few cups of shredded Parmesan (I bought already shredded) and finally, I used "FRESH PASTA SHEETS" I bought from the store. I am not keen on using boxed lasagna because it gets too crispy sometimes.    

Meat Sauce or Salsa Di Carne: 

Saute: 1 large chopped up onion in 1/4 cup of olive oil in a medium heated pan just until the onion is transparent. Add 1 pound of ground beef and 4 cloves of chopped garlic to the pan and saute until beef is evenly brown. Add either 6 large ripe and finely chopped tomatoes, or like I did last night, 1 large can of plum tomatoes. Then add 2 tbsp. of tomato paste, (or you can add entire small can of tomato paste if you like as I did).  1 cup of dry red wine, 1 cup of beef consomme, 2 bay leaves, salt to taste and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Let simmer on low heat for 1 hour stirring frequently. I tripled my recipe last night so that I could freeze the extra meat sauce. 

White Sauce or Salsa Bianca: 

2 tbsp. of butter and 2 tbsp. of flour, melt the butter in a saucepan on medium heat then add flour and simmer on low heat for 2 minutes, whisking constantly. Add to the flour 1 cup of milk and 1 cup of half and half cream to butter and flour mixture and whisk until it thickens. Season with salt, pepper and my fav, nutmeg. As I mentioned earlier, I bought jarred Alfredo to save me a little cooking time and clean up. Onto our Lasagna Al Forno!!!!! If you need to cook your noodles add a little oil and salt to a 5-quart pot and bring water to a boil on high heat and add lasagna noodles and cook until el dente which is 3-5 minutes for fresh pasta, or 5-7 for packaged pasta. It's worth using fresh pasta sheets that you don't even have to cook. 

Putting it All Together

Spread 2 tbsp. of butter and 1/4 cup of the white sauce in the bottom of a 16X12X3 inch baking pan. I did not use butter. Put a layer of the lasagna noodles over the white sauce. Then spread 1 cup of the meat sauce on top of lasagna noodles and 1/2 cup of the white sauce on the meat sauce. Sprinkle 1/2 cup of shredded Parmesan cheese on top of lasagna noodles, meat sauce and white sauce. Repeat this process until there are four layers ending with Parmesan cheese on top. Put baking dish in oven and at back at 300 degrees for 30 minutes. 

 I served with garlic bread and a chopped tomato, basil, and bocconcini salad.