Jamie Oliver's Home Made Lasagne

This is one of the recipes on his iPhone recipe App!! The app is absolutely brilliant and worthwhile downloading if you have an iPhone!


Ingredients:
350g         Beef Mince
2 rashers  Smoked Streaky Bacon
150g         Dried Lasagne Sheets
700ml       Semi-skimmed milk (I just used full cream)
75g           Parmesan Cheese
1 large     Red onion
2 cloves   Garlic
1               Carrot
1 stick      Celery
2               Fresh Bay Leaves
1 sprig     Fresh Rosemary
200ml      Red Wine
1 1/2        410g tins of chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp      Plain Flour
2 pinches Ground nutmeg
125g        Mozzarella cheese
2 knobs   Butter
Olive oil, Sea Salt and Black Pepper


Method:
Preheat the oven to 180 deg C
Pour the milk into a saucepan, add the bay leaves and some salt and black pepper.
Place on high heat and bring to the boil, once boiled take it off the stove and let it stand.
Roughly chop the Bacon, Onion, Garlic, Carrot and Celery put it into a food processor and pulse until everything is finely chopped up.
Put the chopped up mix into a pan on medium heat with some olive oil, and cook for 10mins, stirring occasionally. Strip the rosemary leaves from the stalk and add the leaves to the pan.
When the chopped up mixture is nice and soft add the mince to the pan, breaking up any clumps with a fork.  Turn up the heat and fry for about another 10 mins until all the mince is nicely browned.
Stir in the wine and the tomatoes, add about half a tomato can of water too.
Season with a bit of salt and pepper.
Bring the mixture to the boil and reduce to a medium heat, then simmer for 30 minutes.
After which time you should have a good consistency.


In another saucepan melt the butter on medium heat, once bubbling add the flour and stir to form a paste.  Start adding the hot milk a spoon at a time, stirring in each addition before adding more.  Discard the bay leaves.  Let the Bechamel sauce simmer for 5 mins on very low heat, stirring occasionally.


Finely grate the parmesan cheese, add three quarters of it to the bechamel sauce, with a pinch of nutmeg, salt and black pepper.


Grease an oven proof baking dish with olive oil.
Add a third of the bolognese sauce, cover with lasagne sheets, then cover these with the bechamel sauce.  Then repeat the layers twice more, finishing with a layer of bechamel sauce.  
Tear or cut the mozzarella into small blocks and spread over the top with the remainder of the parmesan cheese. Sprinkle with a pinch of nutmeg, salt and black pepper.


Cover with tin foil and bake in the oven for 30minutes, then remove the foil and return to the oven for a further 15-20mins.


Notes:
I don't preheat the oven in the beginning as my oven heats up fairly quickly so I only put it on, once the bolognese sauce is simmering.


I made more bechamel sauce than it states in the recipe, by adding more butter and double the amount of flour, then just increasing the amount of milk you add at the end.  The reason is I always find that there is not enough white sauce when you are assembling the lasagne. Be careful not to make the white sauce runny, it needs to be relatively stiff, otherwise it will just mix with the bolognese sauce.


The comment about not overlapping the pasta sheets is quite important as they don't cook as well and if you overlap by too much the pasta layer becomes "too much".
I like to use thinner lasagne sheets, as this make the dish "lighter".


If you are cooking for those that don't like the addition of the red wine, then replace the red wine with the same quantity beef stock.  The red wine gives it a very distinctive taste which I like, but some people might not like it.


This is a nice take on Lasagne which sometimes I find to be too "tomatoey" you will find this one has much more interesting flavours.


Enjoy it!


Sorry no photo's, the photo I took with the iPhone, was blurry as the steam from the lasagne got onto the lens!