Micki Eats (mostly gluten and dairy free)

Ingredients

For the Sauce and Meat

• 1 cup olive oil
• 1 large red onion, diced
• 2 large cloves of garlic, minced
• 6 oz pancetta
• 1 1/2 cups red wine, preferably Italian
• 2 28oz cans of chopped tomatoes
• 3 tbsps tomato paste
• 12 oz Italian sausage
• 1 lb ground sirloin
• 1/4 cup pecorino Romano cheese, grated
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 bunch of fresh parsley, finely chopped
• Salt and pepper, to taste

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For the Lasagna

• 15 oz of ricotta cheese
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups pecorino Romano, grated
• 1/2 bunch fresh parsley, finely chopped
• 1 lb mozzarella, grated
• 1/2 lb of fresh spinach, chopped
• 1 box gluten-free lasagna noodles (preferable the kind that do not need to be pre-cooked)

Directions

To Make the Sauce

1. Heat 3/4 cup of the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onions, garlic, pancetta, a liberal amount of salt and pepper and sauté, stirring, for 10 minutes, until the onions are translucent.
2. Add the wine, turn up the heat to medium-high and cook until the wine is reduced by half, about 20 minutes.
3. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, and 2 cups of warm water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer for 1 hour.
4. Meanwhile, in a large bowl combine the ground sirloin, 1/4 cup of pecorino Romano, eggs, and parsley. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper.
5. Using your hands, shape the sirloin mixture into 10-12 meatballs.
6. Heat the remaining 1/4 cup olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Lay the meatballs into the hot oil and brown them on all sides. Do not cook them through.
7. After the sauce has simmered for an hour, add the meatballs and Italian sausage to the sauce and continue to simmer for an additional 1 1/2 hours.

To Make the Lasagna

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Remove the meatballs and sausage from the sauce. Chop coarsely and set aside.
3. In a large bowl, combine the ricotta, 2 eggs, pecorino Romano, parsley, and all but 1 cup of the mozzarella. Season with salt and pepper and mix thoroughly.
4. To assemble the lasagna:
   1. Spoon a layer of sauce on the bottom of a 9-by-12 inch lasagna pan
   2. Cover with a layer of noodles
   3. Spoon another layer of sauce over the noodles
   4. Add 1/3 of the meat
   5. Add 1/3 of the cheese
   6. Add 1/3 of the spinach
   7. Repeat for 2 more layers: sauce, noodle, sauce, meat, cheese, spinach.
   8. Add a final layer of noodles on top. Cover with the remaining sauce and sprinkle 1 cup of grated mozzarella over the top.
5. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.
6. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

How to Not Screw It Up

I’m not even sure how to begin. I’ve made this now a dozen times, and not a single one has come out perfect…yet. So here is my collection of less than perfect results.

1. Yes, you need to really make the meatballs, then heartbreakingly crush them up into mere filling. The most obvious short cut that I tried when I made this lasagna for the second time was to skip making meatballs. I mean, why go through all of the effort to HAND MIX wet, sloppy ingredients like eggs, meat, cheese, and parsley; then carefully brown them, cook them in the delicious sauce, only to crumble them into a filling? The truth is, the extra effort pays off dividends in the taste. If you just brown the sirloin and through it into the sauce to cook, you have dry and less tasteful results. Also, meatballs are easier to fish out of the sauce rather than already crumbled sirloin. This means you have the material for making a distinct meat layer in the lasagna which makes for a pleasing texture. Bottom line: it’s worth the extra effort.
2. Buy more noodles than you think you need. You will always find a use for leftover noodles. You can not easily serve a lasagna that does not have the structural integrity to be lifted from the pan one slice at a time. If you run out of noodles, you have a baked casserole of deliciousness, but you do not have slices of lasagna that stand on the plate.
3. Don’t forget to add a generous helping of salt and fresh ground pepper to the ricotta mix when making the cheese filling. Ricotta has a wonderfully melty texture, but in such quantity is really flavorless without the added salt. Forgetting the salt definitely took away from the depth of the final flavors.
4. Don’t worry that the lasagna may be taller than your pan is deep. I like to add a very generous amount of spinach, and this adds a lot of bulk (and therefore height) to the layers. However, spinach becomes a shadow of its former volume once it’s cooked. Consistently, my lasagna is several centimeters taller than the depth of my pan before it goes into the oven, only to emerge at pan height upon baking.
5. If it sounds labor intensive, make the sauce ahead of time. You can do steps 1-3 ahead of time (even the day before) to cut your cooking time on the day you serve. Then, just bring it back to a boil, and carry on with step 4. Alternatively, you can also do steps 1-7, and store the meat in a separate container from the rest of the sauce and carry on the next day. The other option I found was to enlist a friend and make her do all of things that require getting your hands messy with raw eggs (namely the meatball mixing and the cheese filling). 😉