mean + meaty ragu + lasagne

OMG, I think that I made the best meat sauce ever.. of all time, and it had the fortune of ending up in a rich meaty lasagne which was low in cheese but oh so high in taste.

This sauce stewed away for about 4 hours, and used up some beautiful flavours from my summer garden.

I started with the freshest farm gate ground meat from our friends dearly departed dairy cow (damn girl just wouldn’t get pregnant, but she was incredibly tasty)

In a huge ‘ol pot start by browning in a heatry amount of olive oil:

2 lbs of fresh organic local ground beef

2 medium onions diced fine

6 cloves of garlic chopped fine

8 cups of frozen whole garden tomatoes

and a pint of home made tomato sauce

season and simmer the lot with:

S+P

a handful each of dried garden herbs: parsley, oregano + thyme.

add a splash of red wine vinegar

and a hearty pinch each of smoked paprika and chilli flakes

Stir and simmer away for a couple hours, mashing the whole tomatoes down as you do. Over the course of these hours I added a total of 3 cups of hot water.

Before serving (or turning into delicious lasagne) add a handful of fresh parsley chopped finely, along with an extra splash of olive oil.  This sauce was so good… I couldn’t stop “tasting” it as it simmered away. Maybe it was the magic taste of summer tomatoes, maybe the never frozen ultra fresh pasture raised beef, maybe the lovely harvested, clipped, dried and packaged herbs… likely all of the above, but truly this is the best meat sauce I have ever tasted, let alone made!

To make my ragu into a mean and meaty lasagne:

I boiled 1 packaged of Italian egg noodle rectangle flat sheets of dough until still firm-ish (el dente). Then I layered a 9×14 pryex dish with a little oil along with a layer of noodles, then a thick layer of meat, followed by a noodle layer, then a thick layer of organic cottage cheese mixed with a whack of fresh spinach chopped coarsely, seasoned with lemon juice and S+P, then another layer of noodles, more meat sauce, followed by noodles and finally a thin layer of sauce  and a sprinkle of fresh organic cave aged cheese and a handful of fresh chopped parsley.

Bake at 375 for 30 minutes, or until it smells so good you want to chew your arm off. serve and enjoy the silence of true culinary appreciation of a delicious meal.

The really lovely thing about this lasagne is for the first time ever I didn’t drown it in layers of shredded cheese… it was all about the rich meaty sauce and perfect semolina egg noodles, and all of that summer in one plate!