Old-Fashioned Lasagna

Ingredients

Tick each one off as you go.

• FOR THE MEAT SAUCE
• 30 ml olive oil
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 2 carrots, finely chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 ½ lb (700 g) ground beef (85% lean)
• ¾ lb (350 g) ground pork
• 170 g tomato paste
• 800 g canned crushed tomatoes
• 400 g canned tomato sauce
• 1 cup (240 ml) whole milk
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 2 teaspoons dried basil
• 1 bay leaf
• Salt and black pepper, to taste
• FOR THE RICOTTA LAYER
• 900 g whole-milk ricotta
• 2 large eggs
• 60 g Parmesan, finely grated
• 20 g flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• TO ASSEMBLE
• 500 g lasagna noodles
• 700 g low-moisture mozzarella, grated from the block
• 60 g Parmesan, finely grated, for the top

Method

1. Build the base. Warm the olive oil in a heavy pot over medium heat and cook the onion and carrot with a good pinch of salt for 8 to 10 minutes, until soft and just starting to color. Add the garlic for the last minute only. Carrot is not a garnish here — it is where the sweetness comes from that keeps a long-cooked tomato sauce from turning sharp.
2. Brown the meat. Raise the heat, add the beef and pork, and break them up with a spoon. Let the meat actually brown rather than steam: leave it alone for a minute at a time between stirs, and drain off the fat only if there is a genuine pool. Ground beef needs to reach 160°F (71°C) to be safe, and browning takes it well past that.
3. Cook out the paste. Stir in the tomato paste and cook it for 2 to 3 minutes until it darkens and coats the bottom of the pot. This one small step is what gives the finished sauce its depth. Raw tomato paste tastes tinny; cooked paste tastes like it has been simmering all day before it has simmered at all.
4. Add the milk. Pour in the milk and let it bubble away almost completely before the tomatoes go in. It looks wrong and it is the oldest trick in the book — the dairy tenderizes the meat and rounds off the acidity of the tomatoes. Then add the crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, oregano, basil and bay leaf.
5. Simmer low. Bring to a bare bubble and leave it uncovered for 1 hour 30 minutes, stirring every 20 minutes or so. It is ready when it has gone from bright red to deep brick, a spoon dragged through the middle leaves a track, and a little fat pools at the edge. Fish out the bay leaf and season firmly with salt and pepper.
6. Mix the ricotta. Beat the eggs into the ricotta with the Parmesan, parsley, half a teaspoon of salt and plenty of black pepper. Taste it. Unseasoned ricotta is the single most common reason a homemade lasagna tastes flat in the middle no matter how good the sauce is.
7. Layer it. Heat the oven to 375°F (190°C, fan 170°C). Cook the noodles 2 minutes short of the package time and lay them flat on a towel. Spread a thin layer of sauce in a 23 x 33 cm pan, then build: noodles, ricotta, mozzarella, sauce — three times over. Sauce goes on top, never ricotta, and finish with the last of the mozzarella and the Parmesan.
8. Bake covered, then bare. Cover with foil tented so it does not touch the cheese, and bake for 45 minutes. Uncover and give it another 20 to 25 minutes, until the top is blistered and brown and the sauce bubbles slowly at the edges rather than sloshing.
9. Rest it. Take it out and leave it on the counter for a full 30 minutes before cutting. This is not optional and it is not about temperature. The layers are still liquid when it comes out of the oven; resting is what sets them. Cut it too soon and you will serve a very good soup.