David Rocco’s Lazy Man’s Lasagna

Hi guys! I can’t believe it’s the holiday season again! I’ve been so utterly busy with making pretty accessories for my DiploShop, cooking, baking and going on my usual shopping rounds to take advantage of the end of season sales to get what I need and having my perpetual online garage sale. (I am a struggling minimalist – but obviously losing that battle so far hehe!) Anyway I just wanna share with you that I finally made lasagna for the first time! And IMHO it was pretty yummy for a first try! It helps to have a good authentic recipe to begin with, even if I kinda winged it on the Bolognese sauce. Read on.

Anchor Baking Dish

It all started when I saw a box of lasagna in the supermarket. I said “I really should learn how to make lasagna!” This was a couple of months ago. Then last weekend I saw this Anchor Baking Dish on sale at Ace Hardware Pasaraya. It is usually 399.000 but for the Anniversary weekend it was on promo for 299.000. It’s my first time to see something like this in Jakarta. Not a bad deal for Jakarta yeah?

• Oven/Microwave/Refrigerator safe baking dish
• It has a Cover for the baking dish so it’s perfect for storing – no need to cling wrap!
• It also has this awesome insulated bag – that keeps the dish hot (not just warm), makes it easy to bring to aparty without being scared of touching the hot dish!
• There is also a Temp Assure insulation pack which can keep your dish hot or cold.

Then yesterday, while I was having my morning coffee I saw David Rocco’s Dolce Vita on TV and guess what he was making?!? Lazy (wo)Man’s Lasagna! That was it! The last piece of the puzzle. I knew what recipe I was gonna use! Click here to print out the full recipe.

TD told me he was coming home for lunch and to be honest I thought the recipe was gonna be quicker than I thought and I didn’t have complete ingredients! So I had to do some shortcuts on the Bolognese recipe (I had 50 mins to do it and the full recipe called for 1 hours of simmering the bolognese). I didn’t bother doing the salsa di minuti either. I basically combined David Rocco’s recipe with the Bolognese recipe that I learned from the Italian Chef at Cooking Class in The Ritz’ Lobo. Here’s the recipe I used….If I were you, I would still taste it along the way to be sure it comes out the way you like your lasagna.

Ingredients:

•  50 grams carrots finely chopped
• 1 small onion  finely chopped
• 5 cloves of garlic  finely chopped
• dried chili pepper flakes to taste
• 2 tbsp of Extra Virgin olive oil
• 500g high quality lean ground beef
• 4 basil leaves
• 1 can of pelati 400g
• Seeved tomato puree about the same about as the can
• 2-4 tbsp tomato paste (depends on how sour you like it)
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Lazy Man’s Lasagna:

Btw did you know that this is how to pronounce Bolognese properly?

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYB1c5YI-mE]

 I followed the other instructions almost perfectly except for….

• I prefer using Grana Padano Parmesan Cheese instead of Parmigiano Reggiano. According to Lobo’s chef it is the best parmesan cheese because it’s aged longer than Parmigiano Reggiano. The weird thing is it’s also cheaper in the supermarkets.
• I didn’t have mozzarella so for the bottom layers I just used Grana Padano, then on top I spread some thinly sliced Quickmelt cheese with a generous sprinkling of Grana Padano.

I’m just so happy that it turned out pretty good because I ended up having to bring it to TD’s office instead and having everyone try it out. They were quite impressed and I hope they weren’t just being nice. Personally I really liked how it turned out and TD said the only thing missing was the garlic bread – LOL!

If I had time and complete ingredients I might wanna try the entire recipe next time! Btw I have to say that the bechamel sauce was fantastic and so easy to do!

Click here to print out the full recipe