Total Flex-Cooking Lasagna From Scratch

I'm driven hard by two greatly opposing forces: the fear of potentially bad dairy, and a deep-abiding hatred for food waste.

Needless to say, when I was confronted with an opened 3+ week old container of artisan ricotta in my fridge, I had to figure out how to cook it immediately. There were also other expiring/half-opened things lying around, and my herb garden because thankfully, it's summer. So obviously the ridiculous conclusion I came to was "let's make homemade lasagna from scratch." Needless to say, I didn't think I was going to want to write down the recipe, but it turned out so good, here we are.

Ingredients:

Pasta:

- 2 cups flour

- 3 large eggs

Ricotta filling:

- 1, I dunno, 16- or 18-oz container of ricotta from Dave's Fresh Pasta (it's not a huge 32 oz one)

- handful of chopped fresh basil

- 1 egg

- Some salt (to taste)

- .3 cup Pecorino Romano

- Melty cheese (mozzarella etc)

Sauce:

- 1.5 carrots

- 1/4 of one very large 1+ lb onion

- 1/2 small can tomato paste

- 1 soup can-sized can diced tomatoes (Cento brand?)

- 3 cloves garlic

- 1 generous tbsp Garlic Insanity (Auntie Arwen)

~ 1 tbsp white sugar

- 0.5 tsp smoked paprika (Auntie Arwen)

- Salt & pepper to taste

- 1 tsp dried oregano

- 1 tsp dried basil

- 1 tsp fresh oregano

- 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves

- 1/8 cup water

- Generous splash of fish sauce (3 Crabs!)

- Olive oil (for frying)

Tools:

- Medium pot (big enough to fit all the sauce ingredients)

- Food processor

- Pasta rolling attachment & Kitchen Aid Mixer

First, start by making the sauce. Haphazardly dice the onion into some pieces. Cut the carrot into some diced pieces about the same size as the onion. You can be lazy about it, but not *too* lazy. Slice up the garlic. Heat the olive oil in the pot and start frying the diced onion. Once you're kind of sick of waiting, toss in the cut up carrot and fry that too. Add the garlic and fry it around for a couple minutes, until you get bored. Scoop in the paprika & tomato paste and fry them (add oil if it starts to burn/stick) with the veggies so it caramelizes a bit. Pour in the can of diced tomatoes and chase it with the 1/8 cup water (or just some water from rinsing the can). Get everything up to simmering temp. Add in the Garlic Insanity, dried basil, and dried oregano. Simmer for about 20 minutes. Get antsy and chop up some fresh thyme and oregano. Add that to the pot too and simmer for about an hour.

Meanwhile, get started on the pasta. In the food processor, put in the flour and eggs. Pulse until a rough dough comes together. Take it out, flour a clean section of counter, and knead it until it isn't super sticky anymore (5 min). Wrap it up in saran wrap and let it sit until the simmering is up.

Pour the simmered sauce (the carrots are probably gonna be rude and not actually have gotten that soft) into the food processor that you didn't clean out from the pasta dough making step. Blend the sauce to the texture of your liking (I like it with small chunks). Set blended sauce aside.

Chop up the fresh basil and mix it with the ricotta. Add the egg and stir it into a nice paste. Set aside.

Now prepare your workspace, cuz it's gonna go fast, and the more organized the better. Get your lasagna baking dish set up, with the ricotta and sauce nearby, each with ladles. Flour the workspace for dough rolling. Bust out the Kitchen Aid with the pasta rolling attachment and set it up. Get the wrapped pasta dough and divide it into 6 equal pieces as best you can. Keep pieces in the saran wrap when you're not working with them. Roll the first 1/6th of dough out from 7 to 2 on my machine. Ladle some sauce into the bottom of your lasagna baking dish. Layer in the size 2 thickness sheets made from the first dough ball. Scoop out 1/3 of the seasoned ricotta and spread it on the noodles. Sprinkle with a little grated Pecorino Romano. Repeat the roll out with the next 1/6th of dough. Put it on top of the seasoned ricotta, then ladle out more sauce plus a handful of grated melty cheese on top. Repeat: ricotta/noodle/sauce/noodle/ricotta until you're all out of ingredients. Should be about 6 or 7 layers.

Preheat the oven to 375. Cover the top of the lasagna with tinfoil and bake for 25 min. Take the tinfoil hat off the lasagna and bake for 25 min more. Let it cool for 10 min, then announce that everyone just GOT SERVED!