Gonna share the recipe with us?
Sauce (From my mom, I use this for a bunch of recipes or just straight): 4-5 hot Italian sausages
1.5 lbs ground meat (you can make this part lamb or veal or whatever combination you want; I use only ground meat that’s 90% lean since there’s already a fair amount of fat in the sausage)
4/15 ounce cans plain tomato sauce (be careful not to buy these new cans that say they already have oregano or basil, etc., already in them-they don’t taste good and I’d rather season the sauce myself)
5/6 ounce cans plain tomato paste (or get an equal amount in the bigger cans of tomato paste – I can’t stand opening all those cans)
2 Bay leaves
All of the following amounts are approximate – I don’t really measure, I just kind of put it in the palm of my hand until it looks right and then add it to the sauce. Add herbs to suit your own taste, if you like it more garlicky – then by all means, add more garlic. The finer you mince garlic the stronger the flavor. I do like to use fresh herbs when I can, but dried herbs tend to hold up better for the long cooking time and I’ve never noticed any degradation in the flavor using dried vs. fresh herbs.
1-2 TBL chopped (or whole – doesn’t matter) rosemary
3-4 TBL minced fresh garlic
1-2 TBL dried oregano
1-2 TBL Italian seasoning (this is a bit redundant since it’s just a combination of all of the other herbs, but I’ve always used it - you can find this in the spice aisle)
1-2 TBL dried basil
1-2 TBL dried thyme
1-2 cups dry white or red wine – both work equally well in my opinion
1-2 cups water (try to get a fairly equal amount of water:wine)
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste (or red pepper flakes – but use sparingly if you’re using hot sausages – I use regular pepper)
I start this process at about 5pm the day before I want to serve it. Put the sauce and paste in the crock pot and whisk or stir them together and turn the crock pot on low; add herbs and garlic. You might want to give it a little taste before you add salt/pepper just to see if it really needs it. In a frying pan, fry up the ground meat, breaking it up as you go – add to the crock pot with the sauces. In the same frying pan (don’t wash it, just carry on cooking), put in the Italian sausages and add tap water to come up to about 1/3 of the way up the side of the sausages; let them boil until all the water is gone. Continue cooking the sausages so that they get a bit of browning on the outside. You don’t need to cook them all the way done, you’re just looking for a little color on the outside; when you get to that point, cut each link into 4-5 pieces and let them fry a bit in the pan just a bit longer for color (you might want to prick the sausages at the beginning so that they don’t spit all over the place when you slice them); toss them in the crock pot with everything else. You should have some fat and stuck on meat and sausage bits to the bottom frying pan – get rid of some of the grease (but certainly not all – Nana and Aunt Rose were sticklers that some of that sausage fat make it into the final sauce) – I tended to err on the side of getting rid of most of the fat, but here again – decide for yourself. Put about ½ cup wine into the frying pan and cook scraping up the little brown bits the ground meat and sausage left behind as much as possible (but don’t drive yourself crazy getting every little bit). Believe it or not, Nana/Aunt Rose were doing this step (scraping up the bits with wine) long before it got to be a popular instruction on modern cooking show. Pour it all into the crock pot. Give everything in the crock pot a good stir and assess how much water/wine it needs– you will be cooking this all night, so be a bit generous with your liquid at this point (mine literally comes up to the very top of the crock pot). Keep the crock pot on low and keep it cooking; put the lid on the crock pot, but set it slightly ajar (I just leave the spoon I stir it with tucked under the lid). Give it a stir every 1-2 hours, then before Dad goes to bed (about 11:30-midnight) he stirs it one last time, takes the spoon out and clamps the lid on tight. If it looks like it’s cooking too fast and needs liquid, try to keep wine:water somewhat equal (better to add a bit more water than wine). For some reason, when I bought my current crock pot, it seems to cook a bit hotter than my old one, so when I get up in the morning (time doesn’t matter unless you plan on sleeping until noon) I look to see if it’s still liquid enough and add water if it seems a bit thick. My crock pot cooks at such a rapid boil (even on low) that it’s usually done at this point, so I take it out of the heating part and let it cool on the counter for about 1 hour and then put it into the fridge. Heat it back up on high about 2-3 hours before you’re ready to eat just to make sure it gets good and hot (always assessing for whether it needs more liquid).
And that’s the recipe. The only other thing that Grandpa, Nana, and Aunt Rose said is that onions are FORBIDDEN in this recipe – Sicilians from their part of the island don’t put onions in their sauce; it was a BIG faux pas to add onions to this recipe. Before I was ordered to go to Nana and Aunt Rose to learn how to make proper spaghetti, Grandpa said my spaghetti was “Irish” spaghetti (we put in onion, bell pepper, no sausage, cooked it until the ground meat was done ate it right away…you get the idea). But, you can play with the ingredients to tailor it to your taste - add more sausage if you like, or make meatballs instead of frying the ground meat – whatever you want, there’s no set way to do this (except for the onion thing).
Ricotta layer: -32 Oz. Ricotta
-2 T. Basil, Chopped
-2 eggs
Combine all ingredients, and beat until smooth
Other ingredients: -3 c. Mozzarella
-About 8 slices Provolone
Construction:
The sauce should be made the night before. Preheat the oven to 350. Soak 12 lasagne noodles in hot tap water for 15-20 min (you don't want them quite cooked). During this time, I make the Ricotta layer. In a lasgne pan/dish, put a layer of sauce, then 4-6 noodles. Add a layer of ricotta and sprinkle about a cup of mozzarella on top. Add another layer of sauce. Add the another 4-6 noodles, ricotta, mozzarella and sauce. Lastly, add a layer of Provolone on top, and use any remaining mozzarella
to "fill in the gaps." Cover loosely with foil, and bake for 25 min. Remove the foil, and bake for another 25 min. Let it cool for about 15-20 min. (this would be a good time to make garlic bread), and enjoy.
