My friend Carol has done the coolest, most generous  things all her life, including being the recipient of an award for her work at the White House.   She is also an incredible cook and her sugar cookies are worth writing about in your diary.  One of the other items she makes that stands out is lasagna, and I was recently able to extract her recipe from her.  She provided the sauce for the lasagna you see in these pictures. 

 A pasta machine is not necessary, but you’ll need a crock pot/slow cooker for the sauce.  Carol starts her sauce the night before and lets it cook twelve hours. 

TIPS:  Have all ingredients ready to go for assembling before you do the noodles, unless you are using store noodles.  Homemade noodles dry quickly and you’ll have to assemble the layers fast.

We made homemade lasagna noodles – somehow store-bought did not seem worthy, but you are welcome to use those.   We love our pasta machine and have placed it in our amazon store. 

Sauce

1 pound ground beef (try to find pasture raised)

3  hot italian sausages

mushrooms

1 green pepper

1 red pepper

onion

1 medium or two small zucchinis

I can tomato sauce

3 cans chopped tomatoes (Delmonte or Muir Glen)

half an eggplant, pealed and diced

Wine, often a sweet wine like Marsala

Brown onion and meats.  Put in crock pot.  Chop vegetables into chuncks.  Add these to crockpot.  Pour over canned chopped tomatoes.  Season to taste with salt, pepper and oregano.

Let this cook 10-12 hours  in your crockpot.

Noodles

4 cups flour

6 egg yolks

1/4 cup water

Combine flour and egg yolks.  Dribble in water until firm dough forms.  You don’t want your dough sticky or it won’t go through the pasta machine.  You can also roll the dough very thinly with a rolling-pin and them cut slices or noodles.

Knead dough until it’s a nice uniform golden color with no distinct bits of flour.  This is what ours looked like.  Our farm egg yolks give it this rich golden color.

Egg noodle dough

Take small sections of the dough, and either put it through your pasta machine or roll it out on the surface.  Only roll out enough pieces for one layer of the lasagna at a time.

Creating Noodles

For Assembly, you’ll need a few more ingredients.

Ricotta cheese

Grated cheese

To assemble…

We spread sauce on the bottom of the pan.  I put slices of zucchini on the bottom, more sauce and a dollop of Ricotta on each one.  Cover with layer of noodles.  Add more sauce, more Ricotta, a generous bit of shredded cheese and another layer of noodles.  More sauce, generous layer of shredded cheese and another layer of noodles. 

Building the Lasagna Layers

This is now the top layer.  More sauce and generous shredded cheese.  I chopped some fresh basil from the garden and sprinkled it on top.  This is how the lasagna looked going into the oven.

Lasagna Ready for Baking

Bake this at 350 for over an hour until it is bubbling  and the center is cooked.  You may have to cover the lasagna during the baking process so that the cheese on top does not get too brown.

Here is the finished result, and it tasted as good as it looks!  Thank you, Carol!

Carol Fennelly, free lasagna recipe, lasagna recipe, Meduseld