Festive lasagne
Le gran lasagne
Gennaro Contaldo
SERVES 6-8
Preparation 40 minutes
Cooking 1 hour 30 minutes
This Neapolitan lasagne would always be made on special occasions such as Christmas or birthdays. At home, this dish was usually a joint effort between the women in our household. My mother would make the fresh pasta sheets, my aunt Maria the tomato sauce and my sisters the meatballs. It is an extremely rich dish, so it is advisable to have just a little piece - any leftovers make a delicious snack the next day anyway!
500g fresh lasagne sheets (unless you want to make your own)
1 egg, beaten
flour, for dusting
olive oil, for frying
4 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
4 mozzarella balls (150g each), roughly chopped
200g ricotta
200g Parmesan cheese
for the tomato sauce
8 tbsp olive oil
2 medium-sized onions, finely chopped
4 x 400g tins of plum tomatoes
salt and pepper
couple of handfuls of fresh basil leaves, roughly torn
for the meatballs
250g minced beef
250g minced pork
4 garlic cloves, peeled, finely chopped
3 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
For the sauce. Heat the oil in a large pan and sweat the onion until soft. Add the tomatoes, season with salt, pepper and basil, reduce the heat and simmer gently for 25 minutes. Set aside.
To make the meatballs, mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Shape into small balls the size of walnuts. Heat some olive oil in a large frying pan, then dust the meatballs with flour. Fry in hot oil until golden on all sides. Do in batches depending on the size of your frying pan. Drain on kitchen paper and set aside.
Preheat the oven to 200ºC/Gas Mark 6. Take a large ovenproof dish and line it with some of the tomato sauce. Place a layer of pasta sheets on top of the sauce, then spoon on more tomato sauce. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and a few egg slices, meat balls, knobs of ricotta and pieces of mozzarella. Top with sheets of pasta and repeat with the other ingredients so that the top layer is tomato sauce, meatballs, eggs and cheese. Cover with aluminium foil and bake for about 30 minutes. Remove the foil and cook for a further 5 minutes until the cheese has melted nicely over the top. Serve immediately.
