American Lasagna

Making Sauce the night before is easier.

Place dutch oven over medium or medium-low heat.

Dice onions. In dutch oven sweat onions with 2 T oil for 10 minutes over medium, MedLo heat with generous pinch of salt until translucent, no browning. Add minced garlic and cook for 1 minute. (Starting kneading pasta while sweating onions) Off heat, add tomatoes (use no liquid, if in a rush) using stick blender puree until smooth. Place back on heat. Add spices, salt and pepper.

Season meat if necessary and add directly to sauce without browning, results in finer texture. Break up meat so that sauce is nice and smooth.

Turn heat to low, medium low and simmer partially covered for ~1 hr to tenderize meat.

Adjust salt and sugar to taste. Remove bay leaves.

Cool in sink with ice water bath to make assembly a little easier, or cool and then place in fridge overnight.

Make pasta by combining all the pasta ingredients in mixing bowl, mix by hand briefly, then knead using hook attachment for 10 minutes, clearing/moving dough as necessary.

Wrap/cover dough, let rest for 20 minutes.

While sauce is reducing, roll pasta. Cut dough into 3 even pieces(weigh for accuracy), Roll to T#4, refold pasta to machine width minus 3 inches then rotate 90 degrees and restart rolling process. Repeat if necessary. Roll into sheet of thickness #7. Keep pasta approximately 1-2 inches smaller than the width of the rollers. Pasta width can be controlled by adjusting the feed rate. This will result in ideal pasta size for laying out pasta in a 13x9 dish. Dust with flour and hang to dry using two sticks per sheet so that it is divided into four. You should have 12 lengths of pasta which allows for 6 layers, using two sheets per layer.

Grate cheese in food processor, reserve in separate bowl with tongs.

Add (spinach) filling ingredients to food pro, pulse, adjust seasoning to taste, reserve.

Cooking pasta (or follow instructions for bought pasta noodles) Bring salted water to a vigorous boil in a pot. Have spider, frying pan and two additional large pots/bowls of cold water ready.

Place 3-4 pieces one at a time into boiling water, making sure they are not sticking together. After pasta floats and it’s on the boil again cook for 30 seconds more. Pasta should be lighter in colour. Approx 2 minutes total.

Using the spider transfer pasta to frying pan, then transfer pasta back to spider over the boiling water to get rid of excess water trapped in the pasta folds. Transfer pasta into first pot of cold water, using frying pan underneath the spider to catch drips.

After a minute or so, transfer pasta to second bowl of cold water.

Repeat until all the pasta is cooked and are all in the second bowl of cold water.

Have ready, sauce + large spoon, cheese + tongs, spinach filling + spoon, pasta.

Add 1/4-1/2 cup of sauce on bottom to prevent noodles sticking.

Squeegee pasta with fingers to drain water. Layer on top of sauce.

Add THIN layer of sauce + optional spinach filling. If only using ricotta, save it all for the second last (from the top) sauce layer. You can increase the amount of sauce in cheese as you build up, but its best to keep the lower layers not too saucy/wet.

Top with THIN layer of mozzarella cheese using tongs.

Repeat 3-5, using up all the noodles. Put more cheese on top if desired.

There should be 6 layers of noodles.

Cover with parchment + foil to prevent holes in foil from acid in tomatoes. (Can be frozen/fridged at this point) Place in middle rack of 375F/190C oven and cook 60 minutes covered. (If sauce is warm/hot still, you can cook for less time.) Broil at low for 5-10 minutes to colour cheese. Keep close watch to prevent burning.

Remove cool for 20 minutes, then slice and serve.