This is an old family recipe. Perhaps it was torn out of a local St. Louis magazine in the 1920s, or borrowed from an Italian neighbor. We’ll never know.
The original version called for 1/8t of garlic powder, which is sort of like waving a clove of garlic over the pot and whipsering in its ear but never actually adding the garlic. Surely this was a transcription error.
But as I flip through Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, what strikes me is it’s not that different than the canonical. Mine involves more cans and dried spices, and there was no olive oil in the original, but isn’t exactly what you would do if you were trying to make Italian food in St. Louis without year-round access to fresh international ingredients?
I’ve made some changes:
I use a combination of swiss and mozzarella cheese, for variety, used far, far more spices, and typically include a handful of chopped of fresh tomatoes because I can. Top with basil.
Either use real parmesan or skip it entirely. I’m not convinced it makes a huge difference. But be warned, if you use one of those infamous plastic green canisters, you may be punished in the afterlife by the gods of cheese.
Ingredients
- Lasagna noodles. Enough for 4-5 layers in your pan.
- 2 packs slice Mozzarella cheese, 1 pack sliced swiss cheese
- Freshly grated parmesan cheese. A big handful, or until you’re tired of grating.
Sauce
I’m including the original ratios. I use far more than this and just sort of eyeball it. Tinker to taste.
- 1lb ground beef
- 2 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt. But really you need to taste for saltiness.
- 1 teaspoon oregano
- 0.25 teaspoon black pepper
- 0.125 teaspoon garlic powder. This is nonsense. A heavy dusting or a few chopped cloves is good.
- 2 tablespoon onion flake. Or dice and include a small onion.
- 2 12oz cans diced tomatoes
- 2 cups Tomato Juice
- 2 6oz cans tomato paste
- Handful of fresh tomatoes, chopped (my addition, optional)
- Basil to garnish
Steps
- Brown meat with a little olive oil in a big pot or dutch oven
- Add tomatoes in all forms (diced, paste, juice, chopped fresh)
- Simmer 2 hours
Wait. Take a break, open a bottle of Chianti, pet your dog.
- About 30m before the lasagna is finished, boil the noodles in salted water
- Preheat oven 350°F
- Drain and pat down the noodles to remove excess water
- Layer it in a pyrex baking dish. 9x13 is fine.
- Start with a thin base of sauce
- Place noodles, then sauce and cheeses, alternating until you run out of sauce
- The top layer should be covered in sauce and cheese to prevent burning
- Cover it with foil and bake it in the oven for 30m
- If you want to show off, remove the foil and broil for a minute at the end to brown the cheese.
- Remove and top with chopped basil
- Serve steaming hot
Variations
Vegetarian: Replacing the ground beef with the equivalent volume of fresh chopped tomatoes.
Quick Weeknight Sauce: I oven make a half batch, vegetarian, as a red sauce for regular pasta. It still needs to simmer for an hour so maybe it’s not that quick but it’s easy.
Multa bene, sì?