Deconstructed Lasagne

This is something that I dreamt up from a deeply self-destructive place long ago. It’s certainly not reinventing the wheel, but I’ll take it over your cafeteria baked ziti any time. In any case, it’s heavily personalized and an old standby of days gone by. A deliciously destructive meal, I don’t recommend you ever make it if you care about your health. Even if you’re incredibly healthy, this thing is just bad news. I like to break up the meat in the simmering sauce, which negates any possibility of draining off the fat – you don’t need to do this but I think it makes the whole thing a little creamier. It really is delicious. I can’t believe I used to eat this whole thing in two sittings.

The idea here is to take all the ingredients of a lasagne, but not layer them – add them to a pot, mix thoroughly, then pour into a dish and bake. Mostly because you are not layering things evenly, uneven and chunky is better, so I’ve always used sausage instead of beef. I’m sure you could use beef or veal or whatever, but I also think the sausage’s higher fat content makes it hold up better to the high heat baking in the final dish. The idea is that this a slightly less refined dish than lasagne – spicy, chunky, fire-roasted – so sausage just seems to make more sense. Any short pasta that will stick up and get crispy when baked will do – rigatoni or mezzi rigatoni are often best – but I also like the small, flat squares that are sometimes marketed as rhombi or sagnarelli, since they continue the play on the lasagne theme.

Ingredients:

• 2 TB Olive Oil
• 1 pound hot Italian sausage (that’s what I like, but any Italian sausage will do; fennel also works especially well)
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 carrots, brunoised (optional)
• Dash of white wine
• 1 28-oz can crushed or pureed tomatoes
• 1 TB red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp each dried oregano, basil, thyme
• 2 TBS butter
• Salt and pepper
• 2 TB butter
• 2 TB Wondra
• 3 Cups milk
• freshly ground nutmeg
• Salt and pepper
• 6 oz Gruyere Cheese (optional)
• 4 oz parmiggiano
• 1 box of pasta (Rhombi, mezzi rigatoni, etc)

Directions:

Add the olive oil to a large saute pan over medium high heat, and after thirty seconds, add the onion, garlic, and carrot. Add some salt and pepper. Stir frequently and briskly. Turn the heat down if they start to brown. You want to soften them, so they’re not at all crunchy – if the heat is too high the edges will burn. After 5-10 minutes when the onions are quite soft, deglaze the pan with white wine or dry vermouth. When the alcohol has burned off, add the can of tomatoes.

Stir the ingredients and bring to a simmer. Remove the casings from the sausages, break each one into 4 or 5 pieces, and add to the sauce. Keeping the sauce at a simmer, begin to break up the sausage with a pair of tongs. Use a tong-spatula combo if necessary. Because sausages are tightly packed, they will be more difficult to break up at first, but keep working them and as they cook they will begin to break down. If you wait until they’re fully cooked, they’ll be harder to break into the proper size – it’s really something you want to do as they’re cooking. You want some larger chunks, no bigger than a quarter, but mostly the sausage should be the sizes of nickels and dimes. As you’re breaking up the sausage, or just after, add the dried herbs and pepper flakes, and another hit of salt and pepper. Stir thoroughly, cover with a splatter screen, and let simmer for 20 minutes or so, till the meat is thoroughly cooked but still juicy. Scrape the bottom every few minutes to make sure the sauce is not scorching and to keep things moving. Add water or stock as needed if it looks like it’s getting too thick. When it is finished, mount it with the butter and let stand.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to boil and cook the pasta; preheat the oven to 425.

When the pasta is almost cooked and the sauce is almost done, make the béchamel. This shouldn’t be too thick or gooey. If you don’t know how, detailed instructions are here. Add half the gruyère to the béchamel if you really don’t care for your arteries (if you’ve come this far, you may as well).

Note: it’s not a bad idea to stop the pasta before it’s fully cooked, since it will bake. Don’t worry about timing everything perfectly; you can hold the pasta by coating it in a little bit of olive oil and leave the sausage ragu on for hours…not a problem. When the béchamel is ready though, it’s time to go.

To assemble: return the pasta to the cooking pot, add all of the sausage ragu and the béchamel. Stir to combine thoroughly. Pour into a large baking dish. Feel free to leave pasta sticking up in the air off the top. Top with remaining gruyere and all the parmiggiano. (You can make this perfectly acceptably by just topping with parmiggiano, and I usually do.)

Bake for 20 minutes or until the top is browned and bubbly. Let sit for 10 minutes before serving.