Lasagna with fresh pasta (12-15

portions)

Ingredients for the pasta:

 100-136g all-purpose flour
 7 eggs
 200g spinach
 salt

Ingredients for cheese sauce:

 110g butter
 1 whole head of garlic
 1900ml milk
 200g grated pecorino cheese

Ingredients for the tomato sauce:

 olive oil
 few cloves of garlic
 1/2 an onion
 2tbsp tomato paste
 1600g crushed tomatoes
 glug of white wine
 salt
 pepper

DAY ONE: Make the bolognese.

That recipe makes about twice as much sauce as is needed for
the lasagna. When it's done, cool it down and put the whole
batch in the fridge. Whatever you don't use in the lasagna, you
can freeze later.
DAY TWO: Make the pasta, make the cheese sauce, assemble
and pre-bake the lasagna

In boiling water, cook the spinach for about two minutes or until
just wilted. Remove it to a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking
and set the green color.

In a food processor, mix four eggs, two cups of flour and a

teaspoon of salt until it comes together into a single dough ball.
Remove and wrap in plastic wrap.

Squeeze as much water as possible out of the spinach. Mix it in

the food processor with three eggs, a teaspoon of salt and two
cups of flour until a single ball forms. Remove and wrap in
plastic wrap.

Chill both dough balls in the fridge while you make the cheese
sauce. Take the bolognese out of the fridge to let it warm up a
bit.

Start the cheese sauce by adding a stick of butter to a large pan,

turn on medium heat and let it melt. While it's melting, peel and
chop a whole head of garlic. Whisk just enough flour into the
butter to make a thick, smooth roux (no more than a cup), then
add the garlic. Whisk in the milk, little by little, until smooth.

Remove the sauce from the heat and let it come off the boil.
Grate in all of the pecorino cheese and stir until reasonably
smooth. Taste for seasoning, and add salt until it tastes a little
too salty.
With a standard, 6-inch-wide pasta roller, roll out the yellow
dough ball on the widest setting. Dust it with flour, fold it back
up again, and roll it through again. Repeat the process until it
rolls out smooth. Reduce the thickness by one or two notches,
then roll it through again. Repeat until you've run it through on
the second-to-thinnest setting.

Cut the pasta sheets so they are 1-2 inches shorter than the pan in
which you plan to bake the lasagna (they will expand when
boiled). I recommend a disposable 11x19 inch aluminum baking
pan, available in most U.S. supermarkets. Cut each sheet up the
middle, lengthwise, to make two long ribbons.

Boil the ribbons in a large pot of salted water until they puff up
and float aggressively, about two minutes. Remove them to a
large bowl of ice water to stop the cooking process.

Clear a table, and cover it with clean kitchen towels. Lay out
each ribbon of pasta onto the towels and wipe their top-sides
with another towel to get them all reasonably dry.

Repeat the entire process with the green pasta dough.

Rub the baking dish with olive oil, lay in the first layer of pasta,
followed by a thin layer of one of the sauces. Alternate the
sauces and the two pasta colors until you run out of pasta to
make additional layers. (I get seven layers.) On the final layer,
just dab little blobs of both sauces across the top.
Bake at 200ºC for 20 minutes. Cool, cover, then refrigerate
overnight.
DAY THREE: Make tomato sauce, assemble the final dish, eat
(finally)

To make the tomato sauce, peel and chop the garlic and
onion/shallots. Fry in olive oil until just soft. Put in the tomato
paste and fry a bit more, then dump in the crushed tomatoes and
a splash of wine. Simmer for a half hour, stirring frequently. Add
salt and pepper to taste.

Roughly grate the pound of mozzarella.

Take the lasagna out of the fridge and cut it into 12-18 slices,
depending on the desired portion size. Oil three baking sheets,
and lift the slices onto the sheets, keeping them as far apart from
each other as possible. Top each slice with mozzarella.

Bake at 200ºC for 20 minutes (ideally on convection setting). If

the cheese is not brown enough by the end, finish each pan under
the broiler.

Coat plates with a thin layer of tomato sauce, place the slices
onto the the sauce, garnish with fresh basil.
Bolognese Sauce
Ingredients:
 450g carrots
 1 large red onion
 450g chicken liver
 1350g ground meat (beef and lamb)
 85g tomato paste
 2500g crushed tomatoes
 1 bottle of white wine
 Liquid chicken buillon (or stock cube)
 1tbsp dried oregano
 1tbsps dried parsley
 1tbsp dried basil
 1tbsp dried thyme
 1tbsp garlic powder
 60ml balsamic vinegar
 salt
 pepper

Instructions:

Peel and finely chop the carrots and onion. In a large pot (at least
7 quarts), fry the vegetables in olive oil on high heat until soft,
stirring constantly. Dump them out into a bowl or plate.

Finely chop the livers until almost pureed.

In the big pot, fry the ground meat in olive oil on high heat,
stirring and scraping constantly with a wooden spoon to keep
meatballs from forming. Cook until most of the water evaporates
and the pan starts to crackle. Put in the livers and the tomato
paste and stir to combine.

When the brown stuff on the bottom of the pot looks like it's
about to burn, pour in the wine and scrape to release everything
on the bottom. Stir in a big spoonful of the bouillon. Reduce heat
to a simmer and cook for two hours, stirring occasionally to
make sure the bottom doesn't stick and burn.

After two hours, season the sauce with the herbs and vinegar.
Simmer an additional hour. When it's the desired thickness, taste
and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.

Use, or freeze in ice cube trays, or both. After thawing and

reheating, add a few more drops of balsamic vinegar.
New York Style Pizza
Ingredients for the dough:

 530 ml warm water

 12g sugar
 9g active dry yeast
 30 ml olive oil
 18 g kosher salt
 600g bread flour, plus more for working the dough
 additional oil for greasing the dough
 cornmeal, semolina flour, or coarse-ground whole wheat
flour for dusting

Ingredients for the sauce:

 828 ml can crushed tomatoes

 30-60 ml olive oil
 4g sugar
 2 tsp dried oregano

Ingredients for the cheese:

 680-910 g whole-milk, low-moisture mozzarella, freshly

grated (170-225 g per pizza)
 grated parmesan for dusting (maybe 10 g per pizza?)
Instructions:

Start the dough by combining the water, sugar and yeast in a

large bowl and let sit for a few minutes. If the yeast goes foamy,
it's alive and you're good to proceed (if it doesn't, it's dead and
you need new yeast). Add the olive oil and salt and 5 cups
(600g) of bread flour. Mix until just combined, then start
kneading. Add just enough additional flour to keep the dough
workable (i.e. not too sticky) and kneed until you can stretch
some of the dough into a thin sheet without it tearing. (NOTE:
You will probably need to add a lot more flour. The quantity I
give here is just a base line to get your started.)

Divide the dough into four equal balls and put them in four
containers (ideally glass) and lightly coat the balls and the
interior of their containers with olive oil. Cover, and either rise
at room temperature for two hours, or put them in the
refrigerator and let them rise for 1-7 days. (I prefer the long, cold
rise.)

When you want to bake, put a pizza stone or pizza steel into your
oven (mine works best on a high rack position but every oven is
different) and preheat to your highest possible temperature,
ideally convection, for a full hour.

For the sauce, simply mix together the ingredients.

Liberally dust a pizza peel with cornmeal (or something similar).

Take the cold dough out of the fridge and dust it in flour. Stretch
to the widest size and shape that will fit on your peel and
stone/steel. Top with just enough sauce to lightly coat the
surface. Dust the sauce layer with parmesan, then cover with the
mozzarella. Transfer the pizza to the stone/steel and bake until
the crust is well-browned and the cheese has browned a bit (but,
ideally, has not started oozing out an orange grease layer), 6-7
minutes.