Daring Bakers Challenge - Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.


When I found out we would be making pasta for this months challenge I was super excited. Pasta making is something that I have always wanted to try and now I had the perfect opportunity. We were to make an authentic Italian lasagna composed of noodles, bechamel sauce, and a ragu. My enthusiasm started to fade as I was reading through the recipe for the ragu. I started Weight Watchers about a month ago. I'm not the food police by any means and if I want something like lasagna, I just have a small portion, make good choices for the rest of the day and call it good. But the ragu ingredients (pancetta, veal, pork loin, beef skirt steak, Prosciutto di Parma and red wine among other things) did me in and I had resigned myself to skipping this months challenge. Lucky for me ... I stumbled upon a logical substitution. Roasted Vegetable Ragu.


My friend google and I found a delicious sounding recipe at Picky Cook. The ragu tasted as wonderful as the recipe promised! I was eating it straight out of the pan! The vegetables looked so pretty in the pan ready for roasting.

Here's the finished roasted vegetable ragu. Some of the veggies got a little overdone.


Now on to the pasta making! I struggled with the recipe at first. I wanted to make 1/2 batch and I couldn't get the dough to come together. I had a big pile of unsightly crumbs.

So I added another egg and after a lot of hard work formed a lovely little dough ball!

After some rolling and stretching of the dough, I cut some beautiful noodles. My noodles were a little on the thick side but my dough was starting to tear, so I decided to just take my chances. On a side note, how is it that Alton Brown made this process look so much easier on TV and he did it in thirty minutes! I didn't let my noodles dry since I did the entire lasagna process in a single day. Here they are hanging out in the kitchen.

I made the bechamel sauce and assembling the rest of the lasagna was a breeze! The end result was divine! I never imagined that this lasagna would taste so good!

Thanks Mary, Melinda, and Enza for this great challenge! Thank you Kristin for allowing me to use the ragu recipe. Please check out the Daring Bakers Blogroll to see how the rest of the gang did with their lasagnas! If you've never made your own pasta - try it!

Oh, and for those that may be counting: WW Points=7 :)