Cheese Lasagna

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INGREDIENTS – PASTA

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3 cups flour*

2 eggs

1 egg yolk

½ cup water or more

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* = More might be needed for dusting, texture.

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INGREDIENTS – CHEESE

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3 garlic cloves

1 white onion

2½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese

1¼ cups shredded Parmesan cheese (2 tablespoons more later)

2¼ cups ricotta cheese

⅓ cup red wine

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 26-ounce jar spaghetti sauce

1 15-ounce can diced tomatoes

1 teaspoon basil

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

1 teaspoon oregano

¼ teaspoon pepper

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon thyme

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INGREDIENTS – ASSEMBLY

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2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese

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SPECIAL UTENSILS

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9-inch x 13-inch baking dish

no-stick pastry mat

rolling pin

hand crank pasta machine

cooking scissors (If your baking dish is 8-inches x 8-inches, for example)

no-stick spray

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Serves 12. Takes 3 hours 10 minutes.

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PREPARATION – DOUGH

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Combine 3 cups flour, eggs, egg yolk, and water into large mixing bowl. Knead with hands for 15 minutes. Make a ball of the mixture. It should be only slightly sticky and should just be able to come off your hand. If some of the ball sticks to your hand, then add a bit more flour, mix again, and try the new flour. If the flour ball is powdery, it is too dry. Add a bit more water, mix again, and try the consistency of the next ball. There may be a number of these iterations but it must be done. Divide dough ball into 3 equal mini-dough balls. Wrap mini-dough balls with plastic wrap and let sit in refrigerator for 1 hour.

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PREPARATION – CHEESE

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Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mince garlic cloves and onion. Add mozzarella, Parmesan, and ricotta cheeses to medium mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended

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Add onion, garlic, and olive oil. to frying pan. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Add red wine, spaghetti sauce, diced tomatoes, basil, bay leaf, Italian seasoning, oregano, pepper, salt, and thyme. Cook on medium heat for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

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PREPARATION – PASTA

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This preparation needs to be done 3 times. Dust no-stick pastry mat with flour. Remove 1 dough ball from refrigerator. Keep remaining dough balls in fridge until needed. Put this dough ball on pastry mat. Dust rolling pin. Roll out dough into oval shape 5½” wide and ¼” thick. (Anything thicker inhibits dough from going through hand-crank pasta machine.)

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Use pasta machine’s thickest setting. (#1 on mine.) Hold dough vertically and straight as possible over pasta machine’s roller. Turn crank slowly to feed dough oval through roller. Fold resulting dough sheet in half. Cut about ¼” off each side to make it rectangular and thus easier to feed into roller. (This also makes for uniform dough sheets.) Run this folded sheet through roller.

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Dust dough sheet. Set pasta’s setting the next narrower setting. (#2 on mine.) Again, hold dough sheet vertically and straight as possible over pasta machine’s roller. Repeat process, selecting a narrower setting each time, until final pasta sheet is about 1/16″ thick. Repeat entire pasta-sheet preparation until all dough is used. Trim pasta sheets to be 13″ * 4½”. The cutoff pieces of dough can be used to make another sheet.

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PREPARATION – ASSEMBLY

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Grate 2 teaspoons Parmesan. Use no-stick spray on baking dish. Put a layer of lasagna, 2 side-by-side noodles on the dish. If the noodles happen to be longer than your baking dish, snip off the excess length with your scissors. In this recipe, 6 noodles will make one lasagna dish with 2 layers of meat sauce. Reserve about ½ cup meat sauce. Divide remaining meat sauce and cheese equally between layers.

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Cover this 1st layer of noodles with a layer of meat sauce and a layer of cheese. Add a 2nd

layer of noodles, meat sauce, and cheese. Add a 3rd layer of noodles. Spoon just a little meat sauce atop the top layer along with 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese. Put glass lid or aluminum foil on top of baking dish. Cook lasagna in covered baking dish in oven at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. Cook uncovered for an additional 15 minutes or until bubbly. Remove and let sit for 5 minutes more.

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TIDBITS

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1) Lucy Olduvai of Olduvai Gorge was the world’s first human. Her parents were almost human. And oh my gosh, her brother Ogg, older than her by two years, was oh so close to be human. But with Lucy, they had finally got birthing a human right.

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2) But, sad to say, Little Lucy was a brat. She taunted her sibling mercilessly. “You’re subhuman,”  The sensitive Ogg ran crying to Mama Olduvai. Mama Olduvai got cross with Little Lucy. “Go play with that herd of mammoth cattle until you’re ready to apologize to your brother.”

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3) Oh, tidbit 3) proves that the nearly humans and first humans had the power of speech and in fact, could speak English. Well done, you.

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4) Anyway, proud Little Lucy wasn’t ready to apologize. So, she spent a lot of time poking the cattle. Then she started pulling. Fortunately for the ascent of humanity, she didn’t start with a bull. She began with a cow and got milk. “Wow, this tastes great! I call it milk.”

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5) Then she spotted a field of wheat. The equivalent of a light bulb turned on her first-human brain. “I’ll bet if I can get the cattle to stampede over the wheat field, they’ll trample and crush the wheat into flour.*”

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6) * = First Human speech was much complex than was first suspected, constructing complicated sentences with commas and everything.

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7) So, Little Lucy, ran back to her family as fast as her first-human legs would carry her. “Mama, Mama, I’ve discovered milk and wheat. We can evolve.”

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8) Mama Ogg scowled. “Evolution can wait. Are you ready to apologize to Ogg?”

“I am. Sorry Ogg.”

“It’s okay,” said Ogg, “Do you think we could make lasagna? I’ve had visions of it in my sleep?”

“Well,” said Little Lucy, “we need culture to make cheese.”

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9) So, the Olduvai Gorgers invented cave painting and five-act plays. But this was the wrong culture for making cheese out of milk. The next day, however, they discovered the right culture.

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10) The Gorgers, being hunter-gathers, par excellence, gathered eggs, garlic, cloves, onions, grapes, olives, tomatoes, basil, bay leaves, peppercorns, thyme, and salt. With their almost-human synapses firing something fierce, they eventually uncovered the secret of making tasty cheese lasagna. Life was truly good for the Gorgers.

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11) Until the mammoth-cattle herd migrated out of Africa. Oh no! No herd, no milk. No milk, no lasagna. “What’s the point of evolving?” said Papa Ogg, “if we can’t dine on lasagna?”

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12) “Let’s follow the mammoth cattle,” said Little Lucy. “Let’s follow the most important ingredient in lasagna.” so they did. And this is how humanity spread over the entire planet. Yay.

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– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.