Forty Layered Lasagna

For years I’ve been making the standard lasagna known by most American citizens. You know, layers of pasta, ground beef, marinara, cheese, rinse, and repeat. Great tasting, but you know it’s always levels to this. I travel to Washington DC and eat at a very, very popular Italian restaurant known as L’Ardente and they served a 40 layer lasagna that just simply blew my mind and also challenged how I made lasagna going forward, so I decided to mimic their recipe and create my own version. I promise after this, you’ll never make lasagna the same again.

Ingredients

Short rib

Beef Shanks

Oxtails

Ground chuck

Seasonings (garlic powder, onion powder, curry powder, Lawrys, turmeric, cumin, herbs, Worcestershire, kitchen bouquet, soy sauce)

Sliced red and green peppers

Onions

Oven ready lasagna noodles

Parmesan

Sottocenere Al Tartufo cheese w/ truffles (google it)

Crushed tomatoes

Red wine

Beer

Beef stock or broth

Steps

For the meat: Combine the shanks, oxtails, and short ribs into one bowl. Generously season with all seasonings and marinate overnight.

In a hot Dutch oven or large pot, add some olive oil. Sautee all sides of every meat. Remove all the meats from the pot. Remove the bone marrow from the shanks and place to the side.

In the same pot, add the veggies and sautee. Once soft, pour in the beer and wine and gently scrape the pot.

Next, add that meat back in. Then pour in enough beef stock to fully submerge. Let cook for 2-3 hours, or until meat is tender. More than likely the short ribs and shanks will not take as long as the oxtails. Remove the meats from the pot as they finish cooking. Check every hour.

Chop up all the meats. Place to the side. In another pot, sear the ground beef in some olive oil. Add some of the cooked onions and peppers from the other pot into the ground beef. These will dissolve into the beef.

Add the crushed tomatoes and let cook for 5-10 minutes. Lastly, add the chopped meats to complete your ragu.

Lightly boil the lasagna noodles for about 5 minutes. They will finish in the oven. Combine the Parmesan and other fancy cheese in a bowl.

In a mold, stack it up. Meat, cheese, noodles, until you reach the top. Take a brick or something heavy and press the lasagna. Place in the fridge overnight.

The next day, slice the lasagna into small, similar sized squares. Stack the squares onto skewers. Bake at 425 for 10-15 minutes.

For a little razzle dazzle, in a small pot, take some of the gravy from the meat and combine with some of the crushed red tomatoes to make a quick, beefy marinara.

Put the marinara on a plate, then the lasagna on top of that. Pile up some cheese in the front and indulge.