When I was looking up potential Italian restaurants for when I was visiting NYC(we settled on Lilia, which was solid), I did come across a restaurant called Don Angie, which featured this really cool looking lasagna. When I think of lasagna, I think of layers of pasta, bechamel, and red sauce, stacked up in a deep dish and baked until the top is broiled, cheesy, and caramelized. However, Don Angie’s lasagna featured these rolled up pinwheels of pasta, layered with a creamy filling, and swimming in a red sauce. Don Angie’s actually succeeded in making lasagna look delicate and beautiful. Think about it. The dish that Garfield the cat eats, the dish that you honestly can’t identify what it is un-scooped because the broiled top melds everything into the dish it was baked in, the dish that can basically induce a food coma after one helping(so you have to put the rest of it into the freezer and then reheat it through the winter). For something that I personally associate with all of those things to be so easily transformed just by how it is plated, I just wanted to do my own take on that. So I was inspired by that dish(which I will definitely try the next time I make my way out there) when I was thinking of doing some sort of bolognese pasta situation!

For my components, we have a pork and pancetta bolognese, homemade pasta noodles, and a creamy three-cheese ricotta filling. Unlike a traditional lasagna, or even the Don Angie’s recipe, my recipe does not have a bechamel, mostly because trying to make and then cool one down sounded extremely tedious when I was trying to make this recipe same-day. Instead, we have a filling made with ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan, which echoes similar flavors to a white sauce, being creamy, cheesy, and pleasant, but it is a lot easier to make. The bolognese is where a lot of the focus needs to be, since you have to sweat out mirepox, render pancetta, stir-fry ground pork, then mix that all together with tomatoes, spices, a little cheese and stock, and chilies to form a delicious, hearty meat sauce. The pasta, since we are making it from scratch, will take a few minutes to make, but the more time-consuming aspect will not be making the dough, but rather assembling it with the filling. What I love about this recipe, having made it, is that the edges and tops of the pasta wheels gets extra crispy in the oven, while the bottoms of the wheels really soak up that unctuous meat sauce, so you get the best of both worlds in regards to your typical lasagna-eating experience!

Makes 2-4 servings:
For the bolognese:
2oz olive oil
1 onion, peeled and diced finely
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 stalks of celery, cut to small dice
1 bay leaf
salt
.5oz tomato puree
.25oz Calabrian chilies
1oz cooking sake; can substitute with cooking wine
8oz canned crushed tomatoes
8oz beef stock
1oz parmesan cheese
2oz pancetta, diced
16oz ground pork
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried thyme

In a large pot, start by sweating out the onions, garlic, carrots, celery, and bay leaf in the olive oil with a pinch of salt. To that, stir in the tomato puree and Calabrian chilies first, continuing to stir everything until the onions are translucent. To that, add the crushed tomatoes, beef stock, and parmesan cheese. Cover the pot and continue cooking the liquid on low heat for 10-15 minutes; you want the carrots and celery to be completely soft. Puree the contents of the pot until everything is blended together. Keep the sauce in a pot on low heat, uncovered, stirring occasionally to prevent the sauce from burning on the bottom of the pot. In another pan, render out the pancetta until crispy on low heat. Mix the pork with the other seasonings plus a generous pinch of salt and then stir-fry the pork in the pan with the rendered bacon fat until the meat is cooked and split into smaller pieces. Transfer the pork and pancetta to the pot with the tomato sauce, and allow the pork to cook down in the tomato sauce, covered, for another 15-25 minutes, minimum.

For the pasta dough:
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 eggs
1 tbsp olive oil
a pinch of salt

In a bowl, mix together all of your ingredients to form a dough. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough until it is thin enough to see your fingers through. If you are using a pasta roller, you are aiming to get this dough to the second-thinnest setting. If you are free-handing this, you are trying to go for 9 inch by 12 inch rectangles of pasta dough – you should get roughly 8 rectangles.

For the pasta filling:
6oz ricotta cheese, whey strained out
a pinch of salt
.5oz grated parmesan cheese
2oz grated mozzarella cheese
a pinch of nutmeg
a pinch of black pepper

Mix ingredients together to form your filling.

For assembly:
Spread the filling on top of each rectangle of pasta and then roll them up into little wheels. Cut each wheel in half width-wise. Place down the bolognese sauce in a layer in either a shallow baking pan or an oven-proof pan. Place down the pasta on top of that, cross section sides facing up and down, and bake everything together at 400 degrees F for 15-20 minutes.