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1. The main part of lasagne is ragù alla bolognese and it takes a couple of hours to cook, so plan it well and start cooking early.

2. Let’s begin with all the ragù ingredients preparations - wash and finely chop the vegetables. It depends on the size of your carrots/onions/celery stalks, how many pieces you need to use - I always want to have the same amount of each in the end.

3. For cooking this ragù choose a large thick-bottomed skillet with a lid. Put it on the medium heat and add minced pork meat.

4. Let the liquid from pork evaporate, then add minced beef meat, stir frequently and cook until the meat is golden brown. Remove from the pot and set aside.

5. Put butter in the pot and add the finely chopped vegetables. Add some salt and cook over a medium heat until the onions are soft (not brown).

6. Add tomato paste and cook for a few more minutes.

7. Now take the meat and add it to the vegetables and move to high heat. Add wine and cook on high heat without the lid. Stir if needed.

8. After a few minutes (5) put the lid on and turn down the heat to low.

9. Now your ragù needs a lot of time - you should cook it for at least 3-4 hours on a low heat, covered. Stir occasionally. 

10. Be careful when finding the right heat - the ragù should be simmering, not getting cold and not boiling excessively as it may dry out (and we do not want that).

11. After 3-4 hours, pour in the whole milk and cook covered for another 40-60 minutes, stir when needed.

12. Add some freshly ground black pepper and salt as per your preference by the end of cooking.

13. Now the ragù is ready, let’s prepare the bechamel sauce.

14. Warm up the milk so that it is warmer than a room temperature, but not boiling hot.

15. Melt the butter in another large enough pot or a saucepan and add flour - stir properly. Keep the heat to lower medium and keep stirring so that the flour does not get brown.

16. Do this for a few minutes until the flour starts getting colour.

17. Slowly whisk in warm milk, not all at once. Cook on low heat for around 10 minutes.

18. Keep whisking while pouring in the milk so that your saue does not get lumpy. 

19. You want your bechamel sauce to be creamy, not too liquidy.

20. At the end of cooking this sauce, add grated nutmeg and salt to taste.

21. Now it is time to put our lasagne together. I was using a glass baking bowl 25x35 cm big, 6 cm tall and I got 5 layers of lasagne pasta sheets (around 300-350 g of fresh lasagne pasta sheets 24x12,5 cm big).

22. I covered the inside of the glass tray with the butter first and then started with a thin layer of bechamel.

23. On the bechamel I put the first layer of lasagne pasta sheets - one layer of pasta sheets so that the entire bottom is covered and there are no gaps. You may need to cut your pasta sheets to smaller pieces so that it works perfectly.. 

24. Here comes a note - I was using fresh (not dried) pasta, so I decided not to cook it before baking. The advantage is, that it saves some time and it was not really necessary to do. The disadvantage is that it is a bit more difficult to work with uncooked pasta as it keeps sliding and moving around. My fresh pasta was also drying out quickly when in touch with warm sauces so that the pasta edges were rolling and coming up so I had to work quickly to cover the whole sheets as fast as possible to put them under the sauces.

25. Cover the pasta layer evenly with ragu bolognese, then bechamel sauce, sprinkle with parmesan. 

26. Continue with another pasta layer, ragu, bechamel, parmesan until your baking bowl is full.

27. Make sure to keep enough bechamel for the top layer - it comes together with parmesan on the last layer of lasagne pasta sheets. 

28. I did not put any ragu on the top, because I did not want to and so I used all the ragu before this step. If you still have some ragu left, feel free to put it on the top, under the bechamel sauce and parmesan.

29. You may want to put a piece of butter on the top as well, I did not do it as there is a lot of fat in ragu already. 

30. Bake your lasagne uncovered in a preheated oven (180 °C) for around 45 minutes. Make sure to check it while baking so that the top layer does get nice colour but does not burn.

31. Once ready, remove your lasagne from the oven and let it cool down for 15 minutes, then cut it and serve sprinkled with parmesan. 

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