Ingredients:

For the meat sauce:
1-2 medium sized red onions
1.2 kg of ground beef (can be any other, but chicken won’t work)
3 garlic slices
One leek
One Celery
One chilli pepper
Tomato paste.
2 cans of chopped tomato in its own juices
Salt, pepper, rosemary, oregano, coriander, basil (fresh or dried, but ground it) to taste
# Have a sauce pan that also has a lid

You can try using fresh tomatoes, mushing, chopping and salting before boiling them a bit, but it’s going to take a while, so I recommend going for canned ones and paste. You will also probably need to remove the skin from the tomatoes, since most commercially sold tomatoes are bred for good looks and longevity, which makes their skin thicker.

Béchamel sauce
100g butter
100g flour
700-800 ml of milk

For greens:
Some parsley, half of celery, spinach and broccoli (boil the last in steam first) mixed together. I do this by eye most of the time, but you should have a kilo of the mix. And when I say mix, I mean more of a salad like, not mush or purée.

Prebuy the lasagna pasta and mozzarella cheese (2 balls should be enough). You can also buy grounded cheese or grind it yourself, like me. Remember, there is no such thing as enough cheese only not enough.
You can also try making lasagna pasta yourself if you have a hand cracked machine for it. I tried it once, ended up just having regular pasta instead of lasagna.
Also, when buying mozzarella, make sure it’s actually mozzarella: it’s not frozen and when you take it out of the package, whey (I think that’s how you translate it) should come out and it’s a ball.

Meat sauce:
1. Chop the vegetables (one full celery). Make sure to remove seeds from chilli.

2. Get one of those large sauce pans, add olive oil and let the chopped mass simmer till they are soft and resemble a paste. During this, add all of the mentioned spices and mix all together.

3. Once the vegetables are soft add the meat and make sure it doesn’t form any big lumps by stirring and punching it with a mantle (I have a wooden one so it’s not a problem). It may later release its juices. Don’t panic, form a hole in the middle and stir it after a while so the excess boils off and the meat is dry.
4. Once it is, add the tomato paste and the chopped tomatoes, mix around. May taste to add seasoning depending on the taste.
Find the lid for it and close it.
5. On a small fire keep it boiling for two hours and relax or go and prepare the cheese.

Cheese preparation:
Remember to cut mozzarella into somewhere between thin and thick slices. If you want to suffer and cut your fingers like me, grind the cheese.

After that, remove the lid from the meat sauce pan, but don’t increase or turn off the fire and let a bit of liquid boil off while you prepare the Béchamel sauce.

1. Melt the butter and then dissolve flour in it.
2. Once incorporated add the milk and stir it continuously or better yet, use a hand mixer. I have a small one that can also double as a blender if need.
3. Continue to stir it as it thickens up on medium to high heat and then take it off.

Now for assembling, but while doing this, set your oven to preheat till 180 C or around 350-360 F:

This is from bottom up in a deep dish


Béchamel
Pasta
Meat sauce
Pasta
Béchamel plus mozzarella and greens
Pasta
Meat sauce
Pasta
Béchamel plus mozzarella and greens
Pasta
Meat sauce
Pasta
Béchamel plus grounded cheese and some mozzarella, if you have left it over, since this is the last layer. If you have the mozzarella, place it before the grounded cheese, because you want it to cover mozzarella.

Cover the dish in aluminium foil and shove it in the preheated oven for about 40 minutes.
After that, uncover and let it cook for about 20 minutes to get some crispiness on the top, but don’t over do as a dry lasagna is a ruined one. After that, take it out and serve hot.

# the recipe for the meat sauce may result in more sauce than you need. Don’t throw it out, save for other dishes. You can also add grounded cheese to other layers, because there isn’t such a thing as too much cheese, only not enough and needs more.