I had guests for dinner on Saturday, and lasagne is always a crowd-pleaser. I basically follow the instructions in Bugialli's The Fine Art of Italian Cooking (I see there is an updated edition, but I don't have it), but I make the Bolognese from a 1999 issue of Cook's Illustrated. In particular my meat sauce in this instance was all beef, except for a couple of ounces of pancetta and some dried porcinis sauteed along with the vegetables at the beginning. The Cook's Illustrated technique is in four stages: an initial cooking of the vegetables and ground meat, then a simmer in milk until dry, then a simmer in wine until dry (I used a red in this instance), then a simmer in finely chopped canned whole tomatoes and their packing sauce until it's the texture you want. Call it about five hours of total simmering time. The other layers are a double-thick bechamel seasoned with a hint of nutmeg, and a layer of mozzarella and parmesan. I made plain and spinach pasta and alternated layers, so the finished product, with twelve layers of filling, looks like this (at least, the leftovers I ate for lunch today did!):
