Can I Make The Pasta Less Soft In The Lasagne Of Love?

Our answer

Nigella's Lasagne Of Love (from COOK, EAT, REPEAT) is an ideal dish for a crowd as it can be assembled in advance and feeds 9-12 people. Nigella uses dried lasagne sheets and rather than pre-cooking the pasta she makes a slightly more liquid meat sauce, which helps the pasta to soften and cook as the dish bakes in the oven. This method works for the pasta sheets that Nigella uses, though brands can vary slightly. However it may, in the first instance, be worth seeing if you can get a thicker brand of lasagne sheets, as these should soften less as the lasagne cooks.

If you are finding the lasagne sheets too soft then you may want to try reducing the amount of liquid in the meat sauce slightly. You can either reduce the amout of beef stock or broth used, or simmer the sauce after cooking in the oven to reduce it. If you want to use less stock then we suggest using around 400ml (1 2/3 cups). However, make sure that you check the meat sauce halfway through the cooking time and add more stock or broth if necessary. Otherwise, you can reduce the sauce slightly, after it has cooked in the oven, by putting the casserole dish or Dutch oven on the stove, removing the lid and letting the sauce simmer until some of the liquid has evaporated. We would however caution on making the meat sauce too dry as the bechamel sauce is already quite thick and you want enough liquid to make sure that the pasta does soften.