Chicken lasagna in mini-cocottes

Luisa, whom you know from the blog Cocinando con mi Carmela, invites us to prepare a delicious chicken lasagna that will surprise you with its easy preparation and original presentation. I assure you that it will delight your guests!

I think I remember that I've never prepared an Italian recipe for Claudia's blog, so to make up for it, making a lasagna seemed like a great idea; besides, I chose to prepare it in individual portions, whose presentation looks great in the mini-cocottes and I find it very practical, since it's more convenient when serving the lasagna and you avoid it falling apart. I hope you like it too.

Le Creuset ceramic mini-cocottes and Pallarès carbon steel knife

I love Italian cuisine and pasta is one of my favorite ingredients, since it offers many options when preparing a good dish, and if you have time to make it fresh at home even better: with a good machine it will be very easy!

Lasagna is a Greek dish consisting of sheet pasta, with tomato or béchamel sauce and cheese, and it accepts all kinds of fillings — vegetables, fish, meat, etc. Here are the preparation and ingredients I propose today.

Ingredients

For the lasagna and its filling:

• 1 celery stalk
• 1 onion
• 3 carrots
• 500 gr of very chopped or minced chicken meat (you can also use beef, pork or a mix of these)
• 400 gr of crushed tomato
• A glass of white wine or manzanilla
• Salt, pepper and oregano
• Parmesan
• Lasagna sheets

For the béchamel:

• 1 liter of milk
• 50gr of butter
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 60gr of wheat flour
• Nutmeg and salt

Preparation

We start by making the sofrito:

Finely chop the celery, onion and carrots on our board, all very well diced.

Heat a pan, add oil and sauté the chopped vegetables. Leave for about 15 minutes until they are well softened. At that point, add the minced chicken along with the glass of white wine or manzanilla and sauté until the meat is well cooked.

Add the crushed tomato, season with salt and pepper and add oregano to taste. Personally, I like a lot and let it cook over medium-low heat until the sauce reduces.

Meanwhile, take the opportunity to hydrate the lasagna sheets in a tray with hot water (or boil them, depending on the type of pasta you bought), and prepare the béchamel.

Béchamel preparation:

Heat the milk in a saucepan. Meanwhile, in another saucepan melt the butter over low heat together with the oil.

When melted, add the sifted flour and let it cook — it's important that the flour takes on color, but that it doesn't burn.

Stir well with the help of a spoon or wooden spatula, or I find using some manual whisks very helpful in this preparation (not for beating, but for stirring).

When the milk is boiling, pour it over the flour mixture and remove from the heat. Stir constantly until the lumps that form disappear.
Heat for about 5 minutes without stopping stirring. Finally, add a teaspoon or pinch of salt and nutmeg.

Lasanha assembly:

Preheat the oven to 180ºC.

To prepare the lasagna I used round mini-cocottes to present them individually, but you can also prepare it in the traditional way, making the lasagna in a baking tray. If you want to present individual portions but slightly more generous you can use the 17cm oval mini-cocottes, which are ideal for that.

Now assemble the lasagna: first a pasta sheet (for the mini-cocottes I cut it in half), then a bit of filling and a bit of béchamel; another pasta sheet and repeat again. Finish with a layer of béchamel and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Place in the oven on grill mode to gratin for about 15-20 minutes. Ready to serve, I hope you like it!

Note: If you want to make fresh pasta sheets at home you may be interested in seeing a pasta recipe here.