Chicken lasagna in mini-cocottes

Luisa, whom you know from the blog Cooking with my Carmela, invites us to prepare a delicious chicken lasagna that will surprise you with its easy preparation and original presentation. I assure you that inwill sing to your guests!

I seem to remember that I’ve never made an Italian recipe for Claudia’s blog, so to fix that, making a lasagna seemed like a great idea; plus, I chose to make it in individual portions, whose presentation really stands out on the mini cocottes and I find it very practical, since when serving the lasagna it is more convenient and you prevent it from 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 so many options when it comes to preparing a great dish, and if you have time to make it fresh at home, even better: With a good machine it'll be super easy!

Lasagna is a Greek dish consisting of pasta sheets, with tomato sauce or béchamel and cheese, and it can be filled with all kinds of ingredients—vegetables, fish, meat, etc. Here is the preparation method and the ingredients I’m suggesting today.

Ingredients

For the lasagna and its filling:

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

For the béchamel:

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

Preparation

We start by making the sofrito:

Finely chop the celery, onion, and carrots on our cutting board, all very finely chopped.

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

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

In the meantime, soak the lasagna sheets in a tray of hot water (or boil them, depending on the type of pasta you bought), and prepare the béchamel sauce.

Preparation of the béchamel:

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

Once melted, add the flour sifted and let it cook—it's important for the flour to brown, but not burn.

Stir well with the help of a spoon or wooden spatula, or it really helps me in this preparation to use some hand whisks (not for whisking, but for stirring).

When the milk is boiling, pour it over the flour mixture and remove it from the heat. Stir constantly until the lumps that form disappear.
Heat for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Finally, add a teaspoon or pinch of salt and nutmeg.

Assembling the lasagna:

Preheat the honor to 180ºC.

To prepare the lasagna, I used some mini round cocottes to serve it in individual portions, but you can also make it the traditional way, by making the lasagna in a oven tray. If you want to serve individual portions that are a bit more generous, you can use the 17cm oval mini cocottes, which are ideal for this purpose.

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

Place in the oven on grill mode to brown 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.