Chicken lasagna in mini cocottes

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

I seem to remember that I have never prepared an Italian recipe for Claudia's blog, so, to remedy it, preparing a lasagna seemed like a great idea; In addition, I have chosen to prepare it in individual portions, whose presentation looks great in mini-cocottes and I find it very practical, since when it comes to serving the lasagna it is more comfortable and you prevent it from falling apart. I hope you like that 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 has many options when it comes to preparing a good dish, and if you have time to prepare it fresh at home, much better: with a good machine it will be very easy! !

Lasagna is a Greek dish that consists of pasta in sheets, with tomato or bechamel sauce and cheese, and that admits all kinds of fillings -vegetables, fish, meat, etc. Let's go with the preparation and ingredients that I propose today.

Ingredients

For the lasagna and its filling:

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

For the bechamel:

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

Elaboration

We start by making the sauce:

Chop the celery, onion and carrots well on our board, all very well chopped.

Heat a frying pan, add oil and fry the vegetables that we have chopped. We leave for about 15 minutes until we see that they are well poached. At this point, add the minced chicken meat along with the glass of white wine or chamomile and fry until the meat is well cooked.

Add the crushed tomato, season and add the oregano to taste. I personally like a lot of it​,​ and let it cook over medium low heat​,​ until the sauce reduces.

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

Preparation of the béchamel:

We put a saucepan to heat the milk. In the meantime, in another saucepan, melt the butter over low heat together with the oil.

When it is melted, add the sifted flour and let it cook - it is important that the flour take on color, but that it does not burn.

​We stir well with the help of a wooden spoon or shovel, or it helps me a lot in this preparation to use manual rods (not to beat, but to stir).

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

Assembly of the lasagna:

We preheat the honor to 180ºC.

To prepare the lasagna I have used some round mini-coccotes, 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 but somewhat more generous portions, you can use the 17cm oval mini-cocottes , which are ideal for this.

​It's time to ​assemble the lasagna: first​​ a plate of pasta (for the mini-coccottes I have cut them in half), then a little bit of filling and a little béchamel​; another plate of pasta and we repeat again. Finish with a layer of béchamel and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

We put in the oven in 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 plates at home, you may be interested in seeing a pasta recipe here .