On Friday, we traveled to the Belmont neighborhood in the Bronx, an area with a large concentration of Italian immigrants, which is renowned for its handmade Italian specialties and imported goods. We came home with beautiful sheets of fresh pasta, cans of San Marzano tomatoes, and delicious creamy cheeses. On Saturday, we went to Ottomanelli's Meat Market in the East Village for ground beef and pork for the sauce. We had our ingredients, but if this was to be a truly flavorful lasagna, I was going to need a whole day to prepare it. This All-Day Lasagna would have to wait until Sunday.

Sunday morning came, rainy and cold. We were put slightly behind schedule by a leaking door frame and the ensuing wait for our landlord; however, the cooking got underway at around 1 p.m. While Mike went off to do laundry, I got to work on an adaptation of Marcella Hazan’s Bolognese sauce. I went the “beef and pork adaptation” route, using two parts ground chuck to one part ground pork, and I added double the quantity of tomatoes she calls for, but otherwise, I followed her recipe. About an hour after I started, the sauce was ready to simmer for the afternoon, and the apartment was beginning to smell absolutely amazing. I did a quick clean-up of the kitchen, and I was ready to start prepping the other ingredients.

I had refrigerated the fresh pasta sheets, so I removed them from the refrigerator to allow them to come to room temp before blanching them. I did the same with the cheeses, portioning out half a pound of ricotta and 1/4 pound of fresh unsalted mozzarella, cutting the latter into thin slices. I got out all of the pots I’d need, as well as our wonderful new Chantal earthenware baker, which I went ahead and buttered to keep the lasagna from sticking to it as it cooked. Finally, I finished my mise en place by measuring out all of the ingredients I’d need for the béchamel, arranging them on the counter within easy reach.

At around 6, it was time to finish my prep and begin to assemble the lasagna. I wasn’t really working from a recipe at this point, but I did consult my copy of Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, as well as both Mario Batali’s and Giada De Laurentiis’ versions of the dish, for guidelines.

Using a pizza cutter, I cut the fresh pasta sheets to fit the baking dish (about 6x8). I had a large pot of salted water at a rolling boil, and dry towels laid out on the counter – the pasta sheets would have to be briefly cooked, removed from the pot and plunged into an ice bath, rinsed gently under running water, then laid out on the towels and patted dry to remove any starch before setting them aside.