Cremini and porcini mushrooms cooked down with shallot, garlic, and red wine, folded into béchamel and layered with pasta and parmesan. The kind of vegetarian dish that quiets a table of skeptics.
Yield
6 servings
Prep
45 min
Bake
30–40 min
Oven
350°F / 175°C
Method
Soak the dried mushrooms: tip them into a bowl and pour 2 cups of boiling water over them. Leave to rehydrate for 30 minutes — use this time to prep everything else.
Set a strainer lined with cheesecloth or paper towel over a clean bowl, and drain the mushrooms through it. Reserve 1½ cups of the soaking liquid; squeeze the rest out and save (or discard).
If you used shiitakes, trim and discard the woody stems. Rinse the rehydrated mushrooms thoroughly to get rid of grit, squeeze them dry, and chop. Set aside.
Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large heavy skillet over medium. Add the shallots and cook, stirring often, until tender. Add the garlic and let it perfume the pan for 30 seconds before tipping in both the cremini and the rehydrated mushrooms. Season with salt.
Cook, stirring often, until the mushrooms begin to soften and release their juices.
Crank the heat to high and pour in the red wine. Cook, stirring, until the liquid has bubbled away and glazes the mushrooms.
Add the thyme and the reserved 1½ cups of mushroom soaking liquid. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring often, until the mushrooms are deeply tender and the broth has reduced by more than half. Pull off the heat, grind in plenty of pepper, taste for salt.
Make the béchamel: heat the 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Add the minced shallot and cook until soft.
Stir in the sifted flour and cook for about 3 minutes, stirring often. You're looking for the texture of wet sand — bubbling, smooth, but not browned.
Whisk in all the milk at once and bring to a simmer, whisking constantly until the sauce starts to thicken. Drop the heat to very low and keep cooking, stirring with a whisk and scraping the bottom and corners of the pan, until the sauce is properly thick and the raw-flour taste is gone. Season with salt and pepper.
Pour the hot béchamel directly into the pan with the mushrooms and stir to combine.
Heat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Oil or butter a 2-quart rectangular baking dish.
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt it generously. Cook 3 to 4 lasagna sheets at a time — only until flexible, not fully cooked — then lift onto a kitchen towel to drain.
Spoon a thin layer of the mushroom-béchamel mixture over the bottom of the dish. Top with a layer of noodles. Spread more of the mushroom mixture over the noodles, then a layer of Parmesan.
Cook the next batch of noodles and continue layering — usually 3 or 4 layers depending on dish depth — finishing with mushroom mixture and a generous shower of Parmesan on top.
Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and continue baking another 5 to 10 minutes if you want crispy noodle edges and a lightly browned top.