Lasagna that took months to make

I thought some of you might enjoy hearing about the lasagna I spent all of yesterday making — with ingredients that took even longer to prepare. The meat sauce was a mix of our own ground lamb and goat, simmered with homegrown tomatoes and roasted red pepper purée made from this year’s abundant pepper harvest. The ricotta layer came from ricotta I made using the whey left over from a batch of chèvre, enriched with a couple of our farm-fresh eggs. Between each layer I sprinkled a blend of three different hard cheeses, grated straight from wheels I’d aged in the cheese cave.

In the end, the only store-bought ingredients were the salt, pepper, and herbs I added to the sauce. The lasagna was as delicious as it was satisfying to make — proof that all the effort, from barn to garden to kitchen, was well worth it.