Bolognese Pesto Lasagna

So I was going to make Lasagna Bolognese from the Joy of Cooking.



The recipe points to the page to make Bolognese sauce, which they claim is very tomatoey, despite only having two tablespoons of tomato paste in it.



I read through the recipe, and I had everything to make it except white wine, and I had some very dry cider that I figured would suffice, so I set out to make this stuff.



I browned the beef, I diced the carrots, the celery, the onion. I added garlic, though the recipe didn't call for it. But you can't have lasagna without garlic, can you?



I'm planning to make it a veggie lasagna, add some mushrooms, green peppers and black olives to the recipe, so I prep those ingredients while making the Bolognese sauce. The recipe calls for white sauce, too, but I'm planning to sub a jar of Alfredo sauce for that.



Then I go to add the mile and I notice a detail: you add the milk two tablespoons at a time over the course of two hours.



I thought I was going to be eating this stuff before two hours was up. Then I notice the lasagna recipe calls for 8 cups of Bolognese sauce, but the Bolognese sauce recipe only makes 4-1/2 cups.



Plus, you're supposed to cover this sauce and refrigerate for 24 hours and then skim the fat before proceeding.



Plan B!

Which was mid-week, when I supplemented two kinds of pesto sauce for part of the recipe, my Gladware full of supposedly Bolognese sauce, my Alfredo sauce, my veggies, some Ricotta cheese, and so on. Spiked it with some extra oregano, crushed red pepper, healthy dose of black pepper, etc.



I don't know what the 'tomatoey' deal is, but if you asked me to pick out flavors in the Bolognese by itself, I'd never guess it had tomato in it at all.