Rachel Roddy’s recipe for lasagne with three cheeses, tomato and tiny meatballs | A kitchen in Rome

A deep and ingredient-busy take on the classic, constructed with four layers of pasta and a little geometric thinking Bearing in mind that lasagne is a construction, it pays to start with some easygoing geometry. That is, think about the size of the dish you want to fill in relation to the size of the sheets you are using and the number of layers you want the lasagne to have.

For four to six servings, I use a particular ceramic dish, because its 20cm x 29cm proportions mean that, broadly speaking, two fresh sheets of shop-bought egg pasta or four dried ones make a single layer (homemade pasta can be rolled and cut with scissors to whatever size you like, so is less relevant here). Having calculated how many sheets are needed for each layer, the next question is: how high do you want your lasagne building to be? Height depends on the density of the filling, which, in the case of this week’s recipe, includes sausagemeat rolled (using wet hands and speed) into small, grape-sized meatballs that act like…