Lasagna

This post is long overdue. I make lasagna all the time. It's one thing I feel comfortable doing start-to-finish with no guidance, experimenting with, and it nearly always turns out quite perfectly. To my tastes, anyway. I'm not sure if I should even call it lasagna, actually, because like most things on this blog, it's a bastardization of whatever the original dish is supposed to be. Oh well. Any cook should be able to tell you there's no "one way" for a dish to be. They always evolve. Tradition be damned.

I'm not a big fan of lasagnas that are oozing with copious amounts of completely pureed marinara or indecent levels of gooey cheeses. I like flavor in my lasagna. Mushrooms, eggplant, basil, olive. I like lasagna textured. Each layer should offer something new to the palate. There should be some chewiness/crunch to the very top layer, lightly topped with flavorful, aged Italian cheese. Slight al dente *fwood* when you slice into a noodle. Each vegetable should dance and sing its own number together in a medley of garden-fresh tastes. You should run across a whole basil leaf now and then. Tomatoes brighten the whole face of lasagna, but doesn't smother it. And the white layers... should be quiet. Mellow... and dear.

Speaking of the white layers. I follow in my mom's footsteps here, and use cottage cheese and sour cream instead of ricotta or a bechamel sauce. I imagine this is probably because it's cheaper to buy cottage cheese, but I've prefer the taste of it. Associations, you know.

One thing I always try to do nowadays with my lasagna is make my own noodles. I think the texture and taste is superior to boxed dry noodles, although it tacks on about an hour extra to prep time (I'll include my recipe for this, although of course you can buy noodles if you wish). It would have been much easier had I remembered to bring my pasta machine (essentially a dough roller) with me when I moved. I made do with a rolling pin, and felt like a real cook. You really get to know your food this way. You can feel what it feels. Understand what brought it to you. It's a little bit surreal. That said, I didn't grow the wheat or grind the flour or raise the chickens that laid the eggs. Some day, maybe, but not in a small apartment in a desert city.

Oh yeah, and I use bread flour for the pasta. Bread flour is like all-purpose, but with a higher protein and gluten content. You can probably use all-purpose flour, but you'd have to work it longer to develop the gluten, and maybe add less flour to make up for the extra working. Maybe it would perform pretty similarly. Try it and let me know.


LASAGNA

9 5/8 oz (about 1 3/4 cups plus 2 tbsp) bread flour
3 large eggs
1 large eggplant, chopped into 1/2-inch cubes
Extra-virgin olive oil
salt
freshly ground black pepper
1 medium onion, diced
bunch of cremini or button mushrooms... maybe 10? 15?, sliced
red pepper flakes
fennel seeds
oregano, dried or fresh
thyme, dried or fresh
pinch salt
freshly ground black pepper
3 cloves garlic, pressed
handful of pitted, drained Kalamata olives, chopped coarsely
28-oz can diced tomatoes (fire-roasted are lovely)
16 oz cottage cheese (the highest fat you can find)
8 oz sour cream (full-fat)
1 egg
1/2 cup or so frozen chopped spinach, thawed
bunch of fresh basil leaves
chunk of some aged Italian cheese, such as parmesan, asiago, romano, or a blend (I used Pecorino Romano)

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Make your pasta dough. It's actually pretty easy, especially if you have a food processor. Put your flour and 3 eggs into the food processor, like so.

I know you can only see two eggs in the picture. Trust me, I used three. One made a break for it and went to the other side of the bowl. Turn on the processor and let it whirl until the dough forms a big clump (you can mix it with your hands if you don't have a FP).



And then take it out and knead it forcefully until it gets smooth and not at all sticky. This could take anywhere from 2-8 minutes. When it looks like this:



wrap it up (or put in a close-fitting bowl and cover) and put it in the fridge to rest for an hour. You have to let it rest. The gluten strands relax during this time. If you try and use it now, the gluten will tighten so much that you won't be able to roll it out thinly because it will keep contracting and you'll get really weird, lumpy, thick noodles.

2. Prepare the eggplant. Toss it in a bowl with a little oil and salt and pepper (just a sprinkle of each, enough oil to barely coat). Spread them on a cookie sheet like so:



Put it in the oven and keep it there for 45 minutes to roast.

3. Time to make the sauce, which is probably the messiest part of the whole process. Start by heating a stainless skillet over medium heat and putting in a few tablespoons of olive oil. Dump in the onions and mushrooms right away and toss a bit to coat. Keep an eye on it, stir every minute or two. It will go through a "wet stage" where the mushrooms let out a bunch of liquid. Don't worry about this, just keep it cooking and let it evaporate.



In the meantime, put a bit of red pepper flakes (tsp, probably), fennel seeds (maybe 2 tsp), oregano (tbsp or so if dried and crumbled, more if fresh), thyme (2 tsp if dried leaves, more if fresh), a wee pinch of salt, and some pepper all in a mortar and grind it with the pestle until the fennel seeds are a little crushed. To have it ready to add, put it in a little bowl with the pressed garlic. It all goes in at once, after all.



Dump it into the onion-mushroom mixture (when the liquid has evaporated) and stir it around. Let it cook for a minute (stirring frequently) while you chop up your olives.



When it smells amazing, and looks like this:



dump in the olives and give it a toss. If there's a little bit stuck to the bottom of the pan (there should be some residue, but not too much else unless you're cooking at too high a heat), don't be tempted to add more oil, because you really don't need it. Dump in all the tomatoes and listen to it hiss. That's the sound of all the residue coming off the pan. Mm, browned stuff. Give it a good stir, turn down the heat and let it simmer.



4. At this point, you can probably take your eggplant out of the oven.



Run a spatula under it at this point so it doesn't adhere to the pan while it cools. You can leave the oven on, if you hurry up with the rest of the process, or turn it off and remember to turn it back on later when you're getting ready to bake the lasagna.

5. While your sauce is cooking and your eggplant is cooling, it is probably time for your pasta dough. Take it on out of the fridge, divide it in two, and re-cover one half and save it. With the half you took out, make it into a ball, flatten it slightly, and dust it with flour. You should also dust your counter with flour, as you don't want the dough to stick.



OK, so you have to roll out this little ball of dough. It sounds easy. Hahaha. HAHAHA I laugh at your ignorance. Anyway, you have to get it to approximately 1.5cm thick evenly throughout. Put some muscle into it. You'll have to add flour as it spreads out. The key is not to stretch the dough, because it will just elasticize back into shape again. You want to spread the dough, which is difficult and requires lots of downward pressing of the rolling pin as you roll. Or pasta roller, which is so much easier. After some sweat and tears, you should arrive at this stage.



You can get 4 approximately 12"x2" noodles out of this, with scraps. I like to cut the sides using my little zigzaggy pastry cutter tool. I don't know how to make them curly like the ones in the box, but that is a reasonable enough approximation. You don't even have to do that. A knife works just fine. Just set the noodles aside as you cut. Ball up the scraps and roll it out again, trying to make it a foot long and a few inches wide.



You can get two more noodles out of this. Whatever scraps you have can be cooked as weird pasta shapes, discarded, or put into the next half of the dough to be rolled. I may or may not have eaten mine.

Put on a large pot of water to boil. Repeat the rolling and cutting process with the second half of dough, so you have 12 noodles.



Don't you feel amazing??

If your water is boiling, add a tbsp or so of salt and your noodles, carefully, one-by-one. Cook for 3-4 minutes and remove to a plate, layering with a little olive oil so they don't stick together.

6. When your sauce has reduced and no longer looks watery, mix in all your eggplant pieces and take it off the heat.



Also, mix in a bowl your cottage cheese, sour cream, egg, and spinach. This is the constituent of your white layers.



7. Assembly time is always fun. You can make it look pretty. This generally goes in a 9x13-inch glass baking dish, but I don't have one right now, so I had to squeeze it into a 8x11-inch glass baking dish. I had to cut my noodles so they fit (if your noodles don't fit the long way, do trim them, as they will otherwise hamper the ease of assembly and final deliciousness of the lasagna by running up the sides).

Anyway, put just a little bit of your sauce in the bottom of your baking dish, along with a sploosh of water and a splish of olive oil, and mix it around to coat the bottom as evenly as possible. Then you can put your first four noodles in, overlapping each other slightly if necessary.



In your pan, divide your sauce into three heaps (it should be reduced enough that it doesn't run back together when you smoosh it apart). Put one heap over the noodles and spread it evenly. Top with a layer of fresh basil leaves.



Put half of your white sauce mixture over the basil leaves in small dollops (trust me on this, you want it evenly dolloped or you will just be mushing around a mixture of red and white sauce and it will no longer be pretty, or quite as tasty). Spread it very carefully so it covers the entire thing.



Repeat, with another layer of noodles, red sauce (you can decide whether or not you want another basil layer, I usually just have one), remaining white sauce, remaining noodles. Before you put the last bit of sauce on top, add a bit of water (1/4 cup, maybe?) and a little olive oil, to thin it out a smidge. Mix it all up in the pan, then put it on top and spread to cover the noodles the best you can. Any noodle that sticks out is going to get impossibly chewy when it cooks. Grate your cheese on top.



8. Cover the dish very loosely with foil and bake 20 minutes (still at 375). Remove the foil, and bake it another 20 minutes. When it comes out, it should be bubbly, a little melty, aromatic, and cooked-looking. And the noodles will have warped and wiggled and will look really neat.



Now you're done, and you can slice and eat it. I usually have one portion and then cut the rest into portions and wrap them in waxed paper and then foil and freeze them. Then I can have them at my leisure.

So, that's how I make lasagna. You can use different vegetables. You can take shortcuts. You can ignore it and make something else entirely. Lasagna doesn't mind. It will still be here. It will be here after you're dead and gone. It doesn't need you. Lasagna is one of those people that is perfectly content with herself, regardless of what everyone else is thinking or doing. If you are nice, she will be nice. If you make time for her, she will make time for you. Or at least a nice dinner.

Would I change anything? Yes... I only used 4oz of sour cream, but I should have used all 8 (like I said in the recipe). I also should have used Organic Valley cottage cheese instead of Nancy's. I dearly love Nancy's cottage cheese, but its cultured, lightly soured taste is not right for a dish with so many tomatoes. Plus, that's what the sour cream is for. I would have used more basil. A bigger dish. A little more seasoning. I probably should have sang and danced as I cooked. Oh well. I am building character.