This post contains a cheeky surprise – something overwhelmingly vivacious, perhaps something slightly audacious and saucy, conjuring dazzling images of succulent culinary delights — lasagne is, undoubtedly, my personal favourite dish, a meal that I am most confident in preparing. And yet it a dish I learned to make and perfect by observational learning in the kitchen of my mother and grandmother. No amount of recipe books purchased, however detailed and exquisite, were able to impart their wisdom to me. So if you have been too shy to build a pasta masterpiece in the past, take note of the fact that lasagne is fiendishly difficult at first, but like moulding clay, becomes easier and more malleable with time has the potential to become a creative medium to accommodate your imaginative whims. Thai chicken lasagne? I’ve heard of it before!
In the writing and the preparation and photography of the dish, I had placed upon the table many awful, soggy excuses that were barely passable as a final product. With a grimace, my housemates would assure me it was edible and praised the effort. But not meeting one’s personal potential in culinary adventures is I decided to get right into the nitty-gritty, rolling up my sleeves and rolling out the sheets and spreading over the sauce. I spent hours on quiet contemplation with a mental scouring brush, seeking recollections of family moments crowded around the gas stove, as the dented steel deep-dish overflowing with lasagne bubbled under the gas flame and oozed a crimson river of mozzarella and tomato.
Forget your preconceptions of lasagne as difficult, time-consuming and hardly filling: as I don’t believe in the widely propagated image of ‘the perfect lasagne’, I set out a mission in this post to present a time-and-trial tested recipe and tout it as the best and easiest home-made version, that is certain to keep you coming back for more.
As for the perfect lasagne, what metric could we possibly create to determine perfection of this pasta, whose base recipe means something different to every family and every taste? I would hope that whoever should rise up to the challenge and invent the generic measure for a length of string would be wise to translate this knowledge to ‘how long is a string of melted mozzarella from a lasagne’ and put this mystery to rest!
It is somewhat upsetting to think of lasagne as a dish reborn in modern times solely from clever marketing techniques, manipulation of food presentation and finesse in standardisation principles and mass-manufacturing processes. The real and great appeal of this dish is the home-made quality, the attribute of heartiness and the true reflection of the love and care invested in the selection of ingredients and the preparation.
It would seem that the roots of the humble lasagne have perhaps been forgotten by many and the original recipe lost, or re-invented for the changing palate of a new generation of families.
But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, although pizza, pasta and lasagne — arguably forming the triad of the culinary culmination for main meals in Italy — left the mainland to travel the world. It became inevitable to witness the transformation — or perhaps metamorphosis, into a spiced-up, local variation now found all around the world.
There’s really no need to feel sad. The graceful Sister Spaghetti and Brother Lasagne knew a turbulent life await them beyond the pasta convent – facelifts and adaptations were merely a trade-off to ensure the survival of the Italian culinary hallmark in the new century.
Therefore, In this recipe you will find a protest against manufactured and processed lasagne dishes, to instead share my zeal for the home-baked pasta, which highlights the ending Spring season and the yearly all-rounders brought into singing harmony. Gather your herbs, your cents and your senses and get ready to make your kitchen smell wonderful and feel more homely.
In this lasagne instance, I have chosen to stick with egg lasagne for a thicker pasta pastry layering (it also always gives the best results at higher heat without turning stiff), and have constituted the bulk of the filling for steamed and finely sliced broccoli and spinach and asparagus braised in garlic and olive oil. Of course, while the vegetarian option always comes to my mind first and foremost, especially since ground mince is easily a substitute.
In a divine duo of sauces, a sprinkle of salt, a handful of Kalamata olive cheeks, a few young buds of basil and thyme makes the tomato base, while the white sauce is constituted by cooking cream enlivened with virgin olive oil, Spanish onion, nutmeg and a medley of ground green, red, white and black peppercorns.
INGREDIENTS
1 cup of broccoli
fresh bunch of silverbeet
2 medium-sized brown 0nions
250mL cooking cream
3 cloves garlic, diced
1 can of diced tomato
150g sliced Kalamata olives
1 large brushed potato
pinch of sea salt
pinch of parmesan cheese
pinch of black pepper
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