First thing's first. I'm not putting up a recipe for this because to be totally honest, I'm not sure if I could replicate what happened. So here's a good old fashioned prose-style story about what took place yesterday. I missed my mom's lasagna. Its not the authentic masterpiece of Italian grandmothers everywhere, rather it is an improvised layering of mixed vegetables and "enhanced" canned tomato sauce topped with cheese and baked in the oven until you start begging for it. I love it. So I cleared it with my hubby, and by that I mean telling him that lunch would be a surprise, and set about making the lasagna sheets.
This was trickier anticipated. I've made tortellini from scratch before, so I figured that my homemade pasta formula would hold in this case, and it did. I used 1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour, 2 tbsp of butter, and a pinch of salt. Then I added as much water as would allow me to knead this into a somewhat tough and elastic dough. Mistakenly, I threw some corn flour onto the granite for rolling and put a large pot of water to boil. The sheets formed easily enough, accepting a trim here and there to keep them rectangular. I gently placed the first one into the boiling water and waited for it to rise. It emerged covered in a slimy gel that would only wash off under running water. Oops - the corn flour.
No worries! I put aside my rinsed sheet (because I'm greedy and I hate to waste,) and set about rolling out the remainder using all-purpose. This is definitely the way to go, and I curse my laziness for using what was cheap and at arm's reach when I should have bent over, opened the cupboard and taken the proper flour back out from it's inconvenient location. I made enough sheets for a two layered lasagna, which is 6 in my case (with 1 extra for good measure and possible patching.) Now for the veggies. These were onions, mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes - not adventurous by any standard, yet not conventional. I cooked them together in a little olive oil with salt and pepper, all the while envisioning my perfect tomato sauce and the way it would perfectly coat every layer to perfection.
Three large tomatoes were boiled until their skins split. Together with 3 cloves of garlic, a healthy sprinkling of Italian spices, extra basil and a pinch of salt, I blended them with 1/4 cup of tomato puree for 15 seconds. I have to admit, I'm one of those who likes to find a chunk of tomato in her food, so I never blitz until totally smooth. I began the layering process by first pouring enough sauce into the base of my dish. After that, came layer one of pasta, then veggies, then cheese. I probably should have been using ricotta and parmigiana, or at the very least mozzarella, but these are kinda hard to come by here. So in went the cheddar (Italians, kindly stop screaming.) I repeated the layering process once more and topped off the lasagna with generous spoons of sauce and healthy handfuls of cheese over the final layer of pasta. Pop! Covered with foil and into the oven for 15 minutes of baking; then, another 7 on broil for the top to get crusty.
Here she is: our lunch (and incidently, dinner as well.)
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