anyway,
The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.
Okay,
this is my first time ever making a pasta from scratch! It was almost a disaster *again!*
I was chopping through the spinach very finely (and very very slowly) when my mom enters the kitchen.
"why don't you just use the chopper if you want it to be THAT fine"
ahaha, I don't know what i'd do without her! make it so much easier than slicing and chopping bit by bit. So into the chopper machine it goes. A few buzz later and tadaa!! nicely fine chopped spinach ready to be inserted to the dough.
As I have learned from the previous challenge, I just put the whole flour into a bowl instead of a flat surface to avoid messy goey masses on the floor (danish bread challenge), make a hole in it and pour two great eggs.
Flour well with eggs
next is a mountain of spinach! weeee~ ever so healthy!
mix it up till it form a ball... OMG, just look at the lumpy-ness! haha!and knead!!
err, wait, why is it all sticky?? urgh!!
maybe it'll be smooth (as stated in the recipe) after the kneading.
with a sticky-monster-green-hand ten minutes later (hence the absence of pictures depicting the sticky pasta ball from goey hell) i thought of adding more flour to the dough.
I have been making bread for a long time and dough is not really my enemy. thus when I make bread, or anything to do with dough, I'll follow my instinct and feel for the texture. But I was trying to follow the recipe to the dot since it is my first ever pasta making (and people say you have to follow every single thing within the recipe) I hesitated to add any flour. It was like committing a sin every time I add another tablespoon of flour (yes, ppl I added by tablespoons, hahaha) I kneaded patiently and the dough keeps on sticking.
there's this Malay saying; "sikit-sikit, lama-lama jadi bukit"
literally means little by little, it (the amount) will pile up.
after adding ONE whole cup of flour by tablespoons, I say, to hell with it! I'll just add acorfing to my taste and feel!!! I ended up adding a one and a quarter cup extra flour to the dough before finally giving it a rest(read; giving up) for about one hour.
and since I've modified the recipe, i was in the mood for another chaotic mess with the ragu. there were saute' onions and garlic, throw in the minced meat, cumin, oregano, more herbs and spices poured (in malaysia, this is called rempah campak, literally you throw in a number of random spices in unmeasured quantities) into the pan and finally some tomatoes plus a bit of tomato puree. Simmer for some time and it's done! I know, not exactly a ragu for a lasagna but I was exhausted with the dough :P
the bechamel sauce was modified too. I boiled three potatoes, mash it up and stir into the bechamel sauce to thicken it up and give it some texture. Yumm~
If only the Italians knew, what blasphemy!!
hey it's all the dough's fault!! It triggered some neurotic change
anyway, back at the pasta dough,
looking at the videos provided in youtube, the pasta was perfectly rolled on without sticking together. how i wish I could get a hold of a long rolling pin too!! knowing mine was rather unconventional, I laid a huge piece of plastic sheet on the table, pour some more flour (actually it was a LOT more) on the sheet, my hands, and the rolling pin before proceeding with the rolling :D
cut the dough to quarters and rolled away till what I presume was paper thin cause I can't see through the pasta no matter how thin it was. The only thing I could see was GREEN all over the table! then i cut it into loooong pieces before drying it off. Owh btw, there were some that stuck to the plastic sheets (imagine that!!) and end up with holes here and there! hahaha!! something like what Lisa had!
the rest was a synch! boiled some pasta, arrange the layers and pop into the oven.
err wait... my mom walk into the kitchen again
"so, is the lasagna ok?"
"nope, the ragu's not red enough!"
"here, put some of this squid sambal in"
"but, it's spicy!"
"yea, the spicer, the better!!"
and I plonk in a GENEROUS amount of sambal into the lasagna in between the sea of cheese. In case you people don't know what sambal is, it's actually a mixture of herb, spices and lots and lots of chilies! And this time around, the sambal was extremely spicy! Hah!! A spicy lasagna! But it was gone in an instant! My mom loved it to bits. she ate like two plates right after it came out of the oven. Hehe~ the whole family liked it too.
The Final Product ~ abit burned (on the top) since I went upstairs and forgot about it for a good 30 mins, hey, I was TIRED okay!Thank you, thank you, thank you Mary, Melinda and Enza for hosting this challenge! I'd never try making pasta from scratch before. Now I know I can do it!! Next time I'd make ravioli too :)
check out what others did here
