A Quick Mini-Post

A friend just asked me for my lasagna recipe. I make a pretty dope lasagna. I don't have a recipe, though, I mostly cook off the top of my head, and so I emailed her a stream of consciousness recipe. I'm mostly putting it here so I don't send it off into the ether and lose it forever. not that I really need it. But, you know, maybe someone will benefit someday.



Lasagna. Big noodles, you boil them. You put down a layer of noodles,
and then a layer of ricotta cheese (or cottage, since LA has no
ricotta, or you could make some kind of tofu-y vegan crap). Sauce on
top of that, some kind of red sauce, buy it or make it, and then
vegetables. I don't like carrots in lasagna. Spinach is great. Boil it
for a second first. Just a second, though. Or use frozen, and thaw it
first. Broccoli is great. Olives, if you're into that. Leafy things do
well, and things that can be cut big and thin. Oh, and onions. I
usually put a ton of garlic in my sauce, also. I love it. You could
put a leek in the veggie stage, too, if you want to blow up the
alliums. Trifecta, right? After vegetables comes a pile of cheese.
Mozzarella. A ton. You can mix in something sharper, too, if you want,
but the mozzarella's pretty crucial. Look for veg rennet, or don't, if
you don't care. Then repeat, starting again with noodles. I like to do
at least three iterations, but also I stack thick, so I generally end
up with a wicked tall lasagna. Most people go for shorter and wider,
with thinner (or more "reasonable") layers. Make sure you end with
pasta on top, and then cheese. That means my last three layers are
cheese, pasta, cheese, but you can skip the first of those cheeses if
you choose. I'm not a healthy cook. I'm a comfort food cook. Oh, also,
it's nice to make your own noodles, if you have an extra twenty
minutes. Lasagna noodles are the easiest to make, because they're all
big and lumpy anyway. You just need some flour and an egg and a little
bit of water and salt. You can pretty much guess how to get from here
to there. I'd use white whole-wheat flour, but I use that for
everything. Once you've conglomerated, you bake. Your guess is as good
as mine, here. Maybe 350? Check it at forty-five, and then every seven
or eight minutes after that.