Lasagne – Some Assembly Required...

Made my first lasagne yesterday. A vegetarian masterpiece. Was feeling a little cocky that it would be a piece of cake since I got rave reviews for my recent forays into cooking pasta dishes. Of course, it helps if the reviewers are under threat of death for any bad comments. So, there I was, all pumped up and full of confidence. I survived my lasagne making experience, humbled. I’m sharing my lessons learnt so that my fellow lasagne makers can churn out perfect pastas in the future.

1. Do NOT be over ambitious.
Sure, it would impress your diners if each lasagne layer consisted of different fillings. But you know how much cooking you have to do??? A five layer lasagne with different fillings will require you to cook 5 small dishes, excluding the pasta preparation and lasagne baking itself. Once you put everything together, the taste is going to be all mashed up anyway...So rule of thumb is 1 or at most 2 kinds of fillings.

2. Start early.
You need time to cook the filling, do the pasta and bake the lasagne. Lasagne also requires some assembly and if the lasagne pasta sheets do not fit nicely into your baking tin, be prepared to draw up an engineering plan and get ready for some knife wielding antics. Unless you don’t mind a Frankenstein version of course. And you could always finish a lasagne earlier and heat it up for later. Since I did not think I would encounter so many issues during the process, by the time my sister came over for dinner, the lasagne was far from ready. So, I had to deal with a hungry demanding blood relation, who was clamouring for food while still trying to put the darn pasta together.....

3. Lasagne pasta sheets are NOT like other pasta.
Do NOT put too many sheets together into the boiling water at one time. They STICK together and do not cook evenly. I learnt my lesson well when I had to abandon a whole pot of half cooked, stuck clumps of lasagne sheets. The trick is to only do small batches of 3-4 sheets each time.

4. Always READ instructions thoroughly.
The disaster with my failed first batch could have been avoided if I read through the recipe properly. The instructions were loud and clear but because I was too hasty, I overlooked it.

5. Do NOT use too much flour in the sauce.
By the time I was ready to assemble the lasagne, my béchamel sauce was like hardening cement. I couldn’t even spread it out onto the pasta because it was too clumpy and sticky. It was definitely a case of too much flour which thickened the sauce too much.

6. Do NOT over-estimate the number lasagne sheets you need.
It is not in my nature to reveal how darn stupid I was (or am!) but for the greater good, I am about to reveal something which would not reflect very kindly on my intelligence. I initially calculated 16 pasta sheets for a 5 layer lasagne in a 9x9 baking tin. How did I come up with that number? Aha! This was where my brilliant mind pondered over the question and came up with this foolproof solution. I used the dried pasta sheets and placed it into the tin to see how many pieces I would need to make one layer. I even visualized what I would need to fill up the small hole that appeared which the dried sheets couldn’t cover. When my first batch of 16 lasagne sheets failed (please refer to Lesson 3), and I realized I need to cook it in small batches of 3-4 sheets at a time...I nearly threw in the towel then....Each batch would have taken 15-20 minutes to cook. For 16 sheets, it would take me forever!! Luckily for me, I had some assistance from a very very concerned person who, like my sister, was also waiting for his dinner. With his help, we managed to do the next batch of 3-4 sheets successfully. And surprise! Surprise! Once the sheets are cooked, they actually expand much bigger!!! Whaddya know??? I only needed 2 sheets for each layer. By using some odds and ends from the failed 1st batch, I didn’t have to cook anymore batches after that. So the moral of the story is – brilliant people can make mistakes too....

So there you have it. I am glad that the lasagne turned out pretty decent in the end. At least my reviewers (who were under threat of death for bad comments) thought so :-).