I made lasagne today. I kind of winged it, but mostly followed the recipe for Italian-American lasagne. from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything.
No problem! I’ll explain. First, your fridge needs to look at least a bit like this:
Then you have to be about ready to scream because you’ve never been a good cook when comes to greens that aren’t kale, spinach, and swiss chard.
Then you reach into the above fridge and grab whatever greens that aren’t the above that come readily to hand. You do this because you almost forgot you were going to make a veggie lasagne. Or an Italian-American lasagne. So you have butter that will NOT become béchamel in a sauce pan, and the milk you made a special run for out in a measuring cup. You throw half that butter in a skillet, wash and stem a bunch of greens, then sauté them down. Press out all the water. Start assembling your lasagne:
Ok, cool. It looks good. Until you realize you only cooked enough greens for one layer. That’s gonna be weird. But you’re committed now. Then realize you forgot to thaw the mozzarella. Get that out of the freezer. Then think to yourself, “Wait, is that extra ugly green sorrel?”
Yup.
At which point, you continue assembling your lasagne like it’s going to be gorgeous. And you just hope the sorrel doesn’t make it all wrong. Be briefly impressed that you finally managed to learn how to actually make it visually gorgeous, but wonder how other food bloggers do it day in and day out.
At the end, forget to put meat sauce on the top of the lasagne. Say, “Fuck it.” Pop it in the oven and conclude it’s time to write a fast post. Then, once it’s cooking, realize the mess you’ve made in (and out of!) the kitchen with this project plus all the others. Get the words written, then grab a beer and get to posting photos and updating.
And that, my friends, is “Lasagne of Desperation.” I’ll post the rest of the photos to the other post & share tomorrow, as well as update this post.
The Amazon link in the first paragraph is an affiliate link, so you know.