I should have known there would be more to this...
I'm not a fan of Mr. Ramsay, not at all. In my opinion he's hardly as professional as he claims to be, but does manage to sell his persona quite well. Either way; when I think of this individual I see a group in a restaurant who had pizza delivered to them because they had to wait way too long for their food (some episode of Hell's Kitchen IIRC). Now that was funny, but it seems this individual doesn't have a good sense of humour either. ALAS; offtopic.
Either way; I totally missed the purpose of the thread
I like cooking, though when I'm really busy at work it's also something I sometimes like to cut short a bit. On a day to day routine I always make sure to get some vegetables, potatoes and a nice piece of meat every now and then on the table. I'm trying to specialize a bit on pastas because I really like those, lasagna in particular. I've always considered it a bit fascinating that the real work is basically making the sauce, and not so much the rest around it.
When making lasagna I can easily spend up to three hours in the kitchen to make a good sauce. In general my sauces are based on milk, though I've recently also experimented with a tomato based sauce.
Take...
- 1 leek
- 150 - 200 g pork ("ham"!)
- 1 l milk
- Approx. 20 g of flour
- Approx. 50 g of butter
- 'Italian herbs' (herb mixture which is commonly available in Dutch supermarkets).
- Collection of raw vegetables ("rauwkost")
- Cheese
- lasagna sheets / ribbons / leaves (take your pick)
- Optional: anchovies
- Optional: lemon juice
- Optional: sambal
- Optional: ketjap
- Dish to put the lasagna in
Wherever I say "Approx." I mean as much, use as you see fit. I kinda lost track of the original recipe years ago and these days only focus on the main ingredients, more than often changing amounts if appropriate (for example; am I eating alone or will my girlfriend be joining me).
It's really simple, but good nonetheless. Chop up the pork into parts, do the same with the leek and start baking this. When you're done add extra butter (the approx. 50 g) and after the butter has melted add the flour.
In case you didn't know: if you simply add flour to something in order to try and thicken it up a little you'll more than often risk clumps. If you first mix the flour with butter and then add that mixture to the original you have a much better chance of avoiding lumps altogether. There might be more tricks like these, but this is the one I usually go by.
Now start adding milk and keep stirring until you got a nice sauce. The combination of butter, flour and milk can be used as a basis for a lot of sauces by the way. Either way, make sure you got the amounts right; otherwise you might risk cooking up something which tastes like flour, not the best idea.
Once your basic sauce is done its time to spice it up a little. The Italian herbs should give it a good taste, but these days I also often add anchovies and other optional herbs (coriander or nutmeg for example).
After that I always add a handful of those raw vegetables ("rauwkost") and optional some slices of cheese.
Then it's time to get your hands dirty (though washing them up front and continuing to do so is adviced). Butter up the dish and add the first layer of lasagna ribbons. Then add the sauce and on top of that add some of the raw vegetables. Then it's time for another layer of lasagna ribbons, sauce, vegetables, and so on.
I like adding cheese to the sauce as well as separate on top, but that's also something to vary on. Either way; I also like to add some cheese on top of the lasagna. For both taste as well as looks.
Then you need to put this into the oven, I usually let it go for 40 - 50 minutes or so
*. After which you should have a good, basic, lasagna dish.
Edit: At 180 degrees celcius, can't believe I missed that.
So far the basics. As mentioned above I also like adding anchovies these days, works quite well. I also tend to spend way too much time on adding herbs and the likes. I like my food spicy, but only if it still retains its taste. I don't, for example, like a lasagna sauce with a pepper taste, especially if the spicy bit solely comes from the pepper.
In that case it's a failure for me because you added pepper to spice it up, but in doing so also ruined the sauce (because it should not taste like pepper alone).
But of course you can add pepper and other herbs which, when done right, can "mask" the pepper taste (though I wouldn't recommend on trying this if you're not somewhat familiar with the approach already. practice makes perfect, sure, but you might risk a peppered up dish).
Alas.. optional stuff. I often like to add a little ketjap when the pork and leek are almost done. That gives a somewhat "dark" taste to the meat (as I like to call it, hard to describe taste). I also like to add some lemon juice to the sauce which can add somewhat of a fresh taste (and vitamin C
).
Same applies to the nutmeg (careful with that) and pepper.
And that's basically it.
Hope non-Dutch people can make some sense of this, if not then don't hesitate to demand more info
And bon appetit!
