Jan 15 2010
Family Feasting (with help from Hugh and Katie)
Cripes, it was ages ago now, but we had my family over on the 2nd (prior to seeing the excellent Off Kilter at the Fezzie Theatre- catch it if you can) for a big lunch and an afternoon of Monopoly.
It being the depths of snowy winter (actually, by the morning of the second it had all melted)(the evening was another matter though!) I wanted to make something simple and warming, where the brunt of effort could be carried out in advance so that I was calm on the morning. Lasagne seemed the obvious choice.
I decided to follow a recipe on the grounds that to do lasagne off the top of my head would be to try and emulate my mother’s lasagne, and let’s face it it’ll never be good enough (for me) will it? So I turned to Hugh F-W. His recipe for lasagne was published in the Guardian in Nov 08 and, in true Hugh style, has about a million ingredients. Beef mince plus bacon plus chicken livers plus milk in the sugo? Wow! (The internet has just informed me that milk is an addition typical of Bologna, interesting). But apparently it is not a Hugh original. Seems he got it (probably via his mum) from Katie Stewart. Which wasn’t a name that jumped out at me until Dougal pointed out that she is the author of his Young Cook’s Calendar, from whence our fabby flapjack recipe comes.
Like all good sugo, this requires a long cook- three hours. It smelled and looked amazing after just one! I decided that if I were going to follow someone else’s recipe I might as well go the whole hog, infusing my milk with bay and onion to make the béchamel and then weighing the ingredients (rather than just doing it by the light of day). I bought fresh egg pasta lasagne sheets (which have the advantage of being big and square, which is nicer than the quick cook dried ones you get). I also bought a 500ml tub of beef stock from Waitrose. I wasn’t going to go for the expense, but we didn’t have any beef stock cubes, I wouldn’t really have wanted a whole packet of beef stock cubes, but most compellingly, when I picked up the tub of stock in the shop it wobbled. It was abundantly clear that this tub was chock full of protein. The real shizzle. So I bought it. As I heated it up to add to the sugo it smelled wonderful. Definitely worth going for it you need a decent stock base for something, even if it costs a lot more than stock cubes (but less than a bit of beef to roast for bones!).
All in the lasagne definitely came up to scratch. It was warm and rich and lovely, with some baguettes on the side and a wee warm courgette salad. We were stuffed and had to go and play monopoly to work up an appetite for pudding!
Dougal had made a wonderful chocolate stout cake from the Green and Black’s Chocolate Recipe Book. I’d seen Nigella’s recipe before in Feast, but this is a slightly different beast. It was black as anything and looked as if it would be quite heavy but was in fact very light and easy to eat, but with a really silky rich flavour. Gorgeous!
It was actually a bit of a fiddle to make- you have to beat 100g of cocoa (clue: a lot ) into 400ml of Guinness which is hard going- next time we’d pour the Guinness at least an hour in advance to get rid of the head. But it was well worth his effort I feel!
it was a lovely afternoon, followed by a great evening x
the lovely pictures brought all the delightful flavours back!!!
I discovered the milk in the ragù thing from an Italian girl (from Bologna) a year or so ago and I have to say it makes a huge difference. Truly delicious. It mellows the tomatoes and softens the meat beautifully – truly delicious, and I now never cook ragù any other way.
Personally, I’d save fresh pasta for lighter, more simple sauces than lasagne. It seems a bit of a waste to put it into something where its texture can’t really shine through. There’s nothing better than fresh pasta with sage butter. I’m drooling at the very thought – and, sadly, I have to wait an hour for my flatmate’s pizza dough to rise before I can eat. Aargh!
i’d never considered the loss of texture…but then shop bought fresh pasta (which this was) is so ‘manufactured’ as to not really have a great deal of texture anyway. On the other hand my mum makes her own pasta quite a bit and I’d keenly eat lasagne made with that. But that’s a flavour issue.
Sage butter sounds like an excellent idea- and I’ve just discovered that there is a large sage bush in our (communal) back garden. Something for the -surely just around the corner- warmer nights.