March Challenge!

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

This challenge consisted of three parts, all made from scratch: spinach pasta, ragu, and bechamel sauce. I was excited to make this challenge as it gave me a chance to make spinach pasta, which is one of my most favorite things ever. I had a bit of trouble with it, though. It was just too dry, so I added and extra egg and a splash of water and it turned out fine. I cheated a bit and used a pasta maker to roll out the dough partway, and then finished it up by hand.


Slightly embarrassing confession: until I moved to Vancouver, I didn't realize that racks like the one above were for clothes drying. Some part of me knew that they weren't designed for drying pasta, but that's all we ever used ours for when I was growing up.

I made the meat sauce almost exactly as in the recipe, minus the meat, of course. I added some garlic and herbs to make it a bit more flavorful. The recipe makes too much for the lasagne, but it was amazing on pizza. I always get a bit nervous adding milk to acidic things, because it separates, but it came together fine in the end.

The bechamel sauce was simple and delicious. I found that when I put the whole thing together, though, I had more lasagne noodles than my pan would fit. I also failed to distribute the Parmesan cheese equally between the layers, instead splashing it about whenever I remembered. I also forgot to cover it with foil during the fist part of baking. Oops! Oh well, it turned out great. We had Fitzy over for dinner and she thought it was awesome. Definitely a lot of work, but there's nothing as delicious as homemade pasta.


You can find the recipes here.