I’ve by chance purchased too many bins of dried lasagne sheets. How can I take advantage of them up?
Jemma, by e-mail
That is sounding all too acquainted to Jordon Ezra King, the person behind the A Curious Cook dinner e-newsletter. “It’s humorous Jemma asks this,” he says, “as a result of I used to be on this very same state of affairs earlier this yr after over-catering for a consumer dinner.” The very first thing to say is there’s no instant rush, he provides: “It sounds apparent, however you may hold the bins for a very long time.” Thankfully for Jemma and her procuring mishap, nevertheless, lasagne sheets are additionally versatile, and their form doesn’t need to dictate what you do with them.
With this in thoughts, soupy issues are good to get on the weekly dinner rotation, be that pasta e ceci or minestrone, the latter being the go-to of alternative for Mattie Taiano, chef and co-owner with Ravneet Gill of Gina’s in Chingford, Essex: “Simply bash up the lasagne sheets with a rolling pin and chuck in all of the bits.” Theo Randall, chef-patron of Cucina Italiana on the InterContinental London Park Lane, in the meantime, would break the pasta lengthways and cook dinner it in boiling salted water: “Add that to a ragu-like sauce with a few of the pasta cooking water and a beneficiant knob of butter. Simply be sure you cook dinner the pasta and sauce collectively for no less than three minutes, in order that they mix in texture and flavour.”
Ezra King and Randall’s subsequent port of name can be the fragile silk handkerchiefs of Liguria in north-western Italy. “In the event you have been to make the pasta your self, you’d primarily be making lasagne sheets anyway,” Ezra King says. Historically, these pasta squares are layered up with pesto for mandilli de sea, for which Randall cooks lasagne in boiling salted water earlier than lifting them into a big frying pan with a ladleful of the cooking water. Add some (ideally selfmade) contemporary pesto, then cook dinner, tossing, and serve topped with grated parmesan and black pepper.
Jemma might additionally stuff and roll her boiled lasagne sheets into cannelloni, Gill advises, and be as adventurous as she likes with the filling (suppose squash and chard, or spinach, sausage and ricotta). However it could be clever to not dismiss lasagne itself fully out of hand, Ezra King says: “The bolognese model dominates folks’s creativeness, however lasagne is far more of a framework.” That line of considering can “set you free”, he provides, be that by roasting pumpkin to layer between pasta sheets with bechamel (“swap the same old nutmeg for sage”) and possibly fonduta. “In the event you go farther south in Italy, they put little meatballs in there, or hard-boiled eggs,” Ezra King notes. “There are not any guidelines to lasagne, which is form of cool.”
If time is a priority, in the meantime, there are a number of methods to getting it on the desk quicker. “A superb one is to combine the ragu and bechamel collectively, so that you’re not having to spoon them in individually,” Ezra King says. “In spite of everything, as soon as baked, they’re going to mix into one another, anyway.”
If all else fails, in the meantime, Gill can be inclined to get a bow on these bins: “You could possibly at all times give them away as presents,” she says. Properly, it’s almost *whispers it* Christmas.
