Kids, and many, knew that I love watching cooking shows. They also knew that I am a theorist, not a experimentalist, of culinary arts. For that matter, I am not even a good enough critic. Heavy smoking during my youthful years irreversibly damaged my taste buds.
Why did I, then, attempt to make Lasagna? Something reserved exclusively for restaurants and experienced cooks?
Kids gave me the birthday present of American Test Kitchen and expected something delicious, from me I read the Lasagna recipe three times, cross-checked with allrecipes.com, made sure that I understood the concept, and picked the time when I am guaranteed to be the only victim of the outcome to experiment. Oh, they gave me the book slightly over a decade ago.
Lasagna has three parts: the sauce, the cheese, and the noodles. Clearly the key challenge is the sauce, therefore I chose the most traditional one: meat sauce.
Kid said it is a 3-hour process, so I shopped in the morning and began cooking at 2:30pm for a 6pm dinner time. I chose Wife’s Le Cleuset, trying to get every possible edges that existed. I kept on sampling the sauce until it tasted like a standard meaty pizza. Hey, if the noodles and cheeses are OK, I might have something edible.
At 5pm, the oven, at 375°F, received my dinner. Forty minutes later, I took out the Lasagna and let it cool for 10 more minutes. Then I dived in!
It did not taste half bad! I would even let other people try this.
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