Flashback Friday

Les and I will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary in May.  We started planning and booked our trip last May!  We are flying to Rome, spending a few days there, then joining a cruise ship that will take us to ports in Italy and Greece!  To say we are excited is an understatement!

I was rereading my posts from our 20th anniversary cruise last night.  Such incredible memories!

 Amazing sites!

Delicious food...

And so many laughs!

Friday Foodie

As I mentioned on Tuesday, I made homemade pasta this week. Why in the world did I do this? Well... it all started with a memory. This year we celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary in Rome. For lunch we had lasagna that I have not been able to forget! It was the BEST lasagna I have ever tasted. It was very thin and light and each bite was so full of flavor. I've thought about it many times and came to this conclusion:

The lasagna we ate in Rome had no ricotta cheese.

That's right. There was no ricotta cheese filling up the spaces between the pasta and the sauce. It was just pasta and sauce and a little bit of Parmesan cheese. Thus began my quest to make Lasagna a la Roma! I put on my Italian heritage hat and got to work. I read many, many recipes and tips and here is what I came up with:

Lasagna with Bolognese Sauce


Ingredients:

Fresh Pasta
3 1/3 cups all purpose flour
4 eggs
1/8 tsp. salt

Bolognese Sauce
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter
2 carrots, chopped fine
2 celery ribs, chopped fine
1 small onion, chopped fine
1 lb. lean ground beef
Salt, pepper, basil and parsley to taste
1 cup milk
1 cup white grape juice
2 28-oz. cans crushed tomatoes

You will also need 2 cups shredded cheese ~ I used Albertsons brand "Italian 6 cheese"

To make the pasta:
1. Make a mound with the flour on your work surface and scoop out a well in the middle. (After my cannoli making experience, I put my ingredients in a bowl instead of on a work surface and it worked fine.) Pour the eggs into the hole, add the salt, and work the eggs and the flour together till you have a smooth dough, adding just a drop of water if necessary, and no more. Knead the dough for ten to fifteen minutes, until it is smooth, firm, and quite elastic. Don't skimp on the kneading or the dough will tear while you're rolling it out.


2. Let the dough rest (wrapped in saran wrap) while you make the Bolognese sauce (see below).

3. Separate the dough into two parts. Flour your work surface and start to roll out the dough, rolling from the middle, flipping it occasionally, and flouring it as necessary to keep it from sticking. Keep on flipping and rolling till you have a sheet that's almost transparent -- as thin as a dime, or thinner, if you can manage it (the pasta will almost double in thickness while cooking). This was a workout! My muscles finally quit hurting yesterday...


4. Roll the sheet of dough up into a tube, then slice the tube into rounds of the desired width and shake the skeet out with your hands to free the strands. I then gave each piece a couple more rolls with my rolling pin to make them even thinner.


5. Set them to dry on a rack. Roll out the second piece and cut it as you did the first. (I wasn't sure how long the pasta needed to dry, so while it was drying I looked it up on the Internet. If you are going to cook the pasta right away, there is no need to dry it.)

6. Cook the pasta in salted, boiling water. Since it's fresh, it will cook in three to five minutes. Do not let it overcook! Soft wheat flour has much less gluten than the durum wheat used in commercially prepared dry pastas, and will consequently become flabby if it overcooks. I cooked four pieces at a time for only three minutes and layered them right into the lasagna pan.


To make the sauce:

1. Melt butter in large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion, celery and carrot and cook, stirring until vegetables have softened, about 5 minutes. Turn heat to high, add beef and cook, breaking up with a spoon, until no longer pink, about five minutes. Season with salt, pepper, basil and parsley.

2. Pour in milk and grape juice and bring to a boil. Lower heat and cook at a lively simmer until most of the liquid has evaporated, about 15 minutes. Note: most recipes call for white wine. Since we don't drink, I didn't have a clue what kind of wine to purchase. I realize that the alcohol cooks out (at least that's what I've been told), but did I really want the Apostolic checker at Albertsons to see me buying it? So I Googled "substitutions for wine in cooking" and one of the suggestions was white grape juice. That worked for me! Wine and grape juice both come from the same source... and we'll drink the leftover juice!

3. Stir in tomatoes, cover and cook on low while you roll out the pasta.


To put it all together:

1. Pour a little bit of sauce in the bottom of 9" x 13" pan then begin layering: pasta, 1/3 cup of cheese and sauce. I had three layers of everything, then had one more layer of sauce and topped it all with the rest of the cheese. I did have some pasta left over. Cover with foil. (I refrigerated this overnight because Les wasn't home on Monday night.) Bake at 350 for approximately 1 hour. Remove foil for last 15 minutes.


Nutritional info: 220 calories / 15.2 g protein / 23 g carbs / 7.95 g fat / 0.1 g fiber / 6 WW Points plus per serving. Makes 10 servings. This is as low in points as any lasagna I've ever made.

The verdict? Mama Mia! This was favoloso!! I will never make lasagna with ricotta cheese again. The fresh pasta and sauce blended together to make the most wonderful dish. The pasta was not chewy at all and had a mild, pleasing taste. Sorry I didn't get a picture of the finished product ~ we dug right in and enjoyed every bite! Even the leftovers were good. I've got some in the freezer and I'll let you know how it turns out when we decide to have some more.


Dear Santa:
This year for Christmas I want a pasta machine, please....
Sincerely, Kathy's back