Ever since I succesfully made a Tiramisu, I havent been cooking a lot lately. In fact, I have NEVER cooked since.
I was very jolly today in the morning 'cos I already had a head-to-toe plan for today's baking and I 200% expected it to be achievable. All hyped and fired up from getting the ingredients (and fucking spent RM 80 plus plus) to preparing them at home and getting started.
Everything went on quite well until the motherfucking cheebye food processor of mine decides to self-destruct at the peak of my determination. And that was only the beginning of the recipe where I was about to begin. One fault, and it crashes the energy altogether.
(I was so frustrated I was banging and throwing things until I broke the blender. I even broke into tears. Still wanna marry me hunn?)
And then, there was no choice but to use the last resort which I didn't really fancy.
Oh, I haven't mentioned that I actually planned to do lasagne today. I was browsing through All Recipes where I saw this one with quite some good reviews and it seemed quite promising so I nicked it. Lasagne Verdi al Forno. (click to view recipe I lazy to gunting and tampal here sorry)
If you read the review, most claimed it to be a real good Italian lasagne. Some even named it the best. So I followed exactly like the recipe but left out the chicken livers 'cos I have a yuck thing for animals' intestines. And I doubled the ragu and bechamel 'cos from the review some said that the sauces weren't enough so I so stewpid went and believe and doubled them.
I forgot, Europeans have a much bigger appetite than us Asian, eh? Or is it ME who has a small appetite? YA RIGHTTTT.
It was a mistake. So if you wanna do it, just follow exactly like the recipe. It shall be perfect by then. Aaaaaand because the food processor was dead, I couldn't blend my spinach into paste and make the lasagne sheets myself and was forced to use the instant ones. Tiu. =/ Otherwise, I have a strong feeling that the home-made lasagne sheets gonna be really yummy.
So anyway, here are some pictures for today;
Obligatory, can?
The spinach. Talking bout this, I was having a hard time looking for this in the market cos ALLL the vegetables on the rack was labelled in Malay! And I don't fucking know what's spinach in Malay! So I simply took the bayam cos I don't know what it's called in English either. I was right when I got home, grandma told me it's 'bo choy', spinach in Cantonese.
Part of the methods. Squeezing the water out from the steamed spinach before sending it to be grinded into paste, which obviously did not happen.
The motherfucking cheebye food processor which was dead. The blade was moving to damn slow. Something is wrong with the engine (?) or whatever which makes it work.
Melting the butter.
Sauting the bacon, onions, garlic (something extra I added to replace the chicken livers), celery and carrot.
Stirring in the minced chicken (a replacement for beef since my dad and grandma are religious Buddhists), pork and ham. Tough stage cos the minced meat were all stucked together like a dough, I had to seperate them as I cook them.
Mixing the melted butter and flour under heat.
Whisking them till a roux is formed.
After chilling a while, milk was added.
Adding 2 pinches of nutmeg and salt after the mixture thickened. Then, the bechamel was ready.
The ragu which was left to simmer for 20 minutes.
Oh, 2 types of cheese was called for this recipe's lasagne. FYI, different version of lasagne normally asks for different types of cheese. The last time I made, I used cheddar which was a BIG BIG mistake. You know, cheddar? The orange one? Or more easily recognised as the sliced ones we used to sandwich it between 2 slices of bread and eat it for breakfast? It tastes slightly salty right? Imagine, if I were to use a whole block of it. Yeap, it was freakin salty in the end. So this time I optioned for different cheese.
Parmesan. I'm sure everyone knows parmesan right? The one which smells like vomit.
Ricotta. Wanna know how does ricotta cheese looks like?
It looks like Snow White. Tasteless. Oh maybe a little sour but predominantly tasteless. It's not as smooth as cream cheese nor mascarpone. Ricotta looks like curdled milk.
Before.
After.
And that's all. The outcome when I slice it out wasn't really nice. It was kinda gross. Why?
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I doubled the ragu and bechamel, causing them too much to be contained. The whole baking tin wasn't high enough to support the layers, I had to lift up the aluminium foil.
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The bechamel was too runny. I figured something must have been wrong in the recipe. Gotta add more flour to thicken it.
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I didn't know how much was 1 pint for the ricotta, so I bought TOO MUCH, and added TOO MUCH in the lasagne. As a result, the whole thing looked somewhat like raspberry and vanilla icecream. A mixture of reds (the ragu), and whites (the ricotta cheese).
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I forgot to spread ricotta in one layer which in the end, because I didn't wanna waste the ricotta (it's fucking expensive ok I spent a bloody RM 39 on it alone), I put a THICK coat on the next layer. Which also explains why, when I slice them up the white stuff spurted out.
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Not enough parmesan topping.
Will definitely try again next time.
