Saturday, September 12, 2009

Kids in the Kitchen- Lasagna

For my first Kids in the Kitchen post, I wanted to tell you about Big Bro's lasagna. This lasagna was nothing fancy; indeed, as you'll see from the "recipe" (which is barely that), I have been pretty vague about the ingredients. (Google will have a zillion proper lasagna recipes.) For Big Bro and I, the fun bit was the assembly and eating.

Lasagna
Tomato-based meat sauce I made mine the night before the assembly and didn't note exactly what went in. It was roughly: tomato passata, veal and pork mince, grated or minced vegies (so that the pickier and almost-toothless members of the family could eat it easily), parsley (as always trying to eat our surplus crop), seasonings

Lasagna pasta sheets -I cooked mine beforehand; you could also use the instant sort.

"White sauce" topping- rather than the usual béchamel sauce, as a lower fat version Big Bro combined 400mL plain yoghurt, 1 egg, 1/2 cup parmesan cheese

Cheese- we used thickly sliced mozarella

*I've avoided too many specific quantities, because it depends on the size of your dish*


Big Bro's first job was to "paint" the dish with olive oil. He would have been happy to do this all day!







Next the assembly took place: I spread sauce while Big Bro covered it with the pasta. A bit like Duplo...




Once we reached the top of the dish, we covered the top pasta layer with white sauce and cheese. Big Bro is a cheese fiend, so I'm sure he sampled plenty of pieces!






The lasagna was cooked at 180C for an hour, until heated through and the cheese was melted (will be affected by the size and thickness, and whether the sauce goes in hot or cold.) I need to take a sabbatical with WokkingMum to learn a bit more about food photography. Not a great photo, but it tasted good!






Assembly time (with the pasta cooked and meat sauce ready): maybe 30 minutes with a few distractions from Little Bro ("No, he needs let go my chair!")...

2 comments:

Ponderings said...

Hmmm... brave woman, V, allowing kids anywhere near the unassembled lasagne! I've been too chicken in the fear that I'll be washing the meat sauce out of hair and clothes for days. :)
My boys have been helping me largely with baking for the past few years. Muffins and biscuits are a fave as they could do just about all of it on their own with a little guidance. Breakfasts are also a family effort - pancakes, scrambled eggs etc. Unfortunately dinner prep time is usually madness at our place, so I'm loathe to let them anywhere near the kitchen!

_vTg_ said...

LOL- Big Bro is pretty good at keeping things in their rightful place, thanks to his neat and helpful streaks... TOUCH WOOD!! And the threat of hair washing is usually enough to keep that department clean!!

I find baking sweet stuff is a bit harder as the unassembled product is a bit tastier than for lasagna (apart from the cheese) so there is a bit more sampling and spilling... I have even had the occasional bite taken out of the butter :-P

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