Smoked fish lasagne

(About to follow is a paragraph of grammar/language commentary that you may want to skip)

Even if my day job did not require me to care about grammar and consistency in text, I’d have to anyway because of the really geek-like interest I have in languages. After starting this blog with a desire to keep it American – like the title says – and spell things sans u, I decided that because I’m in England I should spell as they do. Hence, the u returns, and z is largely banished.

All that to say, I’m keeping to the the ‘UK rules’ rule and spelling lasagne the British way because it has been made in the style that Brits tend to do. Oh yes, they do indeed have their own style. As lasagne is not a complicated concept, I’m sure there are parts of Italy that make it the same way, but I stick to my Italian grandmother’s lasagne recipe as my own authentic definition of southern European cuisine. If I ever make something based on that, it will be called lasagnA.

When T makes lasagne, he uses a white sauce rather than ricotta cheese. It makes for a much gooier, melt-in-your-mouth dish that’s perfect for coupling with garlic bread for a fondu-type approach. This lasagne holds together a little better on day two than it does fresh out of the oven, so be careful when serving the first couple of pieces that you don’t scoop out the filling from the middle in the process.

Ingredients:

2 small filets of salmon

2 x 320g packs of smoked fish pie mix (from Sainsburys)

2-3 cloves crushed garlic

About 2 cups (175g) of baby corn, optional

Ground pepper, to taste
Uncooked lasagne noodles

About 2 cups (150-175g) of grated cheddar cheese

White sauce ingredients:

½ cup (113g) butter

½ cup (65g) of plain flour

¾ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon thyme

4 cups (945ml) milk

Method:

1. Make the white sauce first. Melt the butter over low heat, then add the flour, salt and thyme. Stir constantly until the flour is mixed in smoothly, and the sauce begins to bubble. Turn off the heat, and stir in the milk. Turn the heat back on low and keep stirring until the sauce comes back up to the boil. Let it boil for one minute, stirring to prevent it burning to the bottom of the pot.

2. Lightly saute the fish in butter and garlic, seasoning with pepper. Add the baby corn, if desired. The fish will crumble and flake together. Stir in three-quarters of the white sauce to the cooked fish.

3. To assemble, start with a layer of half of the fish mixture, and top with one-third of the grated cheese. Place a layer of uncooked lasange noodles on top of this, then add the rest of the fish. Top this with another portion of grated cheese, as before. Add a second layer of lasagne noodles, then spread these with a thin layer of the remaining white sauce. Top with the rest of the grated cheese.

4. Bake according to the instructions on your pack of lasagne noodles.

If at first you don’t succeed…

What do you get from these ingredients (besides the name of where we usually shop)? Theoretically, it should be pasta.

Do you have a cookbook – or two – that you never use from but don’t want to get rid of because the recipes sound so fabulous? I have this kind of relationship with Mario Batali’s Simple Italian Food. Well, the other day I finally cracked it open with the intention of making one of the staples of most Italian food – pasta. I feel I owe it to my own Italian heritage – and my great-grandmother Assunta’s cooking skills – to master basics like this.

Scarily, you don’t have to use a bowl, because you keep the eggs and olive oil in the center of a mound of flour while you start to blend everything together. Something like this…

I had high hopes after seeing that this stuff stayed together long enough for me to take a picture. But then, I started to mix it. See, the problem with adding in flour with the beaten eggs and oil is that it takes away from the “well” walls. I was soon in a messy battle between falling flour and runny dough, but then gave up and just smooshed everything together so the dough would become firmer more quickly.

Once I actually had the dough, I thought that was the hard part done.  I rolled it out with my trusty wooden pin to the absolute thinnest I could go, cut it into uneven tagliatelle strips and put it in the fridge until dinner – a big mistake.

While in the fridge, the pasta meshed into a firm, cold mound that did not easily separate when dropped into a big pot of boiling water. The pasta was also very thick as I didn’t roll it out as thinly as I thought, so I added a little extra cooking time to compensate. Even so, the pile of tire-quality, congealed rubber was hardly the rustic homemade pasta I’d envisioned.

So, this is one to try again when I have done these two things: 

1. bought a pasta rolling machine
2. read about the proper techniques that are supposed to be followed when mixing and then storing pasta

There’s another portion left in the fridge for tonight’s dinner…can’t wait…