The World’s Best Lasagna

This post essentially marks the end of my first semester at UMBC.

H-u-r-r-a-y!! This, in itself calls for all the celebrations irrespective of all the festivities of this wintry season! The end of my first semester at UMBC has officially marked the end of a dreary six months. This year has not been easy with all the transfer of school and people around me. I have failed terribly to adjust to some situations while managed to live through few tougher ones!

At this point I am quite confused with my tenure as a graduate student. I often feel I am still in my first year, while the truth is that I am already half way through my second year. I guess, the major reason of this confusion roots back to my transfer of school from Texas A&M to UMBC this Fall. It often gets tricky to keep track of the amount of time spent at each school. So, if you see, I spent two semesters at Texas A&M and one at UMBC, which translates to the fact that I am just 6 months old to this school and this city. Having said that, I think this is also one of the reasons I still feel so fresh in this city, as if I just started.  However, this freshness is hard to feel when one is drowned in the web of assignments and mid-term examinations and troubles of life. But now that the semester is over, I feel great!

Throughout the last few weeks, which were presumably the toughest and busiest few days of this semester, we at our abode had given up cooking altogether. I was tired of the taste of food made by me and Aniruddha was busy with his submission deadlines. His deadlines ended and mine dropped in and this resulted in a pile of doordash and Papa-Johns pizza delivery bills stacked in the recycle bin. The sad and ludicrous characteristic of developing the habit of ordering food from restaurants and surviving on frozen meals is that eventually it turns you lazy. You tend to give up cooking as a choice rather than having to give up forcefully. However, Aniruddha insisted me on starting to cook again. And so we decided.

The best lasagna in the world. The recipe was looked up online at Allrecipes.com. They called it “World’s Best Lasagna”. The recipe looked a little ingredient heavy, but I bet you, it was all worth it. The day before the cooking is always the more important and tiring day, because that is when you hunt down the ingredients at a grocery store that has sausages on the east end and lasagna sheets on the west end. However, we did a good homework to jot down the list.

The night of 22^nd, my dining table was overflowing with all the ingredients for the lasagna. That brings me to the enumeration of the ingredients which included:

• 1lb sweet Italian sausage,
• 0.75lb ground beef,
• One large white onion (We used the whole onion minced even though it was mentioned in the recipe that we need only half a cup),
• 3 garlic cloves (crushed even though the recipe mentioned 2 cloves needed)
• 1 (6 ounce) cans of tomato paste
• 2 (6.5 ounce) cans of tomato sauce.
• White sugar and salt (It is always hard for me to give the exact amount of salt and sugar added, because I believe it is always up to you and the people you feed how salty-sugary you want the sauce to be. So, I would say add salt and sugar according to your taste preferences.)
• 1 table spoon chopped basil leaves (In the recipe they mentioned 1.5 teaspoons of dried basil leaves. I however used fresh basil leaves to enhance the fresh taste)
• 4 tablespoons of freshly chopped parsley
• Total seasoning for cooking and grilling (I use the Lawry’s Casero Total Seasoning because it is a wholesome one including salt, onion, garlic, parsley, oregano and cilantro. I used this instead of the Italian seasoning mentioned in the recipe. It is also hard to mention the exact amount added. I added it according to my taste and would recommend you to do the same).
• Chilli powder (This is my improvisation to the recipe. The chilli powder used here is available in any Asian store. I got it from the Catonsville branch of Lotte Plaza Market. The recipe uses ground black pepper. But I personally cannot take the spiciness of black pepper; hurts my throat. I used about 2 teaspoons of chilli powder because I like it spicy. You can use less than that if you prefer it less spicy)
• 12 lasagna sheets
• 16-ounce jar of ricotta cheese
• 1 egg
• 0.75 lb of sliced mozzarella cheese
• 0.75 cups of grated parmesan cheese

I skipped the 28 ounces of crushed tomatoes. I felt we had enough tomato sauce and tomato paste to make up the meat sauce already. I also skipped adding fennel seeds because I am not a big fan of using it in my cooking unless the dish specifically requires the essence of them. I believe fennel seeds have a very characteristic smell and that should not be wasted in a hub of other contradicting stronger essences.

23^rd morning at around 11am, Aniruddha was struggling to open the cans of the tomato paste and the tomato sauce and helped me mince the onion. This was the first time we were using the white onion, we are more used to the red ones. While he was at it, I defrosted the ground beef and the sausages. I would not say I was highly successful in cleanly peeling off the outer covering of the sausage, but I did alright in dismantling them.

The sausages, ground beef, minced onion and garlic cloves were cooked in a large pan over the stove on mild heat until the meat turned red to brown in color. The tomato paste and tomato sauce were stirred in with the seasonings of chopped basil and parsley, chilli powder, salt, sugar and total seasoning. A small amount of water was added to help the cooking, lest the spices stick to the pan and burn. The ingredients were left to get cooked with the lid placed over the pan. I kept checking the status of the sauce every 2 mins, sprinkling some water and stirring it well to prevent any sticking. After about cooking the ingredients for about 15 minutes, with the lid covered, it was cooked for about another 7-10 minutes with the lid open to let the water evaporate a little letting the sauce thicken in consistency.

Generally at this point I am interested in knowing if I am going in the right direction. It is almost like a puzzle. If you know that at least you are thinking straight, or seeing things through you will solve it. So, I summoned Aniruddha to the mission and accomplished the test results. He approached with the tasting spoon and took a sip of the meat sauce. I seemingly had passed the test of the right amounts of salt and sugar and seasonings without a doubt. Everything was in proportion, he said.

In the meantime, Aniruddha prepared the cheese dressing. The ricotta cheese, added to my famous yellow soup bowl was combined with the one egg and seasoned with a half teaspoon of salt and the remaining part of the chopped parsley. The yellow soup bowl is one which was bought with the motive of drinking soup from. However, the bowl turned out to be too shallow for the purpose. In spite of the failed motive of the bowl, I have managed to accomplish almost every task starting from whipping in a cake mix to drinking soup from, in it.

A separate large pot of lightly salted water was brought to boil. The lasagna sheets were cooked in this for 8-10 minutes. The water was then drained and the noodles rinsed in cold water to avoid sticking to each other. The lasagna was then assembled in a 9X13 inch baking tray with the first bottom layer of a 1.5 cups of meat sauce, followed by 6 overlapping lasagna sheets spread lengthwise. This was followed by a layer of the ricotta cheese dressing with a layer of sliced mozzarella cheese on top. The mozzarella cheese slices were then topped with 1.5 cups of meat sauce, the lasagna sheets, the cheese dressing and another layer of mozzarella one after the other just like before. Lastly, another 1.5 cups of the meat sauce was spread on top and the Parmesan cheese was sprinkled over it evenly. The baking tray was then covered with an aluminum foil sprayed with some cooking spray to prevent sticking of the cheese to the foil and transferred to a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. It was baked for 25 minutes with the foil on, and 15 minutes with the foil taken off.

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When Aniruddha took out the fully baked lasagna from the oven, it was smoky hot. Fortunately, the file alarm was still tolerant towards us.

After about 15 minutes, I cut out two slabs of the world’s best lasagna on two plates. We sat on the couch. Our matinee for the afternoon was Leon, The Professional. Aniruddha took a bite of the lasagna, looked at me and said, “It is hard to say that it is home-cooked.”

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It was indeed the World’s Best Lasagna.