Spring asparagus lasagna (lasagne agli asparagi)

 

 

I know it is spring when:

 

I feel the constant urge to buy fresh flowers to brighten up the apartment

 

It is design week in Milan

 

Every pigeon, butterfly, ladybug and cat around me is doing it

 

I can't stop photographing the wisteria outside my window (see last post)

 

My solitary early morning run suddenly gets crowded

 

I start cutting 40 little nails and toenails 2x a week instead of 1x (is it just my kids' overall growth that is so affected by hot weather?)

 

I stop wearing socks, but keep an emergency pair in my handbag (fancy!)

 

Every previously hidden nook and cranny of the apartment is visible and screaming "clean me!"

 

Asparagus, and other veggies make their appearance at the market

 

 

How can you tell it is spring?

 

 

 

 

Moussaka-inspired lasagna

I am sure at least some of you are wondering why the heck I didn’t just make moussaka. I'll get back to that in a minute. First I wanted to share with you one of those unique moments of motherhood.

Those of you who have (or have had) young children know that many earnest conversations take place in the bathroom. Little ones rarely answer important questions if posed directly, but they somehow seem to reveal a lot of essential information in the most unexpected moments. We had one of those mother-daughter moments just last night.

My daughter: “Mommy, when we grow up we leave to go and look for a husband, right?”

Me: “…” (quick mental note to self: never ever let daughter watch another princess movie).

My daughter (misunderstanding my snort of laughter): “no, I mean, not go all around the world. I mean in the city we live. I’m scared, I don’t want to go”.

Me: “Sweetie, first of all your husband could be from anywhere in the world. Secondly, there are a lot of things you will do when you grow up. You will study something you are passionate about and hopefully find a calling or a job you will love and that will fulfill you. You will travel and meet lots of people and make many friends. And maybe on one of those trips or when you are having fun with your friends you will meet the person you will fall in love with. And then maybe you'll get married, or maybe you won't. You certainly don’t have to. But when it is the right time it will happen, you won’t look for it” I sentenced, proud of my women's lib talk.

My daughter: “But I want to get married. Voglio cercare marito (I want to look for a husband. I just had to leave it in Italian for those who could appreciate the choice of words of my five year old, so quaint and old fashioned, something out of a nineteenth century novel)”.

Me: “Well then you should (get married I mean). Love will find you when the time is right”.

My daughter: “But I’m scared anyway”.

How did I get from trying to convince my daughter to eat her vegetables to trying to dissuade her from becoming a wife as her sole reason of adulthood in a matter of a few days?

Which leads me back to where I started. Why did I make a moussaka inspired lasagna instead of a moussaka?

Simple: I had some fresh packaged lasagna that needed using up, two large eggplants that I didn’t know how to convince my kids to eat and a jar of ragù sitting in my fridge. If you decide to make it from scratch, you could use lamb for your ragù, but I had beef ragù. And since my ragù was the Italian kind, lacking those flavors so unique to Greek moussaka, I made a cinnamon flavored béchamel sauce.

 

I am aware that eggplant (aubergine for many of you) is no longer in season in this part of the world. I made this a few weeks ago when it still was. I decided to post this recipe because so many of my readers are in the other hemisphere. You Australians, New Zealanders, Chileans and so forth and so on must be sick and tired of reading recipes for stews and gingerbread when you are getting ready to pull out your flipflops and head to the beach. So this is for you, although I have to admit that lasagna isn’t exactly beach fare.

It served its purpose at my house. The roasted eggplant puree was perfectly nestled between the béchamel sauce and the ragù and although adult taste buds can easily detect the smoky flavor, my children didn’t and gobbled it up. After they swallowed the last bite, I of course informed them of what they had so much enjoyed, as I always do when I have to resort to this method. They giggled.

Roasted vegetable lasagna with saffron bechamel sauce

My mother is in the process of moving and while we were visiting this summer, I went through some of her old books and picked a few to take home. I chose one in particular that I had seen in her bookshelves for years but had never given a second glance, not realizing what it was about. Its English title - I have the Italian translation - is Great Cooks and Their Recipes: From Taillevent to Escoffier and was written by Anne Willan, founder of the prestigious cooking school Ecole de Cuisine de La Varenne, back in 1977.

Now, anybody who knows me knows that I am mildly obsessed with history. Not really dates and wars and rulers, more like everyday life in all periods, but particularly the Middle Ages. I have always been intrigued by people's domestic life through time. I love visiting museums that illustrate the lives in cities, towns and homes of the past and have read many books on this subject. In law school, I have to admit to being more interested in the case studies of Ancient Rome than in most other subjects because it gave me an insight on how people actually lived on a day to day basis at the time. My friends tease me because whenever we drive down roads in the middle of nowhere or at night I say things like "I wonder what it would have been like to live here in the Middle Ages, without seeing a soul for months"; or I wonder what life would have been like in one of the many Medieval towns scattered throughout Italy.

It turns out this book, with its yellowed pages, is filled with information and illustrations about food, eating habits and cooking from the Middle Ages on.  Some of these facts were known to me, others weren't, but they are all fascinating. Did you know, for example, that in the Middle Ages people were not served large chunks of meat or whole roasted animals as we like to imagine? Meat in those days was incredibly tough (especially from larger animals), it was often salted, dried, smoked or pickled to preserve it in the winter and most of the time it was way past its prime so it was common to break it down as small as possible, often puréeing it, and to smother it in sauces and spices to cover the unpleasant taste. A meat dish was considered excellent when you couldn't tell what part of the animal it came from and even more so if you didn't even know what animal you were eating. And did you know that sugar was commonly used on savory dishes? Or that banquets were public and subjects were allowed to watch their sovereigns, the rich and the powerful feast as a means of entertainment?

It was also interesting to read that one of the most ancient forms of pasta in Italy were lasagne, already present in Roman times and prepared in one form or the other throughout history. I think all this reading of the Middle Ages unconsciously inspired the dish I made for my guests over the weekend, a lasagna with no trace of meat or tomatoes but rich with the warm color and flavor of saffron.

This lasagna was a first for us and it turned out to be a success, besides being extremely practical.

First of all, you can prepare it ahead of time so you won't have to cook while your guests are in the other room having fun and drinking all that good wine. Second of all, it is the perfect way to use up the various left over vegetables in your fridge. Last and not least, it is a great vegetarian meal.

There are no exact amounts, ingedients or techniques for this recipe. You can use pretty much any vegetable you like and fill the lasagna however you think appropriate. These are just general guidelines.

Trilogy: ragù, bechamel sauce and lasagne

The week end started pretty badly.

Our little one brought home some nasty germs from day care on Wednesday and by Friday the whole family was hit by the dreaded stomach flu. I woke up early feeling pretty awful only to remember that F was leaving on a business trip and staying away a day and a night.

I had two choices: give in to my feeling of impending doom and nausea or pretend it wasn't happening and go to work. I opted for the second in a moment of relative well-being only to regret it soon after. I had to get some urgent things done at work and decided I would rush home once everyone had left the house and lie in bed feeling sorry for myself. Until the call came: our older one revisited her breakfast just as they were walking out the door. Several calls ensued to organize a baby sitter and let husband leave during the craziest part of my work day (before the stock market opens at 9:00am). This, while feeling like worshipping the Porcelain God myself and dreading the 36 hours stretching in front of me alone with the kids. All I really wanted to do was curl up in fetal position under my desk and cry.*