Pasta Time!

Welcome to my kitchen! Before I get started, let me introduce myself. My name is Jennifer, and I love to eat. LOVE to eat! I've always enjoyed eating, but didn't start cooking until a few years ago. My permanent recipe taster and photographer is my wonderful husband Jonathan. He's great about taking pictures for me, and he's even better at eating the food I make!

So, why not just cook the food and eat it? Why write about it here? Well, for a girl who loves food, writing about it is fun! I hope that you'll enjoy coming on my adventures with me. Which brings me to my first Daring Bakers (http://www.thedaringkitchen.com/) adventure...

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

When I read the challenge I was pretty excited. This lasagna called for fresh spinach pasta and a bechamel sauce, both of which I hadn't made since culinary school. I was anxious to see if I still had it...I really enjoyed making pasta in school! The only hitch was that in school I had a pasta machine to roll out the dough and here in my apartment it would just be my rolling pin and me. Nevertheless, I was confident I could make a pretty good pasta with just my rolling pin.

I chose a Sunday afternoon to make my lasagna. I started with the ragu. It called for several cuts of expensive meat, so I substituted with diced mushrooms (portobell0, shitake, cremini) and eggplant. Here's the beginning of my ragu...

Just a little mirepoix going (carrot, onion, celery) in some olive oil. I got a little caught up in the cooking, and neglected to ask Jon to take more pictures of the ragu. Next I was on to the bechamel, which I didn't think to have him take a picture of at all! It turned out lovely though, so it was on to the pasta...

What you're looking at here is a big mound of flour, with an egg and spinach in the middle. To make the pasta you just mix the egg with the spinach, and work in the flour until it forms a ball. It's fun, and it tastes great, but it does take time. So, I'm sure you're wondering, how did the kneading and rolling out by hand go? My noodles were a little thicker than I would've liked and my arms got sore, but my pasta, well, let's just say Jon looked at getting a pasta attachment for my KitchenAid so I can make more! :)

So now I had all my pieces, I just had to put it together. I layered my bechamel, noodles, ragu and grated parmesan until I ran out, and put it in the oven to bake. Here's the finished lasagna!

It's hard to see how delicious it was, but it turns out taking food pictures isn't as easy as it looks! Just imagine layer after layer of fresh pasta, vegetarian ragu, bechamel sauce and parmesan cheese...yeah, it was good! :)

Thanks again to Mary, Melinda and Enza for picking this challenge!