Pasta! Wonderful, Perfect, Exceptional or a Disaster?
March 27th 2009 07:12
Lasagna Noodle s
Pasta! Wonderful, Perfect, Exceptional or a Disaster?
I'm ¼ Sicilian, my palette comes from that part of my background. I love all foods involving pasta, or Italian ingredients. Give me a dish with loads of garlic, basil, oregano, fresh tomatoes and olive oil and I'm one happy camper.
My grandfather brought over the family recipe for Lasagna. It is absolute perfection, I've never had anything come close. Briefly, it involves a red sauce cooked for no less than eight hours, Italian sausage, both hot and mild, little tiny meatballs, hand made, cooked in garlic and olive oil, garlic in the meat of course, and then put in the sauce to add more flavor. Before all this happens, the sausage is precooked in red wine, a good one, something you can drink. Then it is broken up, and added to the sauce, the red wine de-fatted and slowly added to the sauce as needed, which it is, of course. If you get the feeling that red wine is used a lot in my grandfather's cooking, you're right. While the sauce, with meat added is cooking, we get the cheeses ready, not one cheese, nor just two, but five? First, naturally is the Mozzarella, then the Ricotta, lots of Ricotta, then the Provolone, the Parmesan, and finally we have the Romano. All these cheeses are layered between the sauce, the pasta and piled high in pans. I never learned to make less then enough to feed 20 or more, it is a family tradition.
I have now given you a brief description of one of my favorite dishes, one I learned to make from my father, who learned it from his mother, who learned it from her husband, and his aunts, the Sicilian ones. Now I'm going to explain how I ended up in one of the worlds best hospitals, John Hopkins no less, by eating an Americanize version of Lasagna.
It was in the early 70's, I was in my hippie phase as were most of my friends. One weekend a friend and I took a trip to Baltimore, Maryland (for those of you who don't know the states). We were going to visit some of her friends, and have a night on the town.
We arrived in Baltimore in the late afternoon. Had a couple of beers, talked and did whatever those of us who were not really in touch with the world did, and then decided to have dinner. My friend, whose name escapes me, announced she'd make dinner. I thought, good, I don't think I want to cook. Then she announced she'd make lasagna, my ears perked up at this, images of my family's food danced before my eyes, only to be dashed when she asked for, first ketchup, then American cheese, and hot dogs! Hot dogs in Lasagna! No! It couldn't be, oh, and pasta noodles, she did ask for the proper pasta at least. I was aghast!
“No,” I cried, “you can't make lasagna with ketchup, American cheese and hot dogs, it isn't right, it will taste like, well, not lasagna!” I did use another word but this is a public forum and I'll refrain, just assume it rhymed with trap. I offered to go to the store and buy the proper ingredients and make the dish myself, cutting out the homemade sauce, no time. I was reassured that this would be great she'd done it hundreds of times. I remained doubtful.
About an hour later, the food, I can't call it lasagna because the only thing that resembled lasagna was the shape of the noodles, which were underdone and over salted. The rest was, well, vile is the only term I can think of. I ate, little, very little but unfortunately that little was enough. It seems that she put something else in the dish, some bourbon that was in the kitchen, why she decided to add bourbon to ketchup and such I'll never know, but she did. What she didn't know was that I'm highly allergic to bourbon, even cooked. Hence my trip to John Hopkins. I remained overnight, sicker than I'd been in a long time, I wanted to die, I didn't but I wanted to... I've learned my lesson, I will never eat anyone's lasagna but my own, my mother's or my father's. My sister doesn't know the recipe so I won't eat hers either.
There is a moral to this story, it's a simple one. If offered any ethnic dish but someone who is not of that ethnicity, and hasn't yet learned the culinary necessity of using ingredients native to the country of origin, don't eat the food! And always watch what goes in the pot, it might not be what you expected and it might be something you wish you'd never heard of, ever!
There are more pasta stories, not nightmares, thank heaven, but good ones. I'll convey them to you in the future, and maybe I'll let you know the proportions of ingredients for the family lasagna, but maybe not, it is a family secret after all.
My next little culinary adventure will be the search for good Chinese food, and Dim Sum, in Texas. An adventure that is still taking place.
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