Lasagna Express

In some occassions, helping my mom around the kitchen is a good learning experience. I love food. I sometimes love to study about food, and its preparation, and other trivial tidbits about it. The different things food plays with your senses only serves to perk my intrest in them even more.

In my recent trip back to my parent's home in Rizal last New Year's eve, I see my mom preparing Baked Macaroni and Lasagna. No one prepares meat sauce like my mom. The combined texture of the gounded pork with the right hint of tomato, saltiness and sweetness keeps me coming back to learn how she prepares her sauces.

I already learned how she 'double-cooks' the grounded pork or beef to create the texture and flavor I grew up with. Its where you boil the grounded meat in its own juices, its natural flavor, until the added water is evaporated, then cook it from the oil it produced...sealing in the natural saltiness and flavor of the meat. But the recipe of the sauce itself changes over time. Maybe its to better suit the changing taste as we grew up.

While preparing for the New Year celebration, we were running out of time with the Lasagna. My mom forgot to make the bechamel sauce (which I hate). I told her its okay, no need to make the bechamel. My mom told me that its what makes the Lasagna soft moist and creamy after baking. Since we were out of time, she decided to mix the ingredients of the bechamel to the meat sauce. That means adding the flour, milk and half a bar of butter in the tomato meat sauce I was cooking. It thought its going to ruin the flavor of the meat. To my surprise, what resulted is a creamy textured tomato meat sauce with the same flavor, a bit less salty, but delicious non the less.

While laying the pasta with the sauce, I said "I dub thee, Lasagna Express, a fast and easy way to prepare Lasagna without the fuss of making two sauces at the same time." To which my mom laughed at.

(Later that evening, my mom still made a seperate batch with bechamel sauce)