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Thursday, November 02, 2006

Lasagne

Last saturday some girl-friends willfully offered their hands to me, just to taste once again my wonderful pastalforno, also known as Lasagne(sorry, no piccies of them)... being my pretty lady there, I could not accept any of these offer (I'm glad for receiving them though!), but I nonetheless promised that I'd let them know how to prepare their own...

and here I am.

let's start. You need three things, other than slab-shaped pasta, to make a good dishful: ragu', a.k.a. Bolognese, Besciamella's sauce, which sounds italian but it's french in origins, and some more fillings.

First, the ragu': my mum makes it light, so get away from pre-made bolognese sauce you can buy in the market, they're just choke-full of meat and waaay too heavy. just get some minced meat, beef but also pork or turkey are good choices, let's say 200gr. that should be enough to make a lot of sauce. last time, I stir fried 200gr of turkey with some oil, finely chopped onion, a leaf of laurel and a garlic clove until the meat was cooked. then i poured in a big can of tomatoes (800gr). after that, you're pretty much done. add salt as you like, and may be some nut-meg powder. add whatever spice you like 'cause the more, the merrier the sauce. do not exagerate with quantities, though. spices are there to enhance flavour, not to cover everything else. this is particularly true for chilli. I dropped a whole dry chilli in the sauce. let it simmer until the tomato is cooked, and the sauce is not too thick... I'd give you a viscocity number but have no viscosimeter in my kitchen (yet)...

Then the besciamella/bechamelle... you can buy it, sure, but it's not worth a dime compared to the one you can make yourself: you just need butter, milk, flour and nutmeg (again!)... melt the butter and make a slurry (chemical term for paste) with the flour... let's say 50gr of butter, one spponful of flour... once the slurry is homogeneous, add the milk slowly, keeping the whole thing warm, but not boiling.
always stirring to avoid the flour to aggregate, add some nutmeg powder, then a pince of salt. stir and stir and stir while the milk evaporates, until the sauce reaches the correct viscosity... now you're in business!

oh, you need the filling, I'd go for cooked/roasted ham slices, and some more cheese - emmenthal is a good choice, or some grated mozzarella for pizza.

and the pasta, of course, emiliane barilla or whatever brand you favour...

just layer them down raw, or pre-cook them if you think one of your sauces is a bit too thick and may not have enough water to cook them once in the oven...

anyway, now layer down in a square oven pan, alternating them, ragu''n'besciamella (mix them with a spoon, pasta, ham'n'cheese, and again and again... after four or five layer, you should have enough...

layer some pasta on the top, and cover the whole thing with the leftover ragu'n'bechamelle... don't exagerate...

now, you can keep it in the fridge for half a day or some more, to let the sauces permeate the pasta...

or if you're in a hurry, just pre-heat the oven at 180, and stick the pan inside for, like, 45 minutes...

check half way through, the sauces should start to boil away, and the pasta on top should not burn, but get colored...

then the bell rings, take it out and enjoy!!! ciao!

...and, we're back!

back from the halloween crazy...

I've been to the ardennes, for a day of snooping around, and cooking. I did get a pheasant and I stuffed it with vegetables, and slammed it in the oven for one hour and a half...

my GF was doubtful at first, noticing how the poor thing stank...

but after roasting it, the bloody stench went away, and she chopped away at her part...

pity she didn't like it stuffed with apples... next time will look for some recipes on the i.net to make it better.

or may be i'll look for some other meat...

biche?

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

thirteeen scary things for halloween

it's a very american-centered article, but ehy, what the hell, it's fun to read... or scary, since all the people depicted in there are real...

so, there you go, the scariest candidate president, the scariest judge, the scariest eco-vandal, and so on...

ciao ciao for today, I'm off to Liege/Luik for a short span of holidays, and thesis-writing...

MC Hawking

click on the link, then "Watch this movie", and enjoy an Justice League-style cartoon of Stephen Hawking defeating those fundamentalist pussies!!! yahey!!! Go, Dr Astro!!! (rather unimaginative name, though)

thanks to James Hrynyshyn, lost in the Island of Doubt (I guess that's somewhere in the sea of uncertainty)

too busy to damn blog...

sorry guys, I've been to busy these days to blog. may be coming ones when i'll be home writing up. who knows?

in the meantime, enjoy the gallery on the right hand side. history and good food from the ardennes ;-)



and my mid-summer visit to Luxembourg with some cousins... ;-)

Monday, October 30, 2006

the working bee...

Ehy, it's been a long time... and now I'm back with an interesting pointer to Carl Zimmer's latest post in his Loom... the bees genome has been sequenced, and may shed lights on how genes do interact to form not only a complex organism, but also a complex society...

follow the link and enjoy! 18 big papers in Science/Nature/GenomeResone week due to the completion of this study! wow! that's a buzz!!!

as for me, light work week this one. only two days, today and tomorrow, then off to my GF place to enjoy some holidays, but mostly writing up. I hope to have a tenth chapter ready in two weeks at the most. and may be submit by Xmas. wouldn't that be nice?