The Señor sometimes complains: “The hardest question to answer on a daily basis is the question of what to eat for dinner.” After reminding ourselves that not everyone is lucky enough to have this sort of problem, we usually take a look in our fridge to see what’s left, or poke around the internet for some inspiration.
Our latest bout of culinary indecision led us to a recipe for wild mushroom lasagne on epicurious.com, one of my favorite recipe websites. What’s great about this site is that all their recipes have been kitchen-tested at some point. What’s not so great is that a good number of their recipes call for ingredients that aren’t found in the average American kitchen.
Consequently, neither the Señor nor I were surprised to find that this lasagne called for dried porcini mushrooms. We were, however, a little shocked (and saddened) to find that none of the markets near us carried them, forcing us to substitute some fresh shiitake for the porcini.
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Zucchini was also a part of the lasagne filling, which, with the pasta, was held together by mozzarella and a homemade béchamel sauce.
I didn’t have a non-metal whisk for the béchamel (as our saucepan is nonstick), so I improvised:
That’s right: three pairs of chopsticks – and it worked just as well as a regular whisk.
What you see here isn’t the sauce as according to the original recipe. We heeded the advice of a savvy reviewer and substituted half of the milk with chicken stock, also adding a good squeeze of lemon juice for brightness.
The resulting slice of creamy carbohydrate goodness was very tasty, indeed – but definitely too salty. (I had raised an eyebrow at the instruction to add 1½ teaspoons of salt to the béchemel, after already using 2½ teaspoons in the mushroom filling, but decided to go ahead and make the recipe as written.) Any future renditions of this recipe will be made with much less salt.
Additionally, the béchemel came out so thick and creamy that we were very glad we didn’t only use milk to make it. That, if anything, would have been akin to asking for an early death.
Oh, but what a way to go.
hehe. i do the chopsticks thing too! i haven’t worked my way up to 3 pairs yet tho. the lasagne looks good even if the recipe came from epi. :p