Same Sheet, Different Dish: How To Use Up Excess Lasagne Sheets

2 weeks ago

I’ve accidentally bought excessively galore boxes of dried lasagne sheets. How tin I usage them up?
Jemma, by email
This is sounding each excessively acquainted to Jordon Ezra King, nan man down nan A Curious Cook newsletter. “It’s funny Jemma asks this,” he says, “because I was successful this nonstop aforesaid business earlier this twelvemonth aft over-catering for a customer dinner.” The first point to opportunity is there’s nary contiguous rush, he adds: “It sounds obvious, but you tin support nan boxes for a agelong time.” Fortunately for Jemma and her shopping mishap, however, lasagne sheets are besides flexible, and their style doesn’t person to dictate what you do pinch them.

With this successful mind, soupy things are bully to get connected nan play meal rotation, beryllium that pasta e ceci aliases minestrone, nan second being nan go-to of prime for Mattie Taiano, cook and co-owner pinch Ravneet Gill of Gina’s successful Chingford, Essex: “Just bash up nan lasagne sheets pinch a rolling pin and chuck successful each nan bits.” Theo Randall, chef-patron of Cucina Italiana astatine nan InterContinental London Park Lane, meanwhile, would break nan pasta lengthways and navigator it successful boiling salted water: “Add that to a ragu-like condiment pinch immoderate of nan pasta cooking h2o and a generous knob of butter. Just make judge you navigator nan pasta and condiment together for astatine slightest 3 minutes, truthful they harvester successful texture and flavour.”

Ezra King and Randall’s adjacent larboard of telephone would beryllium nan delicate silk handkerchiefs of Liguria successful north-western Italy. “If you were to make nan pasta yourself, you’d fundamentally beryllium making lasagne sheets anyway,” Ezra King says. Traditionally, these pasta squares are layered up pinch pesto for mandilli de sea, for which Randall cooks lasagne successful boiling salted h2o earlier lifting them into a ample frying cookware pinch a ladleful of nan cooking water. Add immoderate (ideally homemade) caller pesto, past cook, tossing, and service topped pinch grated parmesan and achromatic pepper.

Jemma could besides worldly and rotation her boiled lasagne sheets into cannelloni, Gill advises, and beryllium arsenic adventurous arsenic she likes pinch nan filling (think squash and chard, aliases spinach, sausage and ricotta). But it would beryllium wise not to disregard lasagne itself wholly retired of hand, Ezra King says: “The bolognese type dominates people’s imagination, but lasagne is overmuch much of a framework.” That statement of reasoning tin “set you free”, he adds, beryllium that by roasting pumpkin to furniture betwixt pasta sheets pinch bechamel (“swap nan accustomed nutmeg for sage”) and possibly fonduta. “If you spell farther southbound successful Italy, they put small meatballs successful there, aliases hard-boiled eggs,” Ezra King notes. “There are nary rules to lasagne, which is benignant of cool.”

If clip is simply a concern, meanwhile, location are a fewer tricks to getting it connected nan array faster. “A bully 1 is to operation nan ragu and bechamel together, truthful you’re not having to spoon them successful individually,” Ezra King says. “After all, erstwhile baked, they’re going to blend into each other, anyway.”

If each other fails, meanwhile, Gill would beryllium inclined to get a front connected those boxes: “You could ever springiness them distant arsenic presents,” she says. Well, it is astir *whispers it* Christmas.