Food for special People

[special-food]

Udon and tempura

I love pasta and noodles. Ramen, udon, soba, spaghetti, penne, łazanki, no matter the shape or flour used, I absolutely love boiled dough with tasty soups and sauces. But what do you do when you want soba but have no buckwheat flour? What do you do if you want pasta al pomodoro but you have no tomatoes? Well, you’re usually screwed. But there are cases where you can figure out the bare minimum of ingredients and replacements to still be able to call a dish that dish.

It might be hard to agree on what the bare minimum is though. Does pizza need to be round? No, there are square pizzas. Does it have to have cheese on it? No, the pizza marinara from Napoli has no cheese on it. Does the bread need to be from wheat flour? I’ve had pizzas made with cauliflower crusts. You get my point, it’s tricky to define a dish unless you’re extremely traditional both when it comes to ingredients and presentation. That being said, I’m making udon noodles now without using any special ingredients. You’ll find it all in any western grocery store.

Udon noodles for 1 hungry person

100 grams of all purpose wheat flour

5 grams of salt

45 grams of water

Dissolve the salt in water

Mix flour with the salted water

When you have a ball of dough, put it in a thick plastic baggie, wrap the baggie in a cloth and stomp on it. Yup, your whole body weight should kneed that dough for at least 20 minutes. The gluten will develop, the whole thing will be elastic like plastic, just perfect!

Leave the dough to rest for 1 hour

Roll out the dough, then fold it into a square and roll out that square until it’s a large thick sheet of dough. Flour it and fold it and cut into long thick udon noodles.

When it’s time to boil the noodles, bring a lot of water to a boil (don’t salt it!) and boil noodles for about 10 minutes. But careful, don’t boil it for too long. Try it after 3 minutes. It should be just cooked, no “dry core”.

Wash them in cold water.

For the soup

1 garlic clove

1 vegetable cube stock

A fish or beef cube stock (fish is better if you want the feeling of udon broth), or just another vegetarian stock if you want it all vegetarian.

1/2 onion

1/2 teaspoon of sugar (instead of sweet Japanese wine)

3 mushroom (instead of shiitake, just button mushrooms)

1 shitty carrot

2 litres of water

1 tbsp vegetable oil

5 tbsp of light soy sauce

(Bonus: Kombu. You’ll find it in asian stores, it’s dried kelp and it really gives a deep umami sea flavour, and gives it a really genuine Japanese flavour. But if you have none of this, just ignore it)

Basically, chop everything up that can be chopped, and fry it in a little oil in a large saucepan, and then add water and stock cubes

Boil until half the liquid has evaporated

(If you have kombu, add one piece now and let it simmer 15 minutes and then remove it)

Sieve it all back into the large saucepan

Add sugar and soy sauce.

For the tempura

2 dl flour plus some more in a bowl on the side

4 dl water

10 ice cubes

A lot of frying oil

Any vegetables (e.g. carrot, bell pepper, aubergine)

Heat up a lot of oil in a saucepan until 170 degrees celsius

Mix the 2 dl of flour with the water into a light, watery battery.

Add the ice cubes to keep it cold.

Cut the vegetables into nice bite sized pieces

First cover the vegetables in flour…

… Then dip them into the batter. Fry in the hot oil until light golden coloured. Very light.

Serve

Pour hot soup over the cooled noodles

Make a dipping sauce of equal parts light soy sauce+sugar+vinegar

Serve with freshly fried tempura

[special-food]

Sweet potato gnocchi

Gnocchi is Italian potato pasta cut into little thumb-sized pieces. Depending on who you ask, you’ll get different answers on how much flour you should add. Some claim the major part should be potatoes. Others claim you should add more flour. Some add regular wheat flour. Others use durum wheat flour. Some add eggs others don’t. No different than food debates in general, and just like always, it’s a matter of taste. I don’t like soft mushy pasta hence I make my gnocchi with a lot of durum wheat flour and an egg.

In this recipe, I won’t even be using potatoes in the classic sense. I’ll be using sweet potatoes (which are actually a type of berries but let’s not get into botanic discussions now). They don’t have the starch regular potatoes do, so you really need to add a lot of flour to even keep the gnocchi together.

The sweet potato gnocchi

for several people depending on the hunger level but you can keep the dough, it just gets better

A large sweet potato

durum wheat flour

1 egg

Peel the sweet potato, cut into pieces to speed things up, and boil them in water (unsalted, because you’ll boil the finished gnocchi in salted water later)

When the sweet potato is really soft, drain it and put it into a stand mixer. Add an egg and about 300 grams of flour to begin with. Start kneading the dough using the dough hook. If you don’t have a stand mixer, use your hands. The sweet potatoes should be so soft, that it will just mush without any problems.

Here comes the thing… As long as it’s really soft and sticky, like a potato mash, you need to add flour. Keep adding flour. There’s lots of water in the boiled sweet potatoes, so you don’t need to add liquid.

Once you have an actual dough that comes together, you’re done. Cover it and let it rest for about an hour.

After an hour, take a piece of dough, make a long snake out of it, and cut it into thumb-sized gnocchi.

For the sauce (2 people)

3 salvia leaves

15 San Marzano cherry tomatoes (you can use other tomatoes, but these are really good for this type of stuff)

200 grams of bacon (pancetta? guanciale? Listen, we’re using bacon here. The dish is already de-italianfied so we might as well keep going)

Maybe a pinch of salt at the very end (there are a lot of salty things being added along the way)

Pinch of black pepper

A drizzle of olive oil

1 garlic clove

chili flakes

Tomato paste

Cut the bacon into 3 cm pieces.

Fry the bacon into the fat has melted and the bacon is crispy. Put it on a piece of paper, but keep the fat in the pan. The bacon will crisp up when it cools a little, so don’t over-fry it. It should be dark, not black.

In the fat remaining in the pan, add chopped garlic, tomatoes cut in half, a pinch of chili flakes. Let it fry for a few minutes on medium-low heat until everything is soft.x

Now bring a large pot of water to a boil and add a lot of salt in it. Don’t be too careful with the salt, it’s a lot of water!

Boil the gnocchi for about 4 minutes, until soft but not too soft. Try one. Is it done all the way through? Then it’s done.

The frying pan with your tomatoes being all soft, is a little dry now. So add some of your gnocchi water. It’s salted and it has some starch in it. That’s good for flavor, and to make your sauce less dry while thickening it up at the same time. The Italians do it with most pasta sauces.

Now add gnocchi to your sauce and give it a good stir.

Onto a plate and drizzle a little olive oil on top. Now what? Where’s the bacon? It’s going on top of it!

Eat!

[special-food]

No bake cheesecake

This is a no bake cheesecake meaning you don’t need an oven for any part of it. It’s vanilla flavored cream cheese with cinnamon apples. Who could ever hate that, except lactose intolerant people?

For the apple filling

2 apples (I like one tart and one sweet, e.g one Granny Smith and one golden delicious)

90 g sugar

1 tsp of cinnamon powder

5 g of lemon juice

Pinch of salt

Peal, pit and cut the apples into 2×2 cm  pieces

In a small saucepan, put the apples, sugar and lemon juice. And pinch of salt. Let it simmer for about 20 minutes until soft and brown.

Use a medium cookie cutter and press the apples into it. Place in freezer for it to firm up.

The cream cheese mix

5 g of gelatin sheet or granulated gelatin if you can’t get a hold of sheets

250 g cream cheese

45 g sugar 

2 g vanilla extract 

5 g lemon juice 

150 g whipped cream

Put the gelatin sheets in cold water and let soak for about 5 minutes. Remove sheets, press out the water using your hands and place sheets in a glass and microwave it for about 20 seconds until liquid

Whip the cream to fluffy but still liquid (if 0% is liquid cream and 100% makes butter, whip it to 50%)

If you used cream cheese, there’s usually salt in there. If you used Italian mascarpone, you should add a pinch factor salt now.

Mix the cream cheese and everything else including gelatin and whipped cream. Now you have your cream cheese mix and you’ll be using it in a moment.

Assemble the cheesecake

90 g speculoos cookies or Swedish pepparkakor/gingersnaps or whatever crisp cookies you have

35 g butter

The block of cinnamon apples

The cream cheese mix

Now…

Crush the cookies into fine crumbles

Melt the butter and mix it with the cookie crumbles

Use a large cookie cutter (large red than the one you used for the apples)

Pack the cookie mix in the Morton of the cookie cutter

Add a thin layer of cream cheese mix

Place the apple puck on top

Add the rest of the cream cheese mix and place the whole thing in the refrigerator for 2 hours until firm.

Remove the large cookie cutter and you have your cake.

[special-food]

Carrot cake loafs with lime zest frosting

A carrot cake is basically a pumpkin spiced sponge cake. Americans love carrot cakes, Swedes love carrot cakes, I mean… A succulent carrot cake, what isn’t there to like? This is my take on it. It’s not very advanced when it comes to ingredients, it’s the method you should keep close attention to. You want a moist, soft, wonderful carrot cake with a perfectly zesty frosting. Some add lime/lemon juice to the frosting to make it really sour, but I’m not doing that here.

Also, instead of one big cake, I’m making smaller portion sized loafs. The upsides are that they’re cute and keep fresh for longer. The downside is that they’re dry to begin with if you don’t pay close attention to the baking. Use a thermometer, don’t rely on cooking time. A big carrot cake might get dry in the edges but will keep moist in the middle. Portion sized cakes will be dry all way through in minutes!

For the cake, you need:

3 eggs

2 dl of sugar

1,5 dl of melted butter

3 dl of wheat flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon vanilla powder (or 1 teaspoon of powdered vanilla sugar)

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ginger template

1/2 teaspoon cloves

Two large pinches of salt

1 dl cultivated buttermilk (fermented milk) that Americans call buttermilk in general. Or use kefir, filmjölk or even yoghurt.

2 medium-sized carrots (peeled & grated)

Now…

Whisk eggs and sugar until it’s all fluffy.

Now carefully pour in the melted butter and keep whisking. Careful now, you don’t want the oil to separate.

Mix all the dry ingredients and pour in half of it into the egg mixture, fold gently.

Add the buttermilk/yoghurt and gently whisk it down.

Peel and grate the carrots. Fold the peeled carrots into the mixture.

Grease moulds using cooking spray or simply butter.

Pour in the batter. About 1/3 up, it will rise.

Heat the oven to C 175 degrees.

Place a cooking thermometer into one of the cakes. When the internal temperature of the cake reaches 97 degrees, it’s done. Nobody likes dry sponge cake.

Let cool.

For the glazing, you need:

100 grams of room temperatured butter

150 grams of  cream cheese or mascarpone (it’s basically Italian cream cheese)

2 dl of powdered sugar

Zest from 1 lime

1/2 teaspoon of pure vanilla powder or 1 teaspoon of vanilla sugar (with real vanilla in it, not the artificial vanillin one)

Mix all ingredients. Smear on the little loafs.

Want to make it look a little fancy? Add a little piece of lime. Maybe sprinkle some cinnamon on top. Oh, have you ever wondered why these little meaningless things are done? Apart from (sometimes) looking good, they are meant to show what’s inside. Say we’d flavour the cake with raspberries. Placing a raspberry on top would give the eater a heads up of what to expect.

That’s it. You’re good to go. This cake gives you a big pp.

[special-food]

Chanterelle everything risotto

youI love a really creamy, perfectly made risotto. I love mushrooms. I love chanterelles. Let’s combine the two without saving on the mushrooms. Imagine making a mushroom risotto on home made chanterelle stock, serving it on a bed of creamy chanterelle sauce, and top it with fried chanterelles? That’s what I’m aiming for here.

The stock

In order to make a risotto, you need a stock. Sure, you can add stuff into your risotto and say it has been flavoured with whatever you added. But it’s the stock that will give the whole risotto a flavour. A beef stock will give you a bet risotto. A fish stock will give you a fish risotto. So let’s make a chanterelle stock.

Ingredients for the homemade mushroom stock

1 large carrot

1 large parsnip

250 grams of chanterelles

A huge pinch of salt (you can make a saltless stock when using it for soups or other dishes were a lot of salt and salty ingredients will be added, but in this case we want to give the rice flavour, including some saltiness)

A twig of rosemary

Some olive oil

2 liters of fresh water (if you want to go hardcore high-end cook, you should use distilled water)

Instructions for the homemade mushroom stock

Heat up some olive oil in a pressure cooker. You can use a normal cooker, but it will take much longer. Also, pressure cookers keep the flavour better. When you feel the wonderful smell of food in a kitchen, that’s flavour escaping (according to some pretentious cooks, but I guess it’s technically true).

Peel the parsnip with a peeling and keep the peel. Then keep on peeling it until you have more peel. More and more until you reach the stem of the parsnip. We’re going to use the peel later. As for the stem, cut it into pieces and put them into the pressure cooker.

Cut the carrot, and fry it with the parsnip.

Add mushrooms

Add rosemary

After a quick frying to give it a little color and caramelize some of the sugars, add water and salt.

Close the lid and cook under pressure for 1 hour.

De-pressurize by just letting it cool. Remove lid and let it cook until 60% of the water is gone.

Leave it simmering, you’re going to use the hot stock in your risotto making.

The sauce

250 grams of chanterelles

1/2 onion

2 cloves of garlic

Parsnip peels (from earlier, see above)

50 grams of butter (not margarine, butter! It’s not just here as a fat, it’s here for flavour)

200 ml fresh full fat cream

100 ml chanterelle stock (that you’ve already made, right?)

Finely cut the onion and garlic.

Brown the butter in a pan, but be careful so it doesn’t burn. As soon as it stops bubbling, and looks a little brownish, it’s done, lower the heat and add the onion and garlic. And parsnip peel.

Add mushrooms.

Fry until the parsnip peels are all brown, but careful so they don’t burn. They are full of sugars that are absolutely amazing when caramelized but terrible if burnt. Same goes for garlic by the way.

Add the stock and cream.

Mix it until smooth. Well, it will be grainy because of the mushroom fibers. You could sieve it to really have a smooth sauce, but I like the rustic consistency of the grainy mushrooms. And the flavour!

Black pepper.

Taste it. If the salt from the stock is enough, then you’re good. If not, add some more salt.

The mushroom risotto

1 dl of olive oil

1 onion

1 dl of cold white wine

3 dl of arborio or carnaroli rice (both great for a creamy risotto)

1 liter of boiling hot chanterelle stock

About 3 dl of freshly grated Parmigiano cheese

Heat almost all of the olive oil (save a teaspoon or so) in a large pan

Add the rice and let it heat up a lot!

Throw in the cold white wine. There will be steam, there will be sound, there will be smell, and that’s great. It is said that the grains of rice crack when quickly cooled like this. I don’t have any evidence of this being true, but let’s not upset the Italians on their methods.

Add finely chopped onion and lower the heat to medium.

Now add about 1/5 of the stock. It will boil as soon as it touches the rice, because both the stock and the pan is already hot.

Mix until all the liquid is gone. Now add another 1/5.

Keep on doing this for about 20 minutes until the rice is creamy. It should be chewy, but without a hard core in the rice grains.

Add grated cheese and the last of the olive oil.

Mix well. This is amazing!

Serve it

On a hot plate (heat it in the oven) add some sauce

Risotto

The fried parsnip and chanterelles

Some black pepper and a twig of rosemary on top

Enjoy your mushroom risotto!

[special-food]

Mugcake (muffin) for lazy pieces of of shit

You know those days your fat ass is in bed all day like the piece of shit you are? And you want freshly baked muffins but you’re too lazy and/or incompetent to make any? And there’s nobody around you to make them for you because nobody loves you? That’s when mug muffins come into play. They’re made from a simple mugcake base recipe, and you can then add whatever flavor and sweetener you have at hand. Just sugar for a plain sponge cake flavor. Maple syrup and berries for a finer product. It’s so quick and so tasty that you might end up eating several ones in a row, all with their own amazing flavor combinations. And then you’ll get back into bed and keep contemplating about what a fat piece of shit you are.

Ingredients for base

3 tbsp of plain flour (the less protein the better, you’re making cake here not bread)

3 tbsp of butter (it’s an approximation, better a little too much than too little)

1-2 tbsp of sugar (depending on if you plan on adding other sweet ingredients for flavoring)

1/4 tbsp of baking powder

3 tbsp milk

Pinch salt

Flavoring variations

Blueberries + maple syrup

Banana + Nutella

Apple + cinnamon + dulce di lecce

Instructions

Get a mug

Melt the butter in the mug using a microwave oven

Add all other ingredients except the final flavoring. Mix until no (few) lumps. It’s very liquid. That’s a good thing in this case.

Now choose your mugcake toppings…

Add e.g 1/4th sliced banana and Nutella. Bake in microwave for about 2 minutes (depending on your microwave).

2.Or a handful of blueberries, frozen or not, and bake for 2 minutes in your microwave. Then pour maple syrup on top. Succulent as fuck. Eat.

3. Grate a third of an apple into the batter. Sprinkle some cinnamon in there. A spoonful of dulce di lecce (you can buy ready made or make some by boiling a can of condensed sweetened milk for a long time, or 30 minutes in a pressure cooker but you’re lazy so you won’t make any yourself and we both know it). Microwave for 2 minutes. Eat your mugcake.

4.If you own no sweet flavoring, add half a teaspoon of more sugar into the initial recipe. Experiment with various spices. Cardamom, cinnamon, lemon zest and juice, it all makes a great microwave mug muffin

[special-food]

Peach pie moist like a French vagina

Ok, saying it’s “moist like a French vagina” is sexist and uncalled for. Rather, it’s moist like any nationality of vaginal or penile secretion. The crust is all crusty and flaky and nice whereas the filling is liquid. How liquid depends on how much agar agar you add. I’m keeping it very liquid, like those fast-food apple pies that burn your tongue.

The dough

6 dl of flour

250 g of butter

1 teaspoon of salt

1 tablespoon of sugar

6 tablespoons of ice water (or a little more if needed)

Mix salt, sugar and flour in a bowl

Dice the butter and mix with the dry mix. Use your fingers and just squeeze it over and over again until the flour mix has a sand like texture. Have you ever made scones? Well, that way.

Put some ice cubes in the water to keep it cold. Add a little water at a time, and incorporate it with the flour and butter mix. Why cold? Because you don’t want the butter to melt! When the dough comes together, don’t add any more water. You want a hard ball of dough that you cut into two. So… Two balls of dough!

Wrap the dough balls in plastic and put them in the refrigerator for at least an hour

The filing

5 kg of peaches

1 vanilla pod

Half a stick of cinnamon

3 dl of sugar

2 tablespoons of agar agar (you can use gelatine, but it gives a somewhat different texture when it sets, more of a gelatinous thing… derived from the word gelatine… so… yeah)

Two pinches of salt

Juice from half a lemon

Peel the peaches and cut them into nice chunks.

Put them in a sieve over a saucepan and sprinkle with salt and sugar and coat them with it by stirring them around

The peaches will release liquid into the saucepan.

Now, set the peaches aside

As for the liquid in the saucepan, cut the vanilla pod in half and scrape its content out. Put the content as well as the pod halves into the liquid. Add half a cinnamon stick. And the lemon juice.

Boil the liquid until about half evaporates.

Add agar-agar and make sure it dissolves

Remove the cinnamon stick and the vanilla pod, and mix the now reduced liquid with the peaches

The assembly and baking

Peach filling

Two cold dough balls

Milk

Pine nuts

Set oven to 180 degrees C.

Roll the dough balls into two somewhat round and thin (about 0,5 cm) pizzas

Place on of them in a pie tin. A pro tip here… Roll it up on the rolling pin and roll it out over the pie tin.

Use your fingers to push the pie dough down onto the pie tin, up on the edges. Cut of excess dough and use it to fill in any holes you might have created because you suck at handling the dough!

Now, some would add weights (e.g. beans) and prebake the bottom half of the pie. I don’t do that because I’m lazy and I don’t really think the bottom is that soggy from not doing it. So I just pour the peach filling in here.

6. For the top layer, I sprinkle some pine nuts on top and push them in by rolling the ruling pin over it. No need to but I like them. Now put the top layer on top, and make sure to seal it nicely.

7. Smear the whole top with fat milk. Why? Because it gives a nice feel to it.

8. Into the oven, and let it bake for about 75 minutes. If it’s too brown before you reach 75 minutes, put some tin foil on top to protect it from direct heat.

8. Into the oven, and let it bake for about 75 minutes. If it’s too brown before you reach 75 minutes, put some tin foil on top to protect it from direct heat.

9. Take the pie out and let it cool so that the agar agar sets. Remember, it’s still liquid (unless you added more, then you’ll have a firmer texture)

10. Meanwhile, whip some cream. No need to add sugar, just whip it as is. The pie is sweet enough

11. Serve!

[special-food]

Detroit style pizza to die for

I love all forms of pizza. Here's a Detroit style one where you put the cheese first and cooked sauce on top. The cheese melts down the edges and caramelized making every bite crispy.

The dough

320 grams of wheat flour, the one milled really finely. Called “tipo 00” in Italian. Or unbleached bread flour in general.

6 grams of dry yeast (that’s about 12 grams of fresh yeast)

9 grams of salt.

250 grams of cold water

Dissolve the yeast in cold water. Yes, cold. It will still work, it just needs a bit longer and that will develop a better flavor.

Mix in all the rest of the ingredients. Yes, salt too. No, it won’t kill the yeast.

Kneed in a stand mixer or by hand, until it all comes together. It should be a really sticky and soft dough so don’t add extra flour.

Wet your hands in water, and drag the sides of the dough to its middle. So it becomes kind of a ball on the bottom of the bowl.

Cover. And let it proof until it doubles in size.

The Sauce

40 ml of extra-virgin olive oil (or, if you want to make this as cheaply as possible, use regular cheap ass oil. It won’t taste as good but good enough)

3 cloves of garlic

5 grams of dried oregano

5 grams of gotucharu red pepper flakes (or a dash of whatever hot pepper you like)

1 small onion

800 grams of canned whole tomatoes. That’s usually two regular cans.

5 grams of garlic powder (because it gives a different kind of garlic flavor that compliments the fresh one)

30 grams of sugar

15 grams of salt

Oil in a large pot and heat on medium

Mince the garlic and chop the onion

Fry onion and garlic together with chili flakes and garlic powder and oregano. Give it a minute or so.

Add canned tomatoes.

Sugar and salt.

Let it simmer on medium heat until a lot of liquid evaporates and you’re left with about half the amount of sauce, all thick and chunky.

The final steps for pizza

A deep oven pan, about 25x35 cm in size. Make sure it’s made of metal to get that crust going.

300 grams of white cheddar cheese, or anything that reminds you of Wisconsin block cheese. Well, if you’re in the US I guess Wisconsin block cheese is what you’ll have. For the rest of the world, you need to find a cheese that melts and becomes crunchy when melted, and that has a slight acidity to it. Like... a cheap white cheddar.

Your tomato sauce

About 30 g of olive oil (or shitty cooking oil, that will do if you want to save money but it doesn’t taste as good)

About 150 grams of thinly sliced salami. Or “pepperoni” as the Americans would call it (!).

Set the oven to 250 C.

Oil the inside of the pan all over the bottom and up the sides.

Put the dough in the pan and stretch it so it covers the bottom. It will take a while, but eventually you’ll manage.

Cover the pan and let the dough proof for 30 minutes. Meanwhile the oven will heat up so that’s perfect. And then...

Add slices of salami evenly over the dough.

Cut the cheese into dices and place them even over the pizza. Yes, cheese first. All the way to the edges. That’s the thing with Detroit style pizza, it makes the cheese melt down the sides and caramelized and get all crunchy.

Spread the sauce on top but not all the way to the edge. Leave the edges with cheese only.

Into the oven for about 20 minutes until the cheese is all crusty on the edges, like really really dark brown.

Push a spatula along the edges to separate them from the pan.

Lift the whole pizza out by using two spatulas. Or one really big one, I guess?

Cut into large squares.

Eat that crispy and chewy pizza!

[special-food]

Lasagne in plural

Did you know lasagne (the dish) is like the grammar police of Italian cuisine? Each plate of pasta is called "lasagna." Stack 'em up and bam, you've got lasagne. It’s like pancake vs. pancakes. But who says “I fancy a pancake”? Well, technically, you could say "a pancake," but… I digress. Let’s just dive in, shall we?

Prepare the Pasta Dough:

400 grams of durum flour

1 egg per 100 grams of flour (four for this maths challenge)

Combine using a stand mixer or your trusty hands. No need to knead (ha!) like you’re training for a dough-wrestling championship. Just ensure it's combined, pop it into a baggie, and leave at room temperature for 2 hours. It’s like magic—osmosis will do its thing, and voila, pliable dough!

Next Up, Filling:

2 medium onions

2 garlic stems (or 4 garlic cloves, but stems are like the fancy hats of the garlic world – plus, they taste great! Find them at your nearest Asian store)

1/2 dl of olive oil (maybe a smidgen more for luck)

1/2 dl of lard (trust me, your tastebuds will thank you)

2 star anise (no, not for wishing upon)

1 tblsp of garlic powder (because why not?)

1 tblsp of oregano

1 tblsp of basil

1000 g of canned crushed tomatoes (that’s a lot of crushing!)

250 ml carrot juice (squeeze a carrot or just buy it)

Pinch of salt

Heat up a large skillet, introduce the oil and lard, then let the onions, garlic stems, and star anise have a 20-minute sauna session on medium heat. In another saucepan, add some olive oil and fry the garlic powder, oregano, and basil like they owe you money. Toss in the tomato paste, give it a good stir, then drown it all in crushed tomatoes. Boil until you’ve got a sauce thick enough to write home about. Don't forget the pinch of salt!

Let’s circle back to the dough, shall we?

Lasagna Plate Time:

Divide your dough into 6 equal portions and roll them so thin that, well, you can see things you might or might not want to when held up to a light.

Fit them snugly into your oven pan like a cozy pasta blanket.

The meat:

A generous spoon of lard

1000 grams of minced beef (because why skimp?)

2 Polish kielbasas (dried and smoked sausages, add a dash of international flair)

Pinch of salt

Heat lard until it's screaming hot and sear the minced meat. Pro-tip: High heat and a roomy pan, or else you’ll end up boiling the beef—and no one wants that. Dice the sausages, mix them with the beef, and then combine with your onion medley from earlier. And a pinch of salt, you want to salt every part of the dish, not just parts of it. Some call it "layering your salt", but I don't know. Oh, and toss the star anise; its work here is done.

Now, the Bechamel Sauce:

100 grams of butter

1 dl of flour

750 grams of full-fat milk (because life's too short)

Two teaspoons of black pepper

A hefty pinch of salt

Melt butter, mix in the flour, add some of the milk and mix it into a paste to prevent lumps, then add the rest of the milk, stir while heating – and bam! Thick, creamy sauce. Salt and pepper then set aside.

Constructing your Masterpiece:

250 grams of grated Parmiggiano cheese (Parmigiano Reggiano if you're feeling extra fancy)

4 balls of Mozzarella (mine is made from buffalo milk but you do you)

Start with bechamel on the bottom, followed by a lasagna sheet, then some meat mix, a dollop of tomato sauce, a sprinkle of mozzarella, and repeat until you've got a tower of delight. Crown it with bechamel, tomato sauce, mozzarella, and the grated cheese. Drizzle some olive oil, because why not?

Preheat your oven to 200 degrees, bake for 15 minutes. Crank it up to 250 and give it another 10 minutes for that golden suntan.

Rest for 20 minutes, if you can resist. Dive in. Marvel. Enjoy. Maybe share? Or not. We won’t judge. Cheers to the best lasagne you'll ever make!