Making it up as I go along

One of the many differences between my husband and myself is he is a much more flexible cook than I am. He can come home from work and throw something together; when I try to do that, the answer more likely than not is pasta, probably with a quick-and-dirty alfredo sauce. He can make up dinners without a recipe; I have to know in advance exactly what I'm making and that I have the ingredients handy.

Sometimes, though, I venture into the realm of cooking without a precise recipe. For me, these are baby steps, starting with something I have a general idea about and may even have made before, and then tweaking it here and there. Something like lasagna.

Making lasagna is kind of the reverse of my binder-clearing project; instead of trying out different published recipes, I'm trying to create something worth writing down. Sure, I can make a decent lasagna using the recipe on the back of the pasta box, but the top layer is always too tough and jarred sauces never do it for me. So I want to make up my own.

My basic sauce recipe originally came from a friend, who also made it up as she went along. I started by sauteing a couple of pressed garlic cloves in a little olive oil. If I were making a strict pasta sauce, I would use three or four cloves. In a lasagna, however, I don't want the garlic to be overwhelming.

I put in some tomato paste and a large can of tomato sauce. I don't know why working from canned tomato sauce tastes better to me than using a jar of the stuff, but it does. I dream of getting enough tomatoes out of my meager garden to make sauce entirely from scratch, a dream deferred until next summer.

I like the flavor onions give to sauces, but I don't like the taste or texture of onions themselves and picking them out of my lasagna is not an option. To get around it, I dropped a tablespoon of granulated onion bits into the sauce. Next I added whatever herbs were handy, in this case, fresh oregano, rosemary and basil, a pinch of dried marjoram and two bay leaves. Normally at this point I also slosh in some red wine, but I didn't have it handy so I went without. Last, I tossed in a chunk of Parmesan cheese, and simmered on low for a while.

Meanwhile, I browned some sausages, another tip I got from a friend, and set them aside. I started the pasta. After confirming the milk in the fridge was still good, I went to work on a bechamel sauce. Finally, I threw some ricotta, grated mozzarella, Parmesan and a couple of eggs into a bowl and mixed it all together.

I started layering with some bechamel, a little tomato sauce, noodles, cheese, sausage, tomato sauce, noodles... two things quickly became obvious. One, I needed a lot more sausage than I had. Two, it probably wouldn't have hurt to mix it in with some of the tomato sauce. I skipped the sausage on the middle layer to save it for the top. After laying down the last of the noodles, I topped it with the rest of the bechamel and copious amounts of finely shredded mozzarella. And baked it.

VERDICT: The result was one fine-looking lasagne. It was pretty good, although a lot cheesier and less meaty than I would like; next time I scale back on the ricotta and double the sausage. The top layer of noodles wasn't too tough or overcooked. My husband was skeptical of the use of bechamel at first, but liked it after he tried it. The boys ate seconds. We're getting closer.