Friday, February 11, 2011

Soulfood Notes, 1/30

In our first week back from rest month, I decided to change up the menu and make lasagna. I used this recipe from the book On Top of Spaghetti which is an excellent book that I highly recommend. I really wanted to make fresh pasta for this meal, so I came in on Saturday to crank it out. Not knowing exactly how much lasagna to make, I planned for 150 people, which (according to the recipe) meant 25 lbs. of fresh pasta. Now, fresh pasta isn't difficult to make. But on this scale, one small consumer-grade pasta roller doesn't do the job. Six hours later, with some help, all the pasta was done. One tip: if you don't use the noodles immediately, dust them with coarse cornmeal. Flour will just be absorbed by the noodles and you'll end up with a lump of dough.

The recipe went really well, but it took 2 hours, which meant we were 30 minutes over. I underestimated how long it would take to boil 25 pounds of pasta, as that was the biggest time constraint. We made 12 hotel pans of lasagna: 6 without meat, 1 with meat but without dairy, and 5 with meat and dairy. In the end we had 4 trays of no-meat lasanga left over, and I believe the count was about 120 people. The team's general consensus was that this would be manageable next time if we cut the amount by 2/3 and only made 8 trays.

We also made a salad with baby spinach, dried cranberries, and cucumber with a lemon vinaigrette which I think turned out really well. I believe we had 2 large boxes of spinach which turned out to be just the right amount (need to find out size). Luckily we were given leftover berry crisp to serve as dessert.

No comments:

Post a Comment