I’ve accidentally bought too many boxes of dried lasagne sheets. How can I use them up?
Jemma, by email
This is sounding all too familiar to Jordon Ezra King, the man behind the A Curious Cook newsletter. “It’s funny Jemma asks this,” he says, “because I was in this exact same situation earlier this year after over-catering for a client dinner.” The first thing to say is there’s no immediate rush, he adds: “It sounds obvious, but you can keep the boxes for a long time.” Fortunately for Jemma and her shopping mishap, however, lasagne sheets are also flexible, and their shape doesn’t have to dictate what you do with them.
With this in mind, soupy things are good to get on the weekly dinner rotation, be that pasta e ceci or minestrone, the latter being the go-to of choice for Mattie Taiano, chef and co-owner with Ravneet Gill of Gina’s in Chingford, Essex: “Just bash up the lasagne sheets with a rolling pin and chuck in all the bits.” Theo Randall, chef-patron of Cucina Italiana at the InterContinental London Park Lane, meanwhile, would break the pasta lengthways and cook it in boiling salted water: “Add that to a ragu-like sauce with some of the pasta cooking water and a generous knob of butter. Just make sure you cook the pasta and sauce together for at least three minutes, so they combine in texture and flavour.”
Ezra King and Randall’s next port of call would be the delicate silk handkerchiefs of Liguria in north-western Italy. “If you were to make the pasta yourself, you’d essentially be making lasagne sheets anyway,” Ezra King says. Traditionally, these pasta squares are layered up with pesto for mandilli de sea, for which Randall cooks lasagne in boiling salted water before lifting them into a large frying pan with a ladleful of the cooking water. Add some (ideally homemade) fresh pesto, then cook, tossing, and serve topped with grated parmesan and black pepper.
Jemma could also stuff and roll her boiled lasagne sheets into cannelloni, Gill advises, and be as adventurous as she likes with the filling (think squash and chard, or spinach, sausage and ricotta). But it would be wise not to dismiss lasagne itself completely out of hand, Ezra King says: “The bolognese version dominates people’s imagination, but lasagne is much more of a framework.” That line of thinking can “set you free”, he adds, be that by roasting pumpkin to layer between pasta sheets with bechamel (“swap the usual nutmeg for sage”) and maybe fonduta. “If you go farther south in Italy, they put little meatballs in there, or hard-boiled eggs,” Ezra King notes. “There are no rules to lasagne, which is kind of cool.”
If time is a concern, meanwhile, there are a few tricks to getting it on the table faster. “A good one is to mix the ragu and bechamel together, so you’re not having to spoon them in individually,” Ezra King says. “After all, once baked, they’re going to blend into each other, anyway.”
If all else fails, meanwhile, Gill would be inclined to get a bow on those boxes: “You could always give them away as presents,” she says. Well, it is nearly *whispers it* Christmas.
