Meaty, cheesey, creamy goodness...

I'd say this week has been my favourite so far. Can anyone disagree when our practical lesson is scheduled for lasagne and then anglaise sauce for dessert? I don't think so.

Most people have their mum's famous lasagne that is a family secret passed on from generation to generation. For some reason our house hold never had lasagne as a staple regular which I feel has scarred my youth. Lasagne is one my favourites! Layers of tomatoey, rich, meaty sauce in between layers of pasta and creamy, cheesey-ness. Your officially a nutter if you don't agree with me.

I was in charge of the béchamel sauce while my partner was in charge of the meat sauce. I was excited to do the béchamel sauce as I've never made one before and was a keen bean to learn.

It started with 500mL milk heated on the stove with a quarter of an onion studded with 2 cloves, a few white pepper corns and a bay leaf. Once the milk had come to a boil it was turned off to infuse with the flavours of the goodies which I put in it. Next I started the white roux (pronounced roo as in kanga-roo) which is a thickening agent consisting of a mixture of flour (40g) and fat, in this case (40g of) butter. You melt the butter over the stove being careful not to burn it then take the butter off the stove and add the flour. Mix until it looks like really wet sand and cook back on a low heat for 1-2 min. Strain your infused milk into a separate jug for easy pouring. Take the butter and flour mixture off the heat and add a little of the milk, which should now be warm not hot and mix with your savoury wooden spoon. Keep doing this little by little off the heat making sure there are no lumps until all milk has been incorporated. Once the milk has been incorporated stir over a low heat until sauce thickens to your preferred consistency. This takes about 20 min as you have to cook the flour taste out. I then added a small handful of tasty cheese- this thicken the sauce a little too much so I added some extra milk to thin it down.

My partner was making the bolognaise sauce at this point so both we were both ready at the same time. We layered a little bolognaise sauce on the bottom, then an instant lasagne sheet, then more bolognaise, a spoonful of béchamel, a sprinkle of parmesan then another layer of pasta and continued this until we reached the top of our tray. Chef had a brilliant tip which was not to use all the béchamel sauce in the lasagne and add one egg to the left over and then spoon that as your final layer then sprinkling with both parmesan and tasty cheese. We put it in an 180 degrees Celsius oven until cooked through and golden on top. yum, yuM & YUM!

After devouring our lasagne we started our anglaise sauce. Custard and me have never really gotten on like rice and me (until recently, Woop!). My custards alway end up either a watering undercooked mess or a scrambled egg slop. Both sound appealing... not.

A sauce anglaise is the basis of making custards and ice creams so it is pretty damn important to get this right if you want to work in the kitchen. You can't just go out and buy a carton of dairy farmer thick custard like normally would..

The rule with an anglaise sauce is for every 100mL of milk (or cream or a combination of both) you need 1 egg yolk and 10g of sugar. I put my milk on the stove to bring to the boil with a vanilla bean scraped in it for flavour. While this was doing its job I separated my eggs and mixed my egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl using my sweet wooden spoon. Chef told us not to use a whisk because we don't want air in the egg yolk, just to combine them with the sugar. Next strain your milk into your egg and sugar mixture and stir to combine. Place it all back in the saucepan you used for the milk and back on a very very low heat. This is where you either get custard or scramble eggs. At this point in class I had everything possible crossed in hope that I ended up with custard not scrambled eggs. Anglaise sauce cannot come above 83 degrees Celsius so its easier to use a thermometer but today we used the back of a metal spoon technique. The sauce is ready when it coats the back of a metal spoon and when you run your fingers down the back the sauce does not run back and meet again.

SUCCESS! I ended up with a velvet vanilla custard.

All in all a delicious day.
(If any one has some suggestions of words other than delicious please let me know, I feel I am repeating my self... everything is DELICIOUS... delicious, delicious, delicious!)

* Thanks for reading & keep watching for more cooking adventures!