/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>make lasagna
>roommate didn't get ready to bake pasta
>"its okay bro just make sure sauce is touching the pasta"
>45 minutes later the pasta isn't remotely cooked
FUCK

>take overcooked flat noodle
>layer with under-seasoned meat
>add cheese to make it taste extra bland
>overcook and burn in the oven
>cut into squares that fall apart anyway
>serve

At work last Friday, my coworker was talking about how happy he was that his mother was visiting on the weekend because she was making her "special lasagna recipe". He talked about it at length and I told him lasagna is rather simple to make and I couldn't see it being that "special".

Today, he brought in leftover lasagna for other coworkers and gave me 1/4 of a piece he gave them so that I would, "know why it is special".

It tasted like generic lasagna. He asked me how it tasted and had an almost triumphant expression. Knowing the answer, I asked him if she made her own sauce and pasta. He said no, but she spices and customizes it herself.

I then asked him how he considered it her "special recipe" when she basically assembled pre-made, store-bought ingredients. He tried to hide it, but it was obvious he was upset and realized that I had won this time. He avoided eye contact when he walked past my desk 10 minutes ago. I definitely won.

This experience has gotten me thinking: what do you consider home-made? Obviously I would not expect someone to grow and mill their own flour to make pasta, but there is an obvious medium between that and throwing together processed foods and calling it your "special recipe".

Discuss.

Hey /ck/ noob cook here and I want to cook something for my family this Friday.
I'd like to make a lasagna, salad, garlic rolls, apple pie, and cinnamon ice cream. I want to make everything from scratch except for the lasagna noodles. Any tips? Also, what type of salad should I make?
General advice thread

I want to read all your comments about lasagna. Share recipes, ingredients, techniques, suggestions, likes, dislikes, etc.

Go!

>>8930151
Normally I'm not of the "make it yourself" nazis but honestly this seems like one case where it would be better

I have a question about Italian dishes, for people who might be in the know. Is it normal for restaurants to use cheese as filler in dishes? I'm LI, so I try to avoid TOO much cheese, even though I enjoy it sometimes. Today, I got some lasagna from a new place, expecting it to be split pretty evenly between the two cheeses, meat, pasta, and sauce. Nope. Shit is like 40% mozzarella, 30% ricotta. Pretty much no meat. And I would just be kind of disappointed except that I ordered a prosciutto bolognese from another nearby restaurant a while ago (after getting a REALLY GOOD version of it from a third place that had since closed), and it was basically a plastic frisby in a tin for all the melted cheese in it. And, again, not nearly as much meat as you would expect for a dish with meat in the name.

Am I crazy? Do people just really, really like cheese that much? The lasagna's sitting in my fridge because I gagged on the first bite, which was lik 80% cheese. I want to call up the restaurant but I don't think you can send back something like that, right?

>cook a Lasagna for my roommates
>want to impress them, never cooked for them before
>one is a qt girl I am cracking onto
>make my beautiful meat and white sauces
>put the Lasagna into the oven
>use dry noodles
>later on time for dinner
>open the oven
>realise I didn't turn it on
>everyone in the other room is waiting for their dinner
>fucking panic hard
>boil some water
>slide the entire lasagna into the boiling pot of water
>realise I fucked up
>scoop the mixture into bowles and serve it
>everyone refuses to eat it
>people make fun of me by walking out of the bathroom and saying 'theres a Lasagna for you in there'