Hospital Lasagne
Before we begin, a quick thank you to all lovers of good stuff who shared this newsletter with friends/loved ones/enemies/random strangers. Your grand efforts resulted in three new readers, taking our total up to a whopping 157! It would mean a lot if we get to the big ONE SIX ZERO so please continue to share the good stuff.
And welcome to the three newcomers, as anyone will tell you here, life will never be the same again.
With the accepted risk of turning this all into a chronicle of my son’s young life, I have no choice but to continue from where we left off last.
For those that need their memories jogged, the latest outing of Sam’s Good Stuff smashed convention and stuck it to the food writing man by bringing up diarrhoea in a convoluted attempt to rouse appetite for a bowl of lentils.
However what I’d assured readers to be the end of my son’s first illness was in fact not, and we spent the next week in hospital (I will quickly add that he is now fine).
I may seem like a psychopath in being about to spend more time detailing the hospital food than what my family experienced on a ward awaiting brain scans for an eight month year old baby, but here are some reasons for why this might be justified:
1. This is a food newsletter
2. Thinking about food provided some kind of coping mechanism
3. I might actually be a psychopath
In fact in an argument with my wife in this experience’s aftermath, I may have even been accused of googling local Indian restaurants while entering the A&E ward. To give some justifications to this wild accusation:
1. Ok I did do this, but it was not when entering the hospital. It was at least a few minutes later.
2. The Bengali food near Royal London Hospital is very good
3. Psychopath?
But before we move onto this circumstantially inappropriate exploration of hospital food, a little on what happened.
George went to hospital due to a ptsosis of his right eye, which is medical speak for muscular weakening of the eyelids. Anyone familiar with hospitals will know the waiting game it entails, and after a few days in the ward and a couple of visits from doctors we were able to work out that it could be due to:
1. Something bad in the brain
2. Something bad in the nerve-muscle synapse
3. Something they can’t explain
This leads to an odd scenario where doctors come in each day and you are simultaneously hoping they can give you some information while also desperately hoping they can’t.
Given that options one and two are extraordinarily rare, and that three can be quite common, I tried to remain optimistic. My coping mechanism for hearing neurologists mention “myasthenia gravis” (which sounded quite grave) or oncologists talk of “brain growths” was to think of where we’d go to celebrate and eat when we were freed with the inevitable all clear.
My wife’s coping mechanism was to fully imagine the worst outcome so that she could be ready to confront it.
I didn’t believe I could ever be ready to confront something like that.
And so the days were spent pacing, threading cords of doctors’ information, dissecting the particularities of a phrasing or a statement’s tone, and - of course - googling local Indian restaurants.
Then twice a day a meal is brought to you on a tray with a little plastic lid. It’s usually the kind of British food you would have had as a kid, that your mum served up: fish fingers and chips, macaroni cheese, lasagne and peas, and I found it incredibly comforting.
There were also things that make up the modern British diet: curry, spiced stews, even jerk chicken. I’m probably making it all sound rather better than it was, as in reality it tasted slightly worse than airplane food. However I’ve always held these types of meal have their own joy; some of it lies in it being brought you, some in the way everything is already portioned and you plan how exactly to go about it, and some in that kind of strangely satisfying fabricated flavour. Most importantly these meals on trays form a sort of punctuation, a breakpoint in the endless waiting.
The lasagne and peas reminded me of an English way of eating pasta that is quite distinct from the Italians’, and not necessarily worse. In dishes such as this and macaroni cheese, the pasta is a reimagined vehicle for mopping up a pool of cheesy sauce. It’s not some refined plate of tagliatelle, but a saucy devil, and is to be strictly served with peas, boiled carrots or anything else you can butter up and eat with a spoon.
I’d made a promise to make one for us when we all got out with the inevitable all clear, which we inevitably did, thank the lord, and I hope when George is big and strong and with his own baby in hospital one day eating lasagne and peas, he may find some comfort in it too, thinking ‘ah, just like what dad used to make.’
English Cheddar and Tomato Lasagne
This is a great entry level lasagne and I’d encourage anyone thinking of getting into the world of lasagne to start here. The issue with lasagne is that when done properly, it can take the best part of a day (say if you make ragu and roll your own dough) and if you’re not practised at it, you can spend all that time slaving and then realised you nonetheless completely fucked it (we all know that feeling).
This is about as quick as a lasagne can be and with the least effort so don’t be afraid to try your hand and building strata and getting a feel for lasagne’s lovely layering.
Cheese sauce
1.5L milk
100g butter
100g flour
300g cheddar cheese
Tomato and butter sauce
4 tins peeled plum tomatoes
100g butter
2 onions
Other bits
500g dried lasagne
Frozen peas
More cheddar for grating on top
Put three of four of the tinned tomatoes into a colander to get rid of the liquid, then put these with the entire contents of the fourth tin into a pan with the butter and the onions (simply peeled and cut in half) and a few pinches of salt. Getting rid of the liquid will help it cook quicker. Cook on a lively heat for anywhere between 20 and 40 minutes, mashing with the back of a spoon from time and stopping when the sauce has thickened and not very watery, but still a little fluid (remember, English lasagne is a saucy devil).
Make the cheese sauce by heating the milk in one pan (you could add some bay leaves, nutmeg and pepper here too) and bringing it nearly to the boil (but not letting it boil). Take off the hob and now bring onto the hob on low heat another pan that will fit all that milk, and add the butter, and when that is melted add the flour and stir and cook until it is incorporated and smells nice and biscuity (about a minute). Add the hot milk little by little and stir until it is all added and smooth. Add the grated cheese and let it all cook for about 5 minutes. The sauce’s consistency should not be too thick (remember; saucy!), only just thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
Spread a thin layer of tomato sauce across the base of an oven pan, add some sheets of lasagne (snapping if necessary to make them fit) and don’t worry if it doesn’t quite fill the width of the pan (mine in the image has gaps of half an inch on either flank). Then spoon over the cheese sauce so the layer is completely covered, then spread a little tomato sauce over the cheese sauce, and keep going in this fashion until you’ve run out of sauce or lasagne. The final layer should then have another fistful of grated cheddar on top.
Put a sheet of foil over the lasagne (just gently over, it doesn’t need to be sealed) as this will stop some of the liquid evaporating (do I need to remind about the sauce again?). Place in an oven at 170C for about 40 mins (or until it is all easily pierced with a knife) then place under a hot, hot grill for a minute to get a beautiful crust.
Allow to rest for at least 15 minutes so the lasagne can set, but not too much longer as otherwise the sauce will congeal (the sauce!). This is of course perfect time to get those peas on the boil so go do that and to be truly old school, put out a little white bread and butter on the table to mop everything up at the end.