A secret for the perfect lasagna

         

             I was about six years old when I realized how much fun it was to make a mess into a masterpiece. After school, I would run off the school bus and get into my mother’s car to go home. I dashed into the house and I heard my mom shout, Ready to make a mess in the kitchen? Now what six-year-old child doesn’t want to make a mess? I shouted back, Yes!

          I know everyone is thinking we were about to make cookies, but we were making a pasta dish called lasagna. My mother had everything set up and prepared to make this messy masterpiece. She had one 13 x 9 pan, a one pound bag of mozzarella cheese, one 16-ounce container of large curd cottage cheese (must be the 1% in our household), two 6 ounce cans of tomato paste, one box of lasagna noodles, one pound package of ground beef, and two packets of the thick and zesty spaghetti seasoning made by McCormick. She had out the measuring cup for the two and half cups of water that is also needed for the recipe.

          The first step in creating this masterpiece was always to wash my hands and preheat the oven. I ran to the sink and I would scrub my hands until they smelled like fresh squeezed lemons while my mother preheated the oven to 450 degrees. The next step was to brown the beef and this is when the fun began. I loved standing on a chair and pulling apart the beef and placing it in the pan carefully. I would smile every time I heard that sizzling sound of the beef meeting the pan. After the beef was brown, my mother and I would move it to a large pot and add the water and the two packets of seasoning. Then we would add two cans of tomato paste, and for our liking, we added a little bit of pepper, salt, and garlic. I had a favorite mixing spoon which was a wooden spatula that had “Kunkle” carved on it. I would sit on the chair and mix it for ten to fifteen minutes until my mother would say, Let me check to see if you did a fabulous job. That was her way of saying that I didn’t mix it well but she would fix it.

          While we were making the beef, my mother also cooked the noodles to make sure everything would be done at the same time. The beef then would settle for ten minutes in the great smelling seasonings. My mother had a unique way of layering the lasagna. It had to be noodles, cheese, beef, and then repeat. This was when the messiness began. Now since we had everything done we would start layering. I would put the noodles down, then spread the cottage cheese and mozzarella, then layer more noodles. My favorite part was putting down the ground beef because instead of using a spoon to spread it I would use my hands and smear the sauce across the pasta.

         After about four layers, we would top the lasagna with meat sauce and sprinkle mozzarella cheese over top. The last step was to put it in the oven and wait for 45 minutes until it was done. My father would constantly come out into the kitchen and remind us that You can’t eat lasagna without garlic bread. My mother had the garlic bread done beforehand because she knew I enjoyed making the lasagna more.

        Today, I am living alone and I don’t have my mother there to make me delicious lasagna. I decided the other day that I was going to invite my parents over and make them lasagna. That is when I realized that it isn’t as easy as I thought. The very first time I made lasagna was a disaster. I burnt the garlic bread and I burnt the pasta noodles that the edges were rock hard. My parents looked at me after words and laughed. This is when I realized there was a secret that I didn’t know about and that was that the actual temperature to preheat the oven was 350 not 450. My parents' oven was just broken and that is why she always preheated it to 450.

          Lasagna isn’t a delicious food dish to me anymore, lasagna is a hilarious story of a time when I enjoyed making it to now where I can’t seem to make it right like my mother did. Keep in mind that your parents will always be there for you through everything, but when it comes to making a delicious recipe, they won’t tell you the secret behind why it was always so delicious because they will always want theirs to be the best.