When I was young my mom always made this one lasagna. I would smell it in the house and run downstairs. Tasting her filling, her sauce, everything I could get my hands on. Impatient as I was, I would always burn my tongue on the filling.
Somehow my mom stopped making it. When I asked her the recipe some years ago, she couldn't find it. But now, many years later I relived memories. By making my moms lasagna with my own twist.
My moms lasagna
for 4-6 servings
5-6 carrots
Half a celery
3 onions
3 cloves of garlic
500 grams of ground beef
1 can of chopped tomatoes
1 package of tomatosauce
1 pack of lasagna sheets
seasoning 100 grams of grated cheese
Clean and cut the carrots, celery and onion bite size. Using a foodprocessor, chop up the vegetables and the garlic. In a heated pan, loose the ground beef until it is done. Add the vegetables and let it cok for around 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and sauce to the meat and vegetables and bring to a simmer.
Béchamel sauce
50 grams of butter
50 grams of flour
500 ml of milk
In the meantime, preheat the oven to 180C. In a small saucepan start melting the butter. Add the flour and whisk till it start forming a thick doughy texture. Slowly add a bit of milk and keep whisking. Keep stirring the sauce, adding milk in little by little. Cooking it all the way through, thickening it up and season well. Save a little bit of milk until the end. When thick, set aside for now. Mai's twist
1 zucchini
1 tablespoon of Italian Herbs
2 cloves of garlic
1 mozzarella ball
Using a peeler, make thin length way slices of the zucchini. Sprinkle with some oil, season and grill them using a grill-pan. When done, set aside and sprinkle with some more oil, italian herbs and chopped up garlic.
Assembling the Lasagna
In a greased baking dish, scoop 1-2 soup spoons of sauce. Using your spoon, make it an even layer of sauce. Cover with lasagna sheets. Repeat once. On your second layer of sheets place the zucchini and spread evenly. Slice or tear half the mozzarella and spread in between the zucchini. Cover with lasagna sheet, sauce, lasagna sheet and sauce again.
Using your last bit of milk, reheat your béchamel. Give it some time to thicken up again. Then pour over your lasagna. Covering all the sauce. Sprinkle with the grated cheese and sliced left over mozzarella.
Place in the middle of the pre-heated oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, check if the pasta is done. If desired, put it under the grill for a few minutes to brown of the béchamel cover. I would recommend resting the lasagna for 5 minutes before serving. This will make the lasagna firm up and sets the sauce.
On my lobster hooping trip we caught 6 lobsters, Californian Spiny Lobsters to be correct. The one bigger then the other. Together weighing over 10 kilo's/22 pounds.
What do you do if God gives you lobsters? You feast!
With so many lobsters you have a lot of options, here are two recipes!
Steamed lobster
This one is pretty easy. Because you will steam the whole lobster, you don't have to clean the outside. If you decide to clean the outside, just a quick rubdown, make sure to kill or numb your spiny lobster. You don't want the spikes to get you now. Put them under some running water and stick a knife in their chest. Still be carefull, they're feisty!
Fill a big pot with water, let it come to a boil. Add ginger, onions and a lot of salt. If you killed your lobsters this should be easy, if not, they will move, splash water out, make a scene. So put them in, upside down, head first. Boiling them should take around 20 minutes. Take them out, let them cool for a bit.
Now you can do what you want. Cut it in half, pick at it, grill the tail. Eat it with butter, or olive oil. Take it apart and use it for gumbo, lobster pot pie. The sky is the limit. Oh, don't forget to get rid of the guts!
Why a lobster should be fresh?
Lobsters are interesting creatures. The reason we eat them fresh is because when they die a bacteria inside the lobster starts infecting the meat. Not a great thing to eat!
Why a lobster self caught is yummier then in a restaurant?
The moment a lobster is caught and placed in a tank, he stops eating food. The lobster starts starving himself and start eating from his own flesh. Making restaurant lobsters always skinnier and less meaty since the moment they we're caught. Asian Lobster (with green onion and ginger)
Lobster
Flour
Seasoning
Vegetable oil for frying
This is the way my family prepares lobster and crab. In my opinion lobster doesn't need a sauce or anything. But for some it does.
Kill your lobsters and give them a good scrub down. No cut and clean the lobster. First take of the tail, split the head and tail. Get rid of the tail fins and antennas. Take out all the guts, brains and other insides. You will recognize the meat from the rest, the meat is clear and firm, the rest isn't. If you would like to make a sauce, keep the guts and brains. These will be the star players in your sauce.
Once you cut and cleaned it, give it a quick rinse. Toss in seasoned flour and fry in hot boiling oil until done. For me here it ends, I love lobster like this. Clean and full of flavor.
up: How to disassemble a lobster
down: Asian Lobster, without sauce, straight from the fryer
But some people want Asian lobster with green onion and ginger sauce.
This is what you need:
Guts and brains from your lobster
A couple of shallots
A bunch of green onions
Fresh ginger
Clean the onions and ginger. Cut them into strips or pieces around an inch. Heat some oil in a big pan and stirfry the onions and ginger. Add some seasoning. When almost done toss in the lobster guts and brains. Mix in with the vegetables and simmer for a few minutes. When the sauce is done it should be thick. Piece by piece swipe through the pieces of hot lobster.
up: How to make lobster gut sauce down: Asian lobster with green onion and ginger
Lobster is not something you should enjoy alone! So invite some friends or family to enjoy it with you!
Since my arrival in LA my cousin's husband is talking about his lobster hooping. Lobster is a very foreign and exotic crustatean for me. Shrimp are so common that it's not so interesting anymore, but lobster still feel high class and expensive for me. So when my cousins husband said he catches his own, I didn't hesitated. I wanted to go!
For some years one of my guilty pleasures is watching 'The Deadliest Catch', a documentary about fishermen fishing for spider crab. Although lobster hooping on a low scale, just for fun is not so scary, cold and hard work as fishing for crab or even lobster out on the open water. My lobster hooping adventure ended up being just as exciting and scary as The Deadliest Catch.
up: Me and my dad in front of the boat before hitting the water
down: Me and my nephew prepping bait on the boat
At the harbor I put myself in my banana suit and layered up. The boat hit the water and working began. Together with my little nephew I prepared the bait. Filling up the cases with chopped up sardines and salmon heads. The moment we hit open water, the power of the boat's motor became feel able. Hitting some waves and feeling the wind hitting my face.
After a fast ride we arrived in the Long Beach Harbor. We looked for places to drop our hoops and after we dropped all the hoops, an hour later, we went back to the first hoop. The Californian law doesn't allow for closed traps, so the moment you get up the hoop, you need to pull as fast as possible. This makes the lobster (hopefully) or other caught animals pushed to the bottom of the hoop, giving it no change to swim away.
Pulling up the first basket I got an idea of what was waiting for me. No lobster, but some crab and an octopus. It was such a rush, I saw octopus before, but always in aquariums, so feeling it in my hand was exciting! I was excited to do the second one, ending up with around the same catch.
As we progressed we had some empty hoops, supposedly because a seal or sea-lion played around with our bait and hoops. And then we hit the jackpot! I pulled up a 30-40 feet deep hoop, pushing my muscle limit. When it surfaced a huge lobster became visible. Holding it up at his antennas his strength became visible. He sizzed, moving his whole mouth and flapping his tail at me.
I saw live lobsters before, in Chinese restaurants and supermarkets. But never did I have to touch or hold a living specimen. It didn't look like the lobsters you see in restaurants. It had no claws and a lot of spikes, covering his antennas, head and sides of his tail.
Lob·ster, Maine and Californian from Artist book 2014, Los Angeles
In the next three or so hours we caught one after another, going bigger and bigger. Making all of us more thrilled. I felt like a little girl, going to the garden and collecting my own grown strawberries, times a 100! Coming to an end, I noticed I got tired. And the empty hoops don't really give you an energy boost.
We we're warned for incoming fog around midnight. So when we noticed some fog around 10.30pm. We decided to make a last round and go back to the harbor. Hoping to beat the fog. Within minutes after leaving the fog-less area, we ran into a layer of fog. It still looked ok, we could see lights of a big boat in the distance.
The closer the lights came, the more confused I was. I'm not a water person, so being on a boat is not an ordinary thing. I kept asking what kind and what part of the boat we saw. The answer never came. The kit boat was now so close, that I saw somebody walk out of the control chamber. I realized in a split second, we're facing the side of a boat. I looked to my left and saw a small light, suddenly the whole outline of the boat started to shape. We we're running for the side of a huge tugboat!
I don't remember what I yelled out, but we made a sharp U-turn. Causing some big waves in the water around us. From that point I was alert, focused. The next hour or so the fog became thicker and thicker. Until you could just see a few feet away from the boat. My little nephew got so scared that he just knocked out in the back.
Finally we entered our harbor. Slowly the bouys became visible, de harbor, the docks. Everyone was relived, we made it back safely. All my excitement from hooping had made place for pumping adrenaline of being scared and alert. No finally save I realized how tired I was and sat down for the first time since we left our fishing spot.
We arrived at the dock. Preparing to step on the dock, I noticed a sealion head at the back of the boat. It was so close and big, we all looked at it. Suddenly it jumped up, showing his teeth and body. My curiosity immediately turned into fear. He was jumping up just where my 10 year old nephew was sleeping. We tried to wake him and pulled him up. He didn't wake until he saw that huge sealion jump up on the side of the boat. I screamed like a little girl, yelling that we weren't safe. My nephew started freaking out too, both of us yelling and screaming.
'Blackfish' trailer
I saw sealions before, from a far in the wild and up close in SeaWorld and in the Dutch version of seaworld. Where the trainers walk around with the sealions in this clowns-act. But this was a wild animal, probably not trained and bigger than us humans. It also didn't help that I saw the documentary 'Blackfish' a week before my fishing trip. A documentary about a killer whale, that since his captivity killed (and supposedly eaten) three people.
This documentary made such an impression that my trust issues with animals
worsened. So being eye tot eye with this huge sealion, this big male,
wild sealion scared the crap out of me. I was convinced that if one of
us made a wrong move he would grab us and eat us. The sealion swam
around the boat, going under the dock, surfacing again, jumping up
again.
At this point I stood in the cooler, in the middle of the boat. Holding on to the windshield. My dad went on the dock and, in my opinion started to provoke the sealion. Clapping in his hands and talking to this huge animal. I yelled that he should stop, that it was a wild animal and that if he wanted to could just jump on the dock or boat and grab you.
Even after we left the boat and the dock, the sealion waited. Swimming around the boat. All the way until we drove the trailer (with boat) out of the water again. Until the very end I wasn't sure if the sealion would come on land and just grab one of us.
Away from the dock, loading station and most important, away from the sealion. We changed into some warm dry clothes and got ready for the ride back. At home we unloaded our catch, cleaned up and tried to get rid of the fish smell. Of to bed, tomorrow waits a lobsterfeast!
Catch of the day:
6 lobsters ,weighing up to 10 kg /22 lbs, the heaviest one weigh over 5 lbs
