World's Best Lasagna -- Seriously.

I love lasagna. I used to hate it, because I used to hate mixing foods. I was one of those people who refused to have her foods touching on the plate. But the first time I had lasagna (I think it was my freshman year at Amherst), it was love at first bite. Since then, I have been on the hunt for the perfect lasagna bolognese. I was pretty sure that Pasta E Basta had perfected the recipe - until I tried this.

The first time I had this dish was this past summer with several of my Amherst friends under the direction of recent alum Jordan Gilbertson '10. I made it alone for the first time for my parents and sister, and made it a third time this past weekend for a big family event. Some of the responses included:

"This is UNBELIEVABLE."

"I consider myself a lasagna aficionado, and this is seriously the best lasagna I've ever tasted."

"What did you put in this?! It's amazing!"

"I can honestly say this is the best birthday dish I have ever had." (The Guest of Honor)

"Can you pack some of this up for me to have a 2AM?" (My cousin, a cop on the Friday night shift)

Good cooking tunes - very important!

Have I built this lasagna up enough for you yet? Good. Because it is definitely time consuming, but it is also COMPLETELY worth it. And, best of all, the leftovers taste just as good (maybe even better!) for the next few days.  The original recipe is from allrecipes.com, but there are a couple tweaks I've made that I think make a serious difference, so I'm posting my version. Enjoy with a Caesar salad, garlic bread, and a nice red wine (or all by itself, since it's so hearty ... except, don't skip the wine). Hope you love it!

Pesto by hand

My boyfriend loves gadgets. He is by far one of the most gadgety people I've ever met. Going to Target with him is a dangerous proposition: he will happily spend an entire afternoon wandering the aisles of the electronics department in a gleeful daze, coming to life only occasionally to pull something off the shelf and announce, "I'm getting this." Grocery shopping is just as hazardous, because every grocery store I've been to with him has a cookware section. If it slices, dices, pulverizes, or serves food in a visually arresting manner, he is drawn inexorably to it like a moth to a ceiling lamp.

And yet, he doesn't own a food processor.

This became an issue one recent Saturday as we prepared to go shopping for dinner ingredients. I wanted pesto. I craved pesto. I was horrified by the thought of buying premade pesto for dinner, when it's so easy and satisfying to make at home. But I'd never made pesto without a food processor before. So I turned to the Internets to see if you could, in fact, make pesto entirely by hand.