Potatoes and Pasta? do you really need both together?

Time: 3 hours 45 minutes

Difficulty: 2/5

Ingredient availability: 4/5

Although this recipe doesn’t have any meat in it, the picture and the name were enough for me to go ahead and make this. I think that it is meant to be a side dish, kinda like a bakes Mac & cheese, but it is a more involved than that. Mixing potatoes with pasta never really crossed my mind. Sure, there’s potato gnocchi, but that’s more of an all in one thing. This recipe is distinctly potato and pasta. The question is if they belong together.

Key Ingredients and Omissions:

A couple things that might not be easy to find for most people are creme fraiche and fresh pasta sheets. I had to go to two different stores to find these ingredients and each store only had one option. I wouldn’t be surprised if in other areas you couldn’t find these at all. Sure, you could probably make your own pasta or find a substitute for the creme fraiche, but this is already a lengthy recipe. With that being said, I didn’t omit anything from this recipe.

Tools:

• Rasp style grater

• Box grater

• Sharp Knife

Cooking Review:

Prep: 45 minutes

The prep for this recipe included grating all of the cheese and garlic, which did take longer than I expected. It was fairly easy, however. The mozzarella was the hardest to grate, as it was pretty soft and would crumble as it whittled down. The onions were also sliced in this step.

Sauce: 20 Minutes

The sauce came together pretty quickly. The sauce base is a lot like a béchamel, starting with butter melting and used to cook the garlic and onions before bay leaves and flour are added to thicken it up. The milk and cream fraiche are added next until thick before the parmesan cheese is whisked in and the sauce is set aside to cool.

Cutting potatoes and Assembly: 1 hour 45 minutes

Immediately after the sauce was finished. I stared on the pasta and potatoes. The sheets were cooked one at a time in salted boiling water for 15 seconds before being dunked in cold water for 15 seconds and stacked up between wax paper. After that, I sliced all the potatoes and cooked them In batches, which took a total of 28 minutes for 3 batches. The potatoes were spread out as much as possible on towel lines baking sheets to cool and dry. The assembly, which consisted of a layer of pasta sheets, followed by sauce, potatoes, and mozzarella, took about 24 minutes. It was all topped with parmesan cheese before baking.

Baking: 47 minutes

I covered the baking dish with aluminum foil and baked it for 42 minutes before transferring to a broil for the final 5 minutes. The lasagna was then removed from the oven and left to cool for 20 minutes.

Analysis:

Unlike a recent recipe I reviewed, this lasagna was very cheesy in both flavor and texture. There were a few nice cheese pulls as I forked through my first piece. The textural difference between the soft pasta and more firm potatoes is really nice, especially with the crispier potatoes on the top. The sauce is creamy and flavorful, letting the garlic and onion shine here and there. While it does taste very good and doesn’t need any meat, I do think some shredded chicken or ground beef would turn it into a true main course. I understand that’s not what it’s meant to be. Although it takes a while, I think that it would be worth it for a special occasion. It’s something new and unique, all while being pretty easy to make. This recipe earns a 8/10.