Last night (Friday evening) Master J cooked a scrumptious meal for his first meal in our Mini MasterChef competition. It’s always a bit tricky when cooking a traditional family favourite because we have something to compare it to…but he did a fantastic job! And with so little help!

Susan’s go-to Lasagne‘ followed by Caramel Orange Slices with a hint of Ginger and a dollop of Ice Cream. (Go-to is a softball term, meaning one’s best pitch or the pitch that one throws when they’re in need of a no-fail pitch)

Unfortunately, I forgot (bad homeschool mama) to take photos of it all. Luckily Master C (good homeschool son) got into the act and tried to take a few shots. However Master J was not impressed with the photographer getting in the way so we don’t have too many photos. We were all so impatient to tuck into our dessert that we also forgot to take photos. Maybe next time.

(Click the picture to open it in a light box at full size)

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Preparing the sauce.

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bechamel

The BΓ©chamel sauce, a fancy way of saying a white sauce with cheese added.

lasagne

The end product…looks good enough to eat. πŸ˜‰

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My serve, lovingly plated.

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The difficulty in this dish is that in itself it isn’t hard…except that I don’t use a recipe so Master J was trying to grasp the whole idea with me saying “Oh, just a little bit of this… and a little bit of that” . I used a recipe when I first made a lasagne but since then the dish has evolved and matured. I haven’t used a lasagne recipe for years. None of them seem to taste as good as when I improvise or ‘wing it’. This was the difficult part in teaching Master J: there was no recipe for him to study. I tried my best to write out a recipe at a base level…from here many ingredients can be added for variation- depending upon season, flavour desired, time and/or expense. So he made the basic version but already has a few ideas for how he wants to change it for next time.

He plans to add some form of salad when he prepares this again (to tell the truth, this was not his idea but a suggestion from one of the judges: Miss A). Once he has mastered the technique and *idea* behind the lasagne we will teach the boys to make their own lasagne sheets…as we have taught the girls. If you have not had lasagne with fresh pasta sheets, you have not really had lasagne.

Hmmm delizioso! John is certainly is for some treats when he returns home in 4 weeks time.