KitchenScraps: The Secret of Lasagna by Diana Yoshikawa Paul

Post #26 – Women’s Memoirs, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett

Happy Valentine’s Day

Kendra and I stand back when we publish KitchenScraps stories and let the author and the story shine on their own. However, I can’t resist introducing Diana Yoshikawa Paul. Diana and I met in the mid-1970s. She and her husband had just arrived at Stanford where she was beginning a faculty position. My husband was a tenured faculty member in a different department and I was teaching and conducting research at Stanford. A mutual friend told them to look us up.

And so began a long and lovely friendship. Thirty-five years later, we continue to enjoy each other’s company. We don’t get together as often as we’d like, but we stay in touch. I was delighted that when I asked Diana if she’d like to contribute a family story and recipe, she said, “Absolutely. I have my grandmother’s recipe for lasagna.” Then I pushed my luck and asked if she would share some of her prints as the graphics in the story. For in addition to her other talents, Diana began studying printmaking about five years ago and, as you’ll see below, is now an accomplished artist with an evolving and inspiring style. I have two of her prints hanging in a special location so that each time I walk from the kitchen into the living room, I see them and think of our special friendship.

When Kendra and I developed our publication schedule for the 2010 KitchenScraps, we decided Valentine’s Day, not our usual KitchenScraps Thursday, would be the perfect time to honor Diana’s grandmother’s lasagna sauce. We hope you enjoy her story.

-Matilda Butler

The Secret of Lasagna

By Diana Yoshikawa Paul

Organic Carrot

When I was growing up in Akron, Ohio, back in the 1950s, we were the only family of Japanese and Italian heritage. Our friends knew about Midwestern staples like tuna-noodle casserole; macaroni and cheese (often with hamburger mixed in); goulash, which combined almost any leftover with potatoes and a meat (hamburgers, sausages or hot dogs). Turkey was for Thanksgiving and Christmas, ham for Easter, and barbecue for hot, sticky summer evenings spent trying to catch fireflies before the big meal. No one in the “tire capital” of the world knew about lasagna. I know this must seem hard to believe since every “family” restaurant in the mall and dozens of frozen-food purveyors sell lasagna today, but in our town and, I would venture to guess, in most towns and cities across the United States, few had heard the word “lasagna” let alone tasted the wonders of that dish…except in Italian neighborhoods.

Tomato Top

I grew up on lasagna. It’s also the first dish I learned to cook. I still remember that first dinner I prepared for my cousins and their friends. I had moved to the West Coast by then. The year was 1968, and I was in summer school at the University of California, Berkeley. I remember because it was the year students were tear gassed near the campus’ Sproul Gate.

But, I am getting ahead of myself.

My Sicilian grandmother, Pauline Pinella

The lasagna recipe was part of my heritage from my Sicilian grandmother, Pauline Pinella, who lived with us in Akron, Ohio, for several years after my grandpa died. My grandparents were both New Yorkers from the Little Italy section of the Bronx where lasagna was a familiar dish. When Grandma moved in with us and made lasagna for the first time, we all adored it and couldn’t eat enough. Shortly after that first sensuous bite I decided that I had to learn how to make this dish myself. I know, you’re probably thinking my mother must have made lasagna, but no. She did not like to cook, and besides she felt Italian dishes were too fattening. As a child I would stand by Grandma, watching her cook while I wrote down her every step. I had to chronicle her process this way because my grandma didn’t speak a word of English.

And I didn’t speak Sicilian. Funny, I never did understand what my mother and Grandma used to argue about—except when my grandma was really angry. She was so gentle and quiet that her anger was a splendor to see. She would yell something like “scustomato,” which I was told meant “little cucumber” in Sicilian. It was the meanest word she could think to call my mother. I’m told the meaning is actually more like “you misbehaved, rude brat” but I learned that interpretation many years later. It was about the same time when my Uncle Sonny told me that my mother was ashamed of her Italian heritage until she was quite an old woman.

Hot Stuff

Grandma always began the lasagna by making her own meat sauce. The smell of that secret sauce permeated the house all day. Grandma would get up early and start chopping tomatoes, parsley, onions, and all the herbs. The basil, alas, was dried, but we didn’t know the difference since our Kroger’s grocery store didn’t carry fresh back then. If she couldn’t find decent greenhouse tomatoes, Grandma would use a combination of tomato sauce and tomato paste. Then she would start browning the meats—some stew meat including beef, veal, lamb and pork, as well as ground hamburger. The secret to a good sauce, I learned, was to add two or three soup bones (the type of meat was irrelevant but beef bones were the easiest to find). After browning the bones well, Grandma would scrape out the gelatinous marrow and stir it into the sauce. Proudly, my grandma would beam and say that only Sicilians really knew how to make a good lasagna sauce—because they loved the marrow. Even I could understand that much Sicilian.

Waking to the irresistible smells of sauce cooking in the kitchen, my sister, brother and I would be insatiably hungry for lasagna and yearn for it before we had even eaten breakfast. We were prisoners of the sauce all day. We salivated heavily and had to swallow hard just to keep from drooling. We pleaded for even a taste of the raw sauce and hardly touched our lunch since everything was so disappointing compared with the most piquant, succulent, slightly peppery pleasures of lasagna. Quite possibly, Grandma’s lasagna was the best in the world; it was certainly the only lasagna to be found in Akron.

That fact, however, would not remain a secret for long. My friends soon learned about this meal and begged to be invited over on nights when Grandma cooked. But sadly Lasagna Season was short. We never ate it in the hot, sickeningly sticky summer—which in Ohio began in April and lasted through October. I remember how often it snowed on Halloween, preventing us from showing off our costumes under the heavy winter coats our parents made us wear. The only consolation was the beginning of Lasagna Season. We ate lasagna about once a month, celebrating those glorious cool cooking days with the tangy treat.

With so many hopeful dinner guests and only about five lasagna dinners a year, no one was invited more than once a season, with one exception: my best friend, Mary Whitman. Everyone else had to wait for an invitation. But they never went home empty handed; they all received copies of the recipe as party favors. Akron became one of the first towns, I am sure, to introduce lasagna to the general public. By the time I started high school in 1961 almost everyone we knew had Grandma’s secret lasagna recipe—friends, schoolmates, even my father’s patients. And the local newspaper wrote an article about it. Grandma’s recipe had spread across most of the city.

I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I’ve always thought Stouffer’s owed my grandmother a debt of gratitude for introducing lasagna in Ohio. Stouffer’s was headquartered in Cleveland—our favorite city to visit for shopping and a really good restaurant experience. Who hasn’t enjoyed Stouffer’s frozen lasagna? I’m just putting two and two together and reaching a plausible conclusion.

Psychedelic Ferns

I started making Grandma’s recipe that summer of 1968 when I was a student at Berkeley. A friend of my cousin’s had a wonderful house in San Francisco and wanted to have a dinner party for about 20 people. “No problem,” I said. “I can make lasagna for 20 people quite easily.” And I did. Even in `68, none of those college students had tasted the delights of lasagna before. Of course, they all went home with the recipe.

And that is how the dissemination of the secrets to good lasagna got started. All of the lasagnas I have made for guests over the years have ended with a gift of the recipe. I’ve also made lasagna under some unusual circumstances. In Japan, I cooked it in a rice cooker since we didn’t have an oven when we were living in Osaka as graduate students in 1974. Believe it or not, that was one of the best lasagnas I have ever made—probably because the rice cooker steamed the noodles to perfection. Furthermore, all of the ingredients actually came from Italy—the full-cream mozzarella, Italian sausage, and tomato sauces and pastes were authentic varieties from the homeland.

In all the years I’ve been making my grandma’s lasagna, I’ve only made one change, an adaptation really. I mince some of the herbs—parsley, basil, green onion, and oregano—and sprinkle them on top of each serving for their “presentation” and “plating” effects, probably a little something I picked up from the Japanese side of my family.

Enjoy this recipe and keep the tradition of passing it on!

GRANDMA PINELLA’S SICILIAN LASAGNA

SECTION A: SAUCE (for Lasagna or other Pasta)

Ingredients:

½ onion; 6 cloves garlic; 3-5 Tbs. olive oil; 1 ½-2 lbs. of a mixture of pork, beef, lamb; 2-3 lbs. of beef bones; ¾ lb. of beef stew meat; ¾ lb. of pork shoulder; 4-5 links of spicy or mild Italian sausage (see Section C, step 9); grated fresh parmesan cheese, herbs such as parsley, green onion, fresh and dried oregano, fresh basil, fresh parsley, and thyme; red or white wine (optional).

1. Brown ½ onion (diced) and 6 cloves garlic (thinly sliced) in 1-2 Tbs. olive oil in very large pot.
2. Add ½ -2 lbs. of ground beef, pork and lamb combined.
3. After the ground meats have browned, set aside in a mixing bowl until later.
4. Add 2-3 lbs. of beef soup bones, ¾ lb. of beef stew meat, ¾ lb. of pork shoulder, 4-5 links of Italian sausage cut into thirds. Add more olive oil if needed.
5. Add 1 large can tomato sauce (with minced tomato bits), 1 small can tomato paste, and 1 can of tomatoes. Add two large cans of water and 2 small cans of water.
6. Cover and bring to boil.
7. Lower to simmer.
8. Add ½ tsp. EACH of pepper, minced parsley, dried oregano, thyme, red crushed Italian pepper, and 1 tsp. sugar.
9. Simmer covered for 1 ½ hours. Taste for sugar/spice balance. Add spices and maybe a pinch of salt according to individual preference.
10. Remove soup bones, scoop out marrow and add back to sauce and stir. Discard bones.
11. Simmer after another hour at medium low heat. Add ½ cup of red or white wine, if desired, and return ground meats to the sauce to combine and cook together.
12. Cook for another 30 minutes. Sauce should be ready. It should be firm when picked up in a spoon or ladle, not runny. If it is runny, take lid off to let liquid evaporate or strain sauce through a slotted spoon while assembling the lasagna (see Section C below).
13. Pick out cut-up sausage links and set aside for step 9, Section C below.

Total cooking time for sauce: 3 hours.

** This recipe makes lots and lots of sauce. I usually freeze at least one quart after making the lasagna. It is great defrosted and served over pasta!

SECTION B: LASAGNA NOODLES

Ingredients:

1- 1 ½ boxes of dried lasagna noodles; 1 lb. of mozzarella, sliced; 1 carton (15 oz.) ricotta cheese; parmesan cheese (approx. ¼ – ½ cup); herbs such as oregano, basil, and green onion.

1. Cook 1½ lbs. (1 ½ boxes) of lasagna noodles in a very large pot of boiling water, according to instructions on box. EXCEPT cook for one minute LESS until a little bit too chewy. Watch carefully so there is no overcooking, or the noodles will get gloppy.
2. While the noodles are boiling, mix 1 carton (15oz.) of ricotta cheese with fresh minced herbs such as oregano, basil, and green onion. Set aside.
3. Slice mozzarella (either fresh mozzarella drained from water or hard pizza-style mozzarella) into circles. Set aside.
4. Drain noodles after rinsing under cold running water. Separate and loosen noodles.

SECTION C: ASSEMBLY OF LASAGNA

1. In large roasting pan (at least 18 x 24; approximately 4 inches deep), ladle sauce on the bottom of pan so lasagna will not stick.
2. Add one layer of unfolded noodles side by side with no spaces but not overlapping.
3. Add another layer of sauce to just cover noodles.
4. Add a layer of sliced mozzarella.
5. Add one layer of noodles again, placing them in the same direction as the previous layer.
6. This time spread ricotta cheese mixture over the noodles. No sauce or just a sprinkling so that ricotta peaks through.
7. Repeat steps 2-6.
8. Top layer should be covered with sauce and a sprinkling of parmesan cheese.
9. Cover pan with foil and bake for 30-45 minutes @ 350 until cheese is melted.
10. Reheat Italian sausage links for 20 minutes in oven, covered with foil and a little sauce.
11. Uncover and rest pan on top of stove for five minutes before cutting into squares, placing a couple of sausage links on the side of each plate, and serving.
12. Extra sauce can be served in a pitcher or gravy boat for passing around.

Enjoy!

Traditional Sicilian recipe prepared by Diana Y. Paul

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Diana Paul shares her perspective on writing and printmaking:

Diana Yoshikawa Paul

I love printmaking, because I feel that there are no mistakes. I love writing just as much and am currently polishing the final draft of my novel, The Unhealed Wound.  To me these two creative processes are intertwined and this belief was reinforced when I read that the author of The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger, had been and continues to be a well-respected printmaker, before she leaped into writing her first novel!

La Cebolla (The Onion): Today, I combine my Italian heritage in my love of cooking and my Japanese heritage in my woodblock printmaking.

So, that experience epitomizes printmaking for me: in art, writing, and life, the unexpected can be a beautiful surprise.

My focus is on a Japanese aesthetic combined with a mixed media approach to the image, usually an organic one, with an element of surprise or the unexpected.  Food and other organic themes are my favorites.

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Tagged as: family story, memoir story, Memoir Vignette, Treasured Family Recipe