SCENE 1
The Kitchen

    [AB is lying on a couch] You know, if there's a watchword in 21st century marketing, it isn't luxury, or economy, or beauty, or efficiency, or intelligence. It's comfort. Don't believe me? Well let's do a little channel surfing, shall we? [turns on a television set with a remote]

SCENE 2
TV Channels

GUESTS: Announcer #1 & #2
              Man in Car
              Man and Women in Snugglebug

ANNOUNCER #1: [man is working out on an exercise machine] With your comfort steps on, even workouts are a piece of cake. [AB changes the channel]
MAN IN A CAR: The climate comfort system will keep your feet toasty, and your head cool. Or the other way around. It's up to you. [AB changes the channel again]
ANNOUNCER #2: [a man dressed in a Snugglebug sleeping bag is joined by his wife who is dressed the same] So why not just slip into a Snugglebug, and baste in comfort.

SCENE 3
The Kitchen

    And of course, the comfort concept extends to food, as in "comfort food," which is defined, since 1977 at least, as "foods consumed to achieve some level of improved emotional status, whether to relieve negative psychological effects, or to increase the positives." Consider ... [changes the channel again]

SCENE 4
TV Channels

ANNOUNCER #3: [we see a bowl of mashed potatoes with gravy being poured on it] ...with gravy just like Mom used to make... [channel change]
ANNOUNCER #4: [meatloaf being served] ... like Mom used to serve on every ... [channel change]
ANNOUNCER #5: [mac and cheese being served] .. and like Mom's, only better...

SCENE 5
The Kitchen

    If comfort is indeed king, then as a cook wouldn't you want to know how to prepare the single most comforting dish of all time? A dish that, well, that epitomizes the concept of comfort? Well I recently received a grant to study just that, and the winner was clear. More comforting than a recliner, a friend's shoulder to cry on; more comforting than petting cute little puppies, or wearing those stinky, old sneakers that you hid from your Mom for years when she told you to throw them out, is of course, lasagna. The dish, and the noodle for which the dish is named. And best of all, unlike friends, recliners, sneakers, or puppies, you'll be able to make it yourself, after just half an hour of ...

[Good Eats theme plays]

SCENE 6
The Kitchen

GUEST: Italian Waiters #1 & #2
            Italian Mother

    Let's examine some highlights from lasagna history, shall we? Now lasagna is one of the oldest forms of pasta known to man. The word itself is quite ancient. It comes either from the Arabic lawzinaj, which means a thin, almond cake, or the Greek lasanon, meaning a chamber pot, which then evolved into the Latin, lasanum, or cooking pot, which is considerably more appetizing.
    By the first century A.D., we know that it was the popular noodle in Rome, because the gourmand Marcus Apicius wrote of thin, wide noodles being fried in oil, and then being served, tossed with pepper and the fermented fish sauce known as garum. Probably explains the cats [indicating the picture behind him].
    By the 13th century, folks all around Europe were boiling such noodles, almost like dumplings. And in England, they were tossing them with cream. Perhaps an ancestor of macaroni and cheese, hmm?
    By the 16th century, wide, flat noodles were being cut, fried, arranged in layers with sauce, and then baked in parts of northern Italy. Now if you go just a few centuries on down the line, you can see this dish migrated to a new land called America, which welcomed Italian cuisine and its curious lasagna noodle, because, of course, it was delicious, economical, and you could buy homemade wine in Little Italies, even during prohibition.
    [waiters enter and set up an Italian restaurant venue with lasagna on the plate] Now, after World War II, convenience became this country's culinary cry, and the casserole was its champion. No casserole, of course, was more beloved than lasagna. Now this dish delivered just all that modern Americans find comforting, including in no particular order, ooey, gooey, cheesy, fatty, saucy and starchy. Me, I find comfort in complex stratas of flavor, contrasting textures, a heady aroma, and above all, culinary ease. This means that the delight I get from the dish must not be negated by the fact that it can often be a big, fat pain to make.
    Now I know a few Italian guys who would tell you that lasagna is not a pain at all to make, but I would remind you that they have a secret weapon.

ITALIAN MOTHER: I hope-uh and a-pray that one day, you have a kid like-a you, eh?
AB: Momma!

    You may have noticed I am not Italian. Nor do I have a feisty, round woman in an apron hanging around the kitchen stirring pots of tomato sauce all day.

IM: Why do you have to break your momma's heart, eh? [pinches AB's cheek, and slaps him gently]

    What I do have, however, is a slow cooker, a.k.a., Crock-Pot. This ubiquitous device was conceived by a revolutionary thinker at Chicago's Naxon Utilities Corporation back in the '60s called the "Bean Pot." The device was little more than a ceramic vessel with a built-in, low wattage electrical coil. The appliance went all but unnoticed when the Rival Corporation purchased Naxon in 1970, primarily to get at their lucrative sun lamp and laundry equipment business. But the head of Home Ec. at Rival saw something in this diamond in the rough, and the product was gussied up and introduced to the market in '71 as the Crock-Pot. By 1975, sales were up to 90 million units a year, and no wedding registry was complete without one.
    Unfortunately, then came the microwave, and a new focus on culinary speed, and the noble Crock-Pot was relegated to thrift stores and garage sales. Luckily, cooks are starting to rediscover the long lost ingredient that is time, and the Crock-Pot is back in action. Although I have to say, I much prefer the old school analog models to the modern programmable, digital models, for reasons which will soon be revealed.
    And now, finally, it's time to introduce the star of the show, the lasagna itself. Which, like most pastas, is made from protein-laden semolina wheat, water, and not a whole lot else. And by the way, if it's a single noodle, it ends in an "e", lasagne. If it's plural, then it's an "a", lasagna. Although quality fresh lasagna is very, you know, desirable in some dishes, I think that the dry, factory-made version is better for this dish, but not all are alike.

The last king of Naples, Francesco II, was nicknamed
Lasa due to his father's love of lasagna.

SCENE 7
The Kitchen

    As far as I'm concerned, lasagna, the dish, has relatively few components, okay? There's meat, vegetables, noodles, and sauce, which we'll get to in a bit.

    Now, as for the vegetation, we will begin with the mushrooms, just slice those into 1/4 to 3/16 inch slices. No reason to cut them up any more than that. We want them long and noodle-like.
    As for the eggplant and the zucchini, I basically want to turn them into noodles, say three millimeters thick, and that is going to require some technology in the way of a slicer or a mandolin. Now this one just happens to have a three millimeter setting, an amazing coincidence.
    So we begin on the zucchini. Just slice off a little of the stem end, and split down the middle. Now, before you put this to the mandolin, you want to don some protection, like this Kevlar glove which I like a lot, and just run the pieces through. It does not have to be pretty, and odds are it won't be. There you go.
    Now as far as dealing with the eggplant, same routine. Just slice off a little bit of the stem end. It's a bit on the woody side. But instead of just halving, go ahead and quarter. It's going to be a lot easier to work with, and run it through. And work as quickly as you can, as these slices will turn brown with oxidation if you give them a chance. There.
    Now, for reasons that will soon be revealed, I want to get as much excess moisture out of these as possible. Now I could just wring them out, but that would probably mangle them beyond usefulness, so we will take advantage of osmotic pressure, and purge them, a process that we have undertaken with both of these foods in previous episodes. [for zucchini, Squash Court II: for eggplant, Deep Purple]

    Consider this shocking statistic: 87.3% of all American-made lasagnas are watery, swampy messes. Why? Well most of them are composed of fully cooked lasagna noodles that simply cannot drink up anymore of the cooking liquid, and they usually contain a fair dose of flavorless factory-made ricotta cheese, which is like 10 percent gritty and 90 percent water.
In restaurant environments, the situation is exacerbated by the use of two sauces. A meaty, reddish, Bolognese ragù, and a dairy-based balsamella [sic, besciamella?] which is essentially just a béchamel sauce. Now the question that I have for you today is this: can we get the flavors of these sauces into our lasagna without the additional liquid? The answer, of course we can.

    All right, time to rescue our vegetation. As you can see, a lot of moisture has been pulled out, rendering floppy, noodle-like strips. We need to rinse away the excess salt and bitter compounds, especially from the eggplant, and the best way to dry it off is the salad spinner. There we go. Just give that a few pumps or pulls depending on your make and model. There. [the spinner rattles around in the sink] Stay. There. Go ahead and pull the noodles out of water, and just lay them out onto tea towels. They don't have to be bone-dry. There.

Italian-American food was the first "ethnic" food to gain widespread acceptance in the US.

SCENE 8
The Kitchen

    Now, if our calculations are correct, we should have just enough lasagna to top the lasagna. But enough talk, we build.
    Begin by layering the walls of the crock with the noodles, alright? It'll take a little bit of pressure, but as long as they're moist, you'll be able to get them to stick. And bring that all the way up to about a half an inch from the top. Then, squeeze one of the canned tomatoes into the bottom, juice and pulp and all, then break up half of the sausage. Top with 1/4 of the powdered milk, 1/4 of the flour, and 1/4 of the herb mixture. Then on top of that comes 1/4 of the vegetation. Of course the mixed zucchini/eggplant, and 1/4 of the mushrooms. Just lay it out into a nice, even layer. Then you're going to top that with a layer of noodles. That is level one, okay? And we're going to repeat this three more times. I like to squeeze down each level with a pot lid just to make sure there are no big air pockets, okay?
    Repeat again with the tomatoes, some of the meat, some of the powders, some of the vegetation, and then of course, another layer of noodles, and repeat, alternating the sausage with the pork. I like to build so that in the end, my final layer has the pork going into it, rather than the sausage. There it goes.
    Last but not least, the kind of lid of noodles should always be moistened with a little bit of the canned tomato juice, just to keep things from drying.
    Now, at this point, we've got options. You could stash this covered in the fridge for up to two days, or we can move directly to the cooking phase.
    I am now ready to divulge the secret ingredient. The substance that allows this lasagna to triumph. It is time. Five hours of cooking time and yes, your patience will be rewarded. Now I know what you're saying, you're saying, "Hey, I'm going to be out of the house seven hours. I can't be there to baby sit this thing." No problem. Fancy-shmancy new digital cookers typically have delayed cook functions and auto-off functions. Me, I prefer to marry two proven old school multi-taskers. My analog-style three-quart slow cooker, and a standard lamp or appliance timer available at your local hardware store. This is the kind of device you plug a lamp into in order to trick some burglar into thinking you're home when you're not. I am simply going to set it to begin cooking, ah, say in an hour, and then to discontinue five hours later. Activate the device and just walk away.

The earliest references combining pasta and
tomato sauce date back to only the 1830's.

7.3 hours later...

    Ahh, just savor that aroma. Oh, I'm sorry, you, you can't smell, can you? Sorry. Well let me assure you, it's like being greeted by ...

IM: You're a good-a boy ... sometimes, ah! [slaps AB's cheek again, and exits]

    Who keeps letting her in? Ow!
    [at the Crock-Pot] Hmm, you know one of the most common lasagna-centric complaints is that it can be greasy. Well with all that sausage in there, how could it not be? Now it's a difficult issue to wrangle with when you're dealing with a rectangular vessel. Cooking deep and round like this gives us a very effective option, however. Simply take a lid from a two-quart sauce pan, and press down like this. Now the fat will gurgle up over the sides and into the top of the lid, pretty as you please. Now slowly lift off and discard, or whatever you want to do with it.

    Then of course, you're going to want to brown the cheese, aren't you? For that you're going to need either a blow torch, or a heat gun, the kind that you buy at the hardware store and you use to strip paint. It's pretty good at browning cheese as well. There, that looks finished.
    [at the table] Now I realize that this is not your grandmother's lasagna, even if you are Italian. But, you know, the way I look at it, with four distinct layers, with all the meaty goodness, and the flavorful vegetation, and sauce to bind, and herbs, who cares? [tastes] Hmm, I would say, in fact, this is 9.5 on the comfort food meter. Can we go to 10? You haven't seen dessert yet.

The world's largest lasagna was made in 2008 and weighed in at 8,800 pounds.

SCENE 9
The Kitchen

GUESTS: Five "Fiddler on the Roof" Jews

    [AB illustrates with a globe model of earth] This is a sphere. In German, kugel, which is also the name of what many Yiddish cooks would no doubt consider to be Jewish lasagna. Although savory kugels are often made with layers of potatoes and the like, many Jews and gentiles alike would agree that the most comforting kugel of them all are lokshun kugel, noodle kugel. And although fresh egg noodles are, strictly speaking ...

JEWS: [pop-up and yell] Tradition!!

... lasagna, in my humble opinion, does an even better job when sweet kugel are on the menu.

    Now, as far as the baking vessel goes, we want an 8x8 inch glass dish, sprayed with non-stick spray. If you would prefer a crunchier kugel, you can go with a 9x13 baking dish instead.

    Now I know you're looking at this mixture and thinking that it's very, very fatty. Well, as far as that goes, I said it was comfort food, I didn't say it was spa food. There's no such thing as comforting spa food.

    [at the oven] At this point, remove the foil, and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes, or until the custard is thoroughly set, and the noodles are nicely browned. Then ...
    [now at the table] ... serve to a thankful, comforted world. Indeed, kugel is the most comforting dessert known to man, and a most comfortable culinary cohort to the most comforting casserole known to man, composed, of course, of the most comforting ingredient of all time, lasagna, of course.
    If you want to keep comfortable in your pants, portion control is highly recommended. See you next time on comfortable Good Eats.

Transcribed by Michael Roberts
Proofread by Michael Menninger

Last Edited on 12/01/2011