The Lasagna of Sadness
Layers of grief with ragù and béchamel sauce
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If you’re working through the recent loss of a loved one you may want to skip to the recipes at the bottom (it may also be cathartic to read). I promise the next few newsletters are about happier topics!
“Mama, stop yelling.”
“I’M NOT YELLING THIS IS HOW I TALK!”
My mom had a larger than life personality. She was very charismatic. She had a booming voice. You could hear her down the street. Everyone knew her. Most people liked her, until they didn’t. She could talk for hours.
One of my biggest regrets is not having a recording of her voice.
When we were younger, my oldest sister hid a walkie-talkie inside a grocery bag in one of the floor vents in our house.
“Mama” she said through the walkie talkie. “I’m trapped in the bag.”
“Vere are you?” Mama had a thick Yugoslavian accent.
“I’m stuck in a bag.”
“YOU SHET IN THE BAG?!” she shouted from the kitchen.
Reflecting on this as an adult, this joke was quite mean – my mom had an undiagnosed paranoid thought disorder, we think schizophrenia. She once took apart our TV because it was telling her what to do. She had auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions. I think this joke was my sister’s way of making sense of something we couldn’t understand as kids. In University I wrote all these stories down for my book design class, each story a criteria of the DSM IV classification for symptoms of schizophrenia. My own way to make sense of her, my own cruelty when she found it while rifling through my things.
My mom lived with chronic pain, and because of her mental health, because of the biases society has towards women, her pain wasn’t taken seriously. She ended up on permanent disability (though due to social and occupational dysfunction, not her pain). Still no one took her pain seriously.
Until her bowel ruptured.
In the emergency room she begged the surgeon not to give her a colostomy. She got a colostomy. She had Stage IV colon cancer.
My family tends to deal with trauma through humour. After her surgery our response was, “you shet in the bag?” Colostomies are invasive and can lead to a lot of embarrassing encounters for people with them. Better to be direct. The colostomy bag was a member of our family now.
My mom was a strong woman, both in physical stature and determination. A few weeks after getting out of the hospital she was working in the garden, moving patio stones, killing time until she could start chemo. Her chemotherapy regime, called 5-FU (named for a chemical, branded so she could say “You see Marko, they are saying ‘F U’ to the cancer! Hehehe.”) couldn’t be used within a few months of surgery. She kept stopping chemo, hoping it had done enough that she could have the colostomy reversed. But the cancer always came back, it’s own “F U”.
In Canada, colorectal cancer represents 10% of cancer diagnoses and 11% of all cancer deaths but it is talked about less than other cancers because people don’t like to talk about shitting in a bag (or shitting anywhere, really). Who wants to talk about the time they have had a camera inspect their colon – or more likely, didn’t have a colonoscopy because it seems awkward?
Do you know what’s more awkward than having a doctor put a camera up your anesthetized anus? Leaving your children without a parent, your spouse without a partner, or the world without you.
Also: they now have tiny cameras inside of pills that you can swallow. Ask your doctor.
Colorectal cancer, when caught early, is immensely treatable. Early diagnosis usually involves getting a colonoscopy. If you have colorectal cancer in your family you should start getting colonoscopies at age 40 (stay tuned for that experience to be recounted in a few years, but for now you can read
's account). For others they suggest starting at age 50.If it were to fall apart
The grudge of steel that’s your heart– A Commotion, Feist
I had a very complicated relationship with my mom. She was my mom. But she was also a hateful bigot, who until her dying day did not accept that I am gay. Instead her last words were “I want you to improve, and be a better person, and you know what I mean.” What she meant was that I should marry a Serbian woman instead of being a sinful gay man. I don’t let it bother me – she loved me, perhaps not for who I am but for what I meant for her. Her boy.
I don’t need her acceptance. I accept who I am, I love who I am, and I am enough.
It’s easy to say that now, but that’s what 4 years of therapy will do for you.
There were many people in my family who could have helped my mom – someone to translate her chaotic, paranoid storytelling into understandable information for the doctors (“she’s trying to say her pain is worse today”). Someone to help her enter information into the hospital computers (“which sad face emoji best describes your feelings today?”). Someone to sit with her at chemo, someone to convince her to keep going every time she wanted to stop, someone to pick out yarn so she had projects to keep her engaged.
I am the designated problem solver in my family. So at age 23 this became my second job. I took every other Wednesday off work to take her to chemo. At 25 I planned and paid for her funeral. I have been lucky in my career – I was already an Art Director at age 22, overseeing 30 designers and writers for a local agency. I had the means and the skills to do this. I understand why my dad and sisters wouldn’t do it – we all had complicated, unresolved relationships with my mom. At home and at work, someone had to be the reliable one.
So I took my mom to chemo for two years. I sat there listening to her tell me I was a disappointment until she died. I know I am not a disappointment. I was Co-President of Student Council in high school. I am first person in our family to go to University (which I paid for by working weekends). I was an Art Director, then Creative Director, then Founder/CEO. I sold my company and now I’m an Internet Food Person. If that’s not enough, I’m not sure what is – so before you comment with praise, I’d ask that you stop and think about the people in your life who aren’t sharing their stories in public. Tell them you love them as they are. They need to hear it.
My cup is full after last week.
A dear friend of mine, also the reliable one in her family, took her mother through chemo. She recalled that she had enough Grand River Hospital parking receipts to sew a dress out of. I often think about this experience when privatizing healthcare is discussed. My mom had emergency surgery, post-surgery care, two years of chemotherapy, and months of hospice care at home and at a facility. The only thing we paid for out of pocket was parking. Everything else was paid for by OHIP, Ontario’s Provincial health insurance program funded by our taxes. I am forever grateful for that. I believe in publicly funded, publicly accessible universal healthcare.
My mom was in hospice care for 3 months. She wanted to die at home, but being a strong woman she took a very long time to die. This was a terrible experience for her and our family. She was bedridden, asleep most of the day, hallucinating at night. Stuck in a hospital bed in her bedroom. We took turns sleeping on another mattress on the floor, not wanting her to die alone. The hospice doctor came with The Black Box. It’s filled with an escalating set of painkillers that were administered by me as symptoms worsened.
This one for pain.
This one for nausea from the painkillers.
This one for hallucinations from the painkillers.
This one when nothing else worked.
Despite being the youngest, despite not working in healthcare, I was the family member responsible for these injections. I was the reliable one. These were technically easy to do, they went into a needle-free portacath system, but they were horribly stressful every time. My aunt, my mom’s sister, told everyone I was killing my mother with these injections. I refused to speak to her at my mom’s funeral and I will never speak to her again.
When a good man and a good woman
Can't find the good in each other
Then a good man and a good woman
Will bring out the worst in the other– The Bad In Each Other, Feist
Because my mom was under hospice care for so long, the doctor recommended we move her to a facility so the burden of care wasn’t on me anymore. She was moved to Lissard House, a a hospice facility in the Region. I vividly remember when the paramedics were trying to get her out of the house, strapped to a gurney, navigating the split-level foyer. It took six of us to raise her over the railing, everyone worried we would flip her over and knock her down the stairs. I imagined that she would go flying down the street, shouting “COMING THROUGH!” like the time she drove through every intersection during the 2003 blackout. She only had a 1/4 tank of gas left to get us home from Toronto. She knew how to run on fumes.
We thought she would be in Lissard House for a few days before she died, but she was there for a very long month. I vividly remember driving there every day, listening to the album Metals by Feist. The Bad In Each Other was about my relationship with my Aunt, who was grieving in the way she knew how to. Graveyard and Caught In a Long Wind about my grief. A Commotion for my mother’s hate.
Undiscovered First for me to scream in the car about how unfair this all was.
She died with all of us were there, a month before Christmas, on the day of our family’s Slava. It’s like a family celebration for your patron saint? It’s a tradition we don’t uphold, but everything takes on more meaning with death. She died while I was reading the interactive Charlie Brown Christmas on my iPad to one of my nieces, who was 3 at the time. I still can’t listen to the Charlie Brown Christmas theme song.
After she died I didn’t have anything to do anymore. For two years this was my purpose. But now there were no more appointments. No problems to solve. No drugs to inject. No funerals to plan. No more Grand River Hospital parking receipts.
No Mama.
Grief after a long and painful death is complicated. How do you grieve such a complicated relationship?
Since we knew she was dying we planned her funeral together. It sounds morbid until you’ve been in the situation. Funerals are very expensive – why assume she’ll be mad at how expensive dying is, when I can still ask? So I brought home samples of coffins. We talked about them as casually as if coffins were wool for the sweater she knit me. She liked oak, with removable angels, one for each of us. I’m looking at mine right now. I’ve considered putting it away, but it feels cold? Callous?
“I born you and you treat me like this?”
She specifically requested there be cold cut platters at the service.
Whispers in the grass
Under slow dancing trees
Birds are telling me stories
Saying you were meant for me– Bittersweet Melodies, Feist
My mom was a terrible cook, but she made one thing exceptionally well. She had an illegal basement bakery where she made kore – a type of phyllo dough. With us as child labour she would make 300 dozen kore on the weekend, drive them to Waterloo, Hamilton, or Toronto, sell them to the European stores in exchange for cold cuts or money to take us to Wonderland. Kore is used to make pita (cheese pie, also known as burek, depending on which part of the former Yugoslavia you’re from). She was known in town for making the best pita. My mom worked as a custodian for the school board, so my teachers would ask for her to bring pita to PTA meetings. My mom liked puns.
I didn’t make pita for 10 years, I’ll post the recipe eventually. It’s not that it’s a secret, but that I want it to be right. In the days, months, and years after she died I found purpose again by cooking.
I cooked for our family, I cooked for my friends, I cooked for myself. I cooked when no one wanted to eat anymore. We still ate.
That was the first year I made this lasagna. It was also the year I began a tradition of baking a Christmas cookie every day from American Thanksgiving (when she died) to Canadian Christmas (when I had enough). It is a great way to distract myself and force myself to visit friends with cookies.
When the flag changes colours
The language knows
When the month changes numbers
It's time to go– Anti-Pioneer, Feist
This was 12 years ago. Time numbs us from pain. The first year was impossibly hard, since there is now a first everything where the empty chair is present. When you lose someone whose personality was larger than life the quiet becomes suffocating. Losing a parent, even one with a complicated relationship, doesn’t become anything less than impossible for about 5 years. Eventually you can tell stories of the person without tearing up. Eventually you get enough distance from the pain that you can focus on the nice memories instead of your unresolved pain (unless you’re writing a newsletter about grief).
There was the time she fell asleep on the couch, shoving her bra in the cushions. One of my friends found it the next day. “MARKO, IS THIS YOUR GIRLFRIEND’S BRA?!” she shouted to all of my friends – the friends I had come out to as gay a month prior. I tell my nieces about the way we could only have the car windows open “TWO FINGERS!” in the heat of summer, because “THE DRAFT WILL KILL ME!” I turn around, crinkle my nose like her and shout “CHECK MY BLINDSPOT!” I tell them about how we grew up listening to Lepa Brena in Grandma’s car. I ask Siri to play Sanjam.
She once told me “YOU DRIVE MY CAR LIKE A WHORE!” I gave the same feedback to my oldest niece when teaching her to drive.
On several occasions Mama wrapped her leg in a garbage bag, then pink insulation that she took from inside the walls, then another garbage bag. “I SVEAT THE PAIN!” Once she shouted, unironically, “Who the fuck taught you how to FUCKING SVEAR?!” But most often when she was upset she would threaten to pack her things and “MOVE INTO THE FUCKING BUSH!”
However disappointed she was in me for being a gay man, she did make every other part of my life was supported. She bought me an iMac on a custodian’s salary so I could learn iMovie and Photoshop in higschool. She waited in line to get me a gold Ocarina of Time cartridge from Zellers. She always went back to McDonalds if my cheesebüerger wasn’t plain. She made palačinke (crepes) and uštipci (fried bread) when I was sad.
She yelled at me not to climb the cherry tree her father planted, while simultaneously asking that I pick all the good ones from the top before the birds eat them, since I was up there already.
It’s not easy to hold two things true in your mind, even harder in your heart, but that’s the truth of life. Most people are not all good or all bad.
Almost every day she would go to the Tim Hortons drive-thru for a plain bagel, toasted, “with a little of butter,” and a medium double double. “Marko, eat half.” I always got half the bagel. I don’t know what she did with the other half if I wasn’t in the car. Once or twice a year I go to her grave with a plain bagel, toasted, with a little bit of butter, and a medium double double. I eat half the bagel.
I leave the other half. For her spirit? My memory? The squirrels? I don’t know. I still take her a bagel.
What does sadness see?
The mirror has a mirror in its teeth
That's what sadness is– Comfort, Feist
I’ve had more friends lose parents than I care to count. All of them at too young of an age. When you’re young, your 50s seem old. When you’re middle aged, your 50s seem like you still have your whole life ahead of you. Until one day you don’t.
After my mom died I learned to have an appreciation for the people who show up in hard times. I haven’t always been that person – I was in Scotland on a work trip when a very close friend of mine’s mom died. I missed the funeral. I wasn’t there for her and I still feel bad about it almost a decade later. Since then I’ve started making a concentrated effort to make sure I am there for my chosen family. I make lasagna whenever someone close to me loses someone close to them.
I call it The Lasagna of Sadness. It takes a long time to make. For me, it's a meditation – a way to reflect on my own experience with loss.
I reflect on my relationship with my friend, my relationship with my mom, and my relationship with my grief.
As much as time heals you, sharing someone’s grief transports you back to that place.
As still as a well, mysterious hymn
She closed one eye slowly
Her light became dim
She couldn't see how to give her light to the water
Looking up from the depths, he didn't know how to want her– Pine Moon, Feist
I think about what I wish someone had told me back then, so I can tell it to my friends. That for long illnesses like cancer, it's okay to feel a conflicting set of emotions. There's grief, there's loss, there's even relief, and the guilt you feel for being relieved that they're no longer in pain and you're no longer waiting for death.
You will need to make yourself a priority after putting someone else’s needs before yours for such a long time. You will have to fight to let go of the guilt for doing so – even when it's what they would have wanted for you.
You will need to live your life, for you.
And you can't possibly feel all these things at once and still cook for yourself, so I made this for you. It's a Lasagna of Sadness. It’s really good. I hope it makes you feel better. I hope it gives you some space from your loss.
I hope it helps you make some space for yourself again, one bite at a time.
Is this the right mountain for me to climb?
Is this the way to live?
Is it wrong to want more?– Undiscovered First, Feist
The Recipe
The recipe below is a continuation of the story of grief. You can view a straightforward, printable version without my life story on my website. There is also an equally delicious vegan version. You can make either version gluten free, or use the vegan bechamel with the meat ragù to make it dairy free. It’s your grief.
This recipe is an enormous amount of work and expensive. I suggest you do it over 3 days. I only make this when someone dies. This is not a casual lasagna recipe. I have a delicious mac and cheese recipe that’s comparatively affordable and only 30 minutes work, it’s also great for grief.
You can make all the components of this recipe in stages across several days depending on how much distraction you want to create for yourself. The bolognese and bechamel can be in the fridge for 2-3 days, or the freezer for several months. You can also freeze the assembled lasagna for 3 months.
You can double or triple this easily, which is great if you want to have components on hand in case of emergencies.
Paid Substack subscribers will also receive a beautiful 40-page cookbook PDF tomorrow. You can manage your subscription here.
Lasagna noodles
Making your own noodles is optional, but I find the repetitive, mechanical nature of making pasta to be very meditative. Here is a video demo (this was my second ever video on YouTube!).
18 egg yolks (300g), save the egg whites to make angel food cake
Flour – 120% of the weight of the egg yolks (3 cups)
Salt – 0.5% the weight of the egg yolks (1 tsp)
Olive oil – 5% the weight of the egg yolks (2 tbsp)
Separate and weigh your eggs
Clean your counter and your calendar to make space for the work ahead.
Crack all of your eggs into a large bowl, along with all of your memories. It’s more comfortable if you let the eggs, and your memories, sit at room temperature before getting to work. Pluck each egg yolk out, transferring them to one bowl. Memories to keep.
If you break any egg yolks in the egg whites, you can use a shell to move them over. The egg shells cling to the yolk, like the memories at the back of your mind you don’t want to face yet.
Weigh your egg yolks. Multiply this by 1.2 and measure that amount of flour.
Make the dough
Place the flour on the counter and make a well for your eggs. The well for your memories is the space you are creating in this time, this methodical work. Pour the eggs in. Add the salt and olive oil.
You need to be gentle with the eggs and with yourself. Start by popping each memory with a fork. Bring in the flour with a fork, a little bit at a time. You don’t want to knock down all your walls yet, you and the pasta will both end up a mess on the floor. Little by little, you process grief until it’s something that can be managed. When the fork isn’t cutting it, switch to a bench scraper. When you are ready, switch to your hands.
You will knead the dough for 10 minutes. It’s a dry dough, the hard work of grief is to transform it into something softer. If there is a lot of dry flour left on the counter, scrape it away instead of trying to incorporate it. If the dough won’t come together, tap your fingers in a bowl of water (two fingers!) and then rub that water on the dough – it doesn’t take much. If the dough is at all sticky or tacky, add more flour, dry your tears. Take breaks if you need to.
Rest, then roll the dough
Wrap the dough in plastic and let it rest. The gluten needs time to relax. You need time away from grief for it to really transform. Go for coffee with a friend – at least for 30 minutes, but up to 2 hours at room temperature. Put your grief in the fridge for up to 2 days (but the eggs will oxidise, the surface turns dark – it will brighten again after being rolled out).
When you’re ready to roll out the dough, set up your pasta roller. Divide the dough into 4–8 pieces, depending on how familiar you are with handling situations like this. It’s easier to work with smaller pieces.
Run the dough through on the thickest setting. Continue through each setting on your pasta machine until you can start to see yourself through it, when you start to see the person you used to be before this. For me that’s setting 7 of 9 on a Marcato Atlas.
I place my lasagna pan on the counter and trim the noodles to size with my bench scraper (scissors also work) – matching the length of the pan. Dust each sheet with semolina flour, which acts as a non-stick separator for them. Don’t try to use regular flour for this, they’ll all glue together. If you don’t have semolina use clean kitchen towels, parchment, or plastic. Continue rolling, trimming, and grieving.
Boiling noodles
Fresh noodles can be challenging in lasagna. They can get too mushy. Traditional Italian recipes solve this through a tedious but worthwhile process. You will need:
Your lasagna noodles
A very large pot of boiling, heavily salted water
A very large bowl of ice water
A large bowl of clean, cool water (you’ll regularly change this water)
A baking sheet
At least 3 large lint-free kitchen towels, I prefer organic cotton floursack towels
Add a few of your lasagna noodles to the boiling water for 30 seconds. Use a spider strainer to plunge them into ice water. Transfer them to the clean water to rinse off any surface starch. Gently squeeze the noodles to remove excess water, like squeezing a sponge. Transfer them to a clean kitchen towel in single layers.
This tedious process is essential to give fresh pasta the strength it needs to hold up the heavy weight of your grief and the bolognese. You can’t skip the transformation, if you do the noodles will break down.
I learned this tedious technique in Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking.
Bechamel sauce
45g | 3 tbsp butter
60g | 1/2 cup flour
1,500ml | 6 cups milk (whole milk is ideal)
115g | 4oz parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 tsp sweet paprika
Salt and pepper
Dairy Free and Vegan alternative
Often I make this with cashew milk (I prefer Elmhurst, since it has high fat/protein content like dairy milk, and the only ingredient is cashews). I’ve also made this vegan many times by using olive oil instead of butter. For a gluten free variation, use sweet rice flour (like Mochiko). Corn starch will be too gritty and glue-y, arrow root won’t thicken after it’s heated for so long.
Method
In a 3-quart or larger pot, on medium heat, melt the butter until it foams. Add in the flour and using a whisk mix it together. Cook it for 2-3 minutes until it smells nutty.
Add in the milk in batches. If you add all of the milk it will be lumpy and difficult to work with, and you will never get the lumps out. Start with 2-3 tablespoons of milk. Instantly you’ll see it become a very thick paste. Keep adding small amounts of milk at a time and whisking until incorporated before adding more milk. It will take at least 2 cups of milk to get a thin enough consistency that you can add the rest all at once.
Continue cooking on medium heat, whisking constantly – otherwise the flour will burn or the milk will scald. You must cook this until you see bubbles, then cook for 1 minute more. You’ll feel a slight thickening in the texture. Bubbling indicates the mixture has reached 212°F and the flour will be cooked. If you don’t let it get to bubbles it will taste starchy and not thicken.
Remove from the heat, add the nutmeg, paprika, salt and pepper. Adjust seasoning to taste.
It will thicken as it cools, so if it’s difficult to spread out nicely I recommend gently warming it before making your lasagna.
Ragù Bolognese
Ragù bolognese is very personal to each family. It may be all beef, all pork, or a mix. Some people prefer braised shortribs. Some use sausage instead of pork. You can replace the beef with small black and brown lentils for a vegan option. You do you, ragù.
Here’s what I make most often.
1,000g | 2lb ground beef (80%)
500g | 1lb ground pork
2 tsp salt
2 tsp black pepper
45ml | 3 tbsp avocado oil
100g | 3.5oz pancetta, chopped
1 medium onion, finely diced (1/2 cup)
2 medium carrots, finely diced (1 cup)
2 celery stalks, finely diced (1 cup)
6–8 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (75g)
60ml | 1/4 cup tomato paste
250ml | 1 cup good but affordable red wine (like Beaujolais-Villages)
1 x 794g | 28oz can of tomatoes
1L | 4 cups chicken stock
2 bay leaves
100g | 3.5oz parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper to taste
Brown the meat
Gently mix the beef and pork together with salt and pepper, using your fingers to toss it. You don’t need a homogenous mixture. Form them into 12 rather large meatballs, the size of a small apple, around 125g each (you don’t need to measure, they are getting mashed later).
Get a large, heavy bottom pot. At least 4.5 quarts but larger is better – a dutch oven is ideal. Cast iron is best, but use what you have. Add the avocado oil. Pre-heat until the oil is shimmering.
Add 4 meatballs into the pan. Space them apart. You need to create space for yourself while grieving. It feels like space is going to slow things down. Why not put all your meatballs in at once? The problem is that the beef won’t transform. You need it to get a beautiful, crispy caramelized outside like a smashburger (my mom pronounced this “büerger”). If you crowd the pan it will steam. It will look brown but it will not be caramelized.
Give your grief space to transform. Don’t try to do everything at once. It won’t work.
On medium-high heat you only need 1-2 minutes per side. Sides are confusing when discussing spheres, but somehow spheres have 6 sides when browning. 12 minutes per batch. 36 minutes to brown. You are going to be impatient, to want to get through to the other side. But give yourself the time and space you need.
The easiest way I’ve found to rotate the meatballs is with a pair of tongs. Generally they release from the pan when the surface touching the pan is caramelized enough. If you rush it the beef will stick to the pan. Between batches I use a fish spatula to scrape up the stuck on bits. These bits usually taste the best.
Remove the meatballs to a baking sheet – you can put them on the same one with the raw beef, since you’re browning, not cooking, right now. After you’re done with the meat, set it aside.
Make the ragù
If your oil from browning the meat looks dirty and smokey and smells bad, discard it out into a heat-proof container and add fresh oil. You can keep the fond on the bottom of the pot (don’t wash the pot!)
Add the chopped pancetta. Cook for 8–10 minutes until the pancetta has released its fat and is beginning to brown.
Add the onions, carrots, celery, and garlic. Add a pinch of salt, which helps pull moisture out of the vegetables so they cook faster. Stir often until the vegetables are soft, about 10 minutes.
Add the tomato paste and cook for another 3–5 minutes.
Add the wine, bring it to a boil, and cook for another 5 minutes until most of the liquid has evaporated.
Add the canned tomatoes, optionally crushing them with your hands. Add the stock and bring to a boil. Add the bay leaves.
Add the beef, reduce to low simmer, cover with the lid slightly ajar for at least 3 hours, ideally 4 hours. You can also bake this, covered, at 275°F in the oven. Protein bonds begin to break down after 4 hours, which is why the long cooking time is necessary. The beef will be incredibly tender.
Find and remove the bay leaves.
Mash everything with a potato masher until you have broken up all the meatballs and there are no large clumps of beef. For a smoother texture that allows more lasagna layers, I like to partially blend (about 50%) with an immersion blender, leaving some ground meat texture.
Add the parmesan cheese which will help emulsify the sauce. Taste and adjust for salt, pepper, and acidity.
Assemble the lasagna
Pans
Not all lasagna pans are created equal – they may look like the same dimensions, but due to the thickness of the material, tapered sides, and height of the dish they can range from 3 quart to over 5 quarts capacity!
Aluminum disposable baking pan:
13x9x2.0” – 2.5 quarts
13x9x2.5” – 3 quarts
Pyrex glass 13x9” – 3 quarts
USA Pans 13x9” – 3.75 quarts
Emile Henry 13x9” – 4.7 quarts
MadeIn 13x9” – 5.3 quarts
Personally I use the USA Pans most often, they are $20–30, they are all metal so you can confidently go from freezer to oven. Emile Henry and MadeIn are great luxury options that you may want to invest in or include as a gift with the lasagna.
If you want to create an excuse to check in on them
Use a beautiful, deep lasagna pan – I have the Emile Henry one, which is 2.76” deep and can have five (five!) complete layers of pasta, bechamel, and bolognese, as well as a bechamel topper. Since it’s such a luxury item they will (hopefully) want to return it – giving the person in grief an in-built way to come over for coffee, or for you to check in on them to get your pan back. It’s also a beautiful gift if you can afford that.
If you won’t be seeing them for a while
Look for the disposable aluminum 13x9 pans, with a depth of 2.5” or more. When building a lasagna in a disposable pan, place the pan on a baking sheet until the lasagna is refrigerated or frozen. The pans aren’t super stable with a semi-liquid lasagna inside and you don’t want it fall on the floor.
For smaller families and single people it can be nice to make several very tall 9x5 (loaf pan) lasagnas, or two 9x9 (brownie pan) lasagnas instead of one large lasagna. But a large lasagna is also a forcing function to share.
Glass and metal pans
Glass lasagna pans are common and affordable, but they are tragically only 1.5–1.7” tall inside. This is 50% less lasagna in the same pan. At best you’ll fit 3 layers. If you are looking for an affordable, re-usable option I would recommend the USA Pan 13x9 metal pan, which is $20 and made in the USA, and fits 5 layers.
Measure filling to create even layers
Starting with an empty lasagna pan
Add 2 tbsp of olive oil and massage it around the bottom and sides
Add 1 cup of ragù. Use an offset spatula to distribute it (it will be a sparse layer).
Add your first layer of noodles. Use scissors to trim them to fit. It’s okay to have a bit of overlap but try not to have gaps. As you build your layers try to offset where the seams are (so the seams aren’t always in the same place). This will give you a stronger structure.
Add 1-1/4 cups of béchamel and spread it out into an even layer with the offset spatula. I like to use 1/4 cup and add 5 drops – 2 left, 1 middle, 2 right (like a 5 on a dice cube).
Add 1-1/2 cups of ragù and spread it out into an even layer with the offset spatula. I like to add 3 columns – left, middle, right – then spread out the ragù.
Add a layer of pasta.
Repeat this until you are at the very top of the pan.
For the final layer you’ll use extra noodles. You want to ruffle them, zjoosh them up. You want some pockets for béchamel, some parts that pop up for crispy lasagna moments. Once you’re happy with the layout, top with béchamel sauce.
There may be extra ragù and béchamel, if that’s the case you can make a mini-lasagna in a ramekin for yourself.
Baking and serving
Pre-heat the oven to 350°F. Bake for 1 hour until bubbling in the middle and the top layer of noodles and béchamel has golden brown areas (see photo). Allow to cool for at least 30 minutes before serving. If you rush this the filling will be very fluid and pour out of the lasagna slices.
To freeze for later
Instead of baking, cover with a piece of parchment paper directly on the surface (it will peel off easily once the lasagna is frozen). Wrap tightly with foil.
Freeze. Thaw overnight in the fridge before baking.
To bake directly from frozen, bake at 325°F for 90 minutes, until the middle is bubbling. The exact time will vary depending on your lasagna pan and how many layers you have. To brown the top, increase the temperature to 425°F for 10 minutes, but only after you see bubbling in the middle.
Leftover grief
Leftover lasagna is one of the greatest gifts of lasagna:
Cut the leftover lasagna into 1” thick slices.
Heat a frying pan on medium-high with some butter or olive oil
When the oil is hot, place the lasagna in the pan cut side down (the layers face the pan, as if the lasagna fell over)
Cover with a lid or foil, reduce to medium, and cook for 8 minutes
It will reheat through and also get extremely crispy on one side and possibly taste even better than it was the day before
Support from a distance
Sometimes you’re not able to be there, physically, for your friends to get them a lasagna. What I’ve started doing here is finding food local to them in a delivery app. My favourite times I’ve done this I’ve employed what I call the Cousin Cousin network. I find other friends in the same locale, friends who will wait in line at the city’s best bakery for croissants, or go to the award winning vegan restaurant that has take-out, but not delivery. They pick up the food, throw it in a Lyft, and it shows up some time later. It’s a bit of magic. It’s a story to tell. It’s a distraction from grief.
It’s proof that even in the darkest times joy still exists in the world.
While you held me up
I held my calendar out like a cup
While you held me upMake it about me
I want to hold the blame to guillotine
Make it all blame-freeHe-he-he, he-he-he-he-he, he-he
– Comfort, Feist
Our neighbors are expecting their second child in 5 days and we're stocking their freezer with the lasagna of happiness. It is almost the same as the lasagna of sadness except it is seasoned with anticipation rather than tears. Delicious and perfect for sharing. Thanks, Christina