The food of love: Family makes lasagna for the holidays
Courtesy of Kristin Andreassi
Kathleen and Valorie Andreassi make noodles while Jon Andreassi looks on.
Courtesy of Kristin Andreassi
Freshly baked lasagna being served.
Courtesy of Kristin Andreassi
The almost-finished product, it just needs to go in the oven.
Courtesy of Kristin Andreassi
Valorie Andreassi makes the first layer of a pan of lasagna. The noodles hanging over the sides will eventually form the top layer.
Matthew Andreassi boils noodles and prepares to scoop them out to place them in an ice bath.
Courtesy of Kristin Andreassi
Chris Andreassi makes multiple roasters of sauce that go on each layer of lasagna.
If the noodles aren't see through, they aren't thin enough.
Noodles are laid out flat, with flour to prevent sticking.
The dough will need to go through the roller on different settings to get the right length and thickness.
The lasagna dough is first fed through a pasta roller.
”To eat good food is to be close to God.”
Those words are spoken by Tony Shalhoub’s character in the 1996 film, “Big Night,” co-written and co-directed by Stanley Tucci. In the movie, Tucci and Shalhoub play two brothers who operate a restaurant with a deep commitment to serving truly authentic Italian food, to a fault.
I brought this movie up at my parents’ house during our annual lasagna making day this past October, and my Aunt Kathy told me something I never knew: “Big Night” was one of my Nana’s favorite movies.
Joanne Andreassi (née Painter), my paternal grandmother, and John B. (Giambattista) Andreassi, my Papa, were who used to make my family’s traditional Christmas lasagna. When they stopped hosting Christmas dinner, they would bring the massive pan to my parents’ home.
“Wait, Christmas lasagna?” is what I just imagined you saying out loud to your newspaper or device of choice. Yes, Christmas lasagna, right next to the ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy.
My Nana and Papa, however, did not originate the recipe. My Papa’s Aunt Gina Andreassi (née Tomassi) started cooking the lasagna in Villa Sant’Angelo, located in the Abruzzo region of Italy, where my Papa was born.
When Gina made lasagna, she would make the bottom layer with bread crumbs and extra long noodles that hung over the sides of the pan. The excess noodles are folded back over the top to form the final layer.
Gina would serve the lasagna by flipping the pan upside down.
According to my Aunt Kathy, this was mostly about presentation, but also had the added benefit of making the top, crusty layer of noodles, which Gina hated, the bottom layer.
It also was not specifically a Christmas lasagna, but Gina only served the dish on Sundays for special gatherings.
We no longer use breadcrumbs, or flip the lasagna out of the pan to serve, but continue to use the technique of having long noodles serve as both the bottom and top layers.
My mom recalls that the first time she made Gina’s lasagna recipe was when my Nana died in 2007. My Papa came over to teach my mom how to make the dough.
Ever since, “Lasagna Day” has been a tradition at my parents’ house. Making lasagna from scratch takes a lot of hands, and like any team sport you have the find the role where you can be most efficient.
My dad gets up early to prepare roasters of sauce, and then gets to watch football. The rest of us start by feeding dough through a pasta roller until the noodles are long and thin enough.
The noodles get boiled for a minute, and then pulled from the water and put into an ice bath. Someone else takes the noodles from the ice bath and lays them out flat, and then they need to be patted dry with a clean cloth.
My mom is typically on building duty. Sauce, meat, cheese and butter goes on each layer until she runs out of one of the ingredients (this year, it was the sauce). Her record is 12 layers.
Recently we have started making a vegetarian option that replaces the meat with spinach, and it’s delicious. We tried our hand this year at a vegan pan made with eggless dough. Though it got good reviews on taste, it came out of the oven more like lasagna soup. We will continue to workshop vegan lasagna.
When lasagna day is finished, we don’t just have a giant Christmas lasagna, but smaller pans for Thanksgiving, Easter and whatever other special occasion pops up along the way. There is almost always at least one frozen pan of lasagna at my parents’ house.
I wish I were not 15 years too late to ask my Nana what she enjoyed about “Big Night.” Maybe she just loved Stanley Tucci (how could you not?), though I wonder if we both had a similar emotional reaction.
“Big Night” makes a brilliant metaphor out of the simple act of cooking eggs. The eggs are an olive branch, a gesture of forgiveness between quarreling brothers. Food is how they say, “I love you, no matter what.”
I hope I am not alone in my family in thinking that food holds the same significance to us. I never met my Great Great Aunt Gina, but her love exists as long as there is lasagna at the dinner table.