Lasagna

Have you ever felt that food makes you remember or makes you forget?

I like to cook rice with pigeon peas, potatoes salad, and Dominican-style lasagna.

It is a recipe that we made as a Dominican tradition, every December 24th. I remember that I always helped my mother prepare the big dinner, where the whole family would gather, talk about fun topics, and nourish family ties.

I always helped my mother, or I stole more portions than I helped, but I liked being with her. The energy, the feeling, the happiness that overwhelmed me every December 24th from the moment it dawned.

It has been 3 years and 4 months since I left my mother to come to the United States. I have not seen her again, and every day I miss her, but there are days when the feeling that something is missing is stronger than others.

Sometimes I am at work, and out of nowhere, in my mind, or in my subconscious, I get the desire to prepare that same dinner. Even if it is not December 24th, even if I am not with my mother, and even if the whole family is not going to get together.

I buy all the ingredients, and I cannot help but remember when I went to the supermarket with my mother.

Lasagna was what I liked the most. That is why I want to share it with you.

First, we made the ground beef.

— Ground beef.
— Onions.
— Chicken cubes.
— Pepper Cubanela.
— Oil.
— Raisins.
— Tomato paste.
— Garlic.
Salt.

First, we made sure all the kitchen utensils were clean.

We cut the onions and the pepper Cubanela into small pieces. We crushed the garlic with a little salt. Then we turned on the stove and put a little oil. Once the oil was hot, we added the onion, cubanela pepper and garlic over medium heat for two minutes. You will begin to smell the delicious aroma that this mixture produces. Then we added a little tomato paste, chicken cubes and ground beef. We mixed everything with the help of a large spoon and covered it for 5 minutes, until the meat was cooked. Once the meat was cooked, we added raisins.

We left the meat in the container. The next step was to preheat the oven (the degrees will always depend on the power of your oven). Then we boiled the lasagnas and prepared the sauce for our lasagna.

— Packs of lasagna.
— Mozzarella Cheese
— Onion.
— Cubanela Pepper
— Chicken Cubes
— butter
— Carnation
— tomato paste.
— cornstarch
— Water.

After we boiled our lasagnas, we prepared the sauce. My mother was never an enthusiastic fan of buying ready-made sauce, she liked to give her own touch to her lasagnas. For the sauce, the first thing we did was put a cardoon on the stove and add butter. A little onion, garlic, and Cuban pepper. We would let it sit for a minute and add the chicken cubes, and the carnation milk. In another container, we would put water and cornstarch and mix it until the cornstarch dissolved. We would put it in the cardoon along with the other ingredients and mix. We could not stop mixing until our sauce took the desired consistency.

The next step was to assemble the entire lasagna. In an aluminum pan, we would start by placing a little of our sauce, and then lasagnas. 4 per layer or depending on the size of our aluminum pan. We put sauce again, then added the ground beef, and the mozzarella cheese. We repeated the process repeatedly, and when we finished, we covered it with aluminum foil and put it in the oven for 45 minutes or 1 hour.

Together we prepared everything else. Now I must do it alone at home, but that does not mean without her company, because mostly my mother is there through phone calls. Most of the time I like to call her, and it is stupid, because I know the whole recipe, but hearing it from her voice makes it different. It is like therapy, mom’s love, that relieves me of everything. It ends stress, troubled times and makes me know that everything will be okay and that one day we will see each other again.

Meanwhile, I can answer myself, and its that preparing food makes you remember and forget, because preparing this dish makes me remember the happiest moments of my life, but it also makes me forget the distance that separates me from my mother and my sisters. It makes me forget that I have not seen them in years, it makes me forget that, for now, we can only communicate by phone, without hugs, without kisses, and without those good mother-daughter conversations that take place face to face. It makes me forget that I am without them, in an unknown country, missing those I left behind in my own country.