[ Tapping rhythmically ]
-What was that?
Good job. Okay, I got another
one for you, okay?
[ Tapping rhythmically ]
Come on. No one knows?
♪ Me say day O ♪
♪ Daylight come
and we want to go home ♪
♪ Come, mister tally man,
tally me ♪
♪ a mushroom ♪
♪♪
Hi, I'm Farideh. I'm the
culinary director at MUNCHIES,
and today we're making
a spinach and mushroom lasagna
from our new cookbook,
"MUNCHIES Guide to Dinner."
What we're gonna do
to get started
is we're gonna make
our filling for this lasagna.
So we've got a bunch
of cremini mushrooms.
These are kind of like
baby portobellos a little bit.
It really doesn't matter
what kind of mushrooms.
If you want to do a mixture of
all kinds of mushrooms, do that.
We're using just standard
little yellow onions in here.
If you want to use red onions,
you can.
Like, it's not gonna make
that big of a difference.
The idea is that we're using
this book to empower you
to take this as a jumping-off
point to make your own recipes.
If you're more of
an advanced cook,
if you're still a novice,
follow these recipes
but then get really comfortable
with these recipes
that you can use them
to kind of jump off
and make them
into something of your own.
Slice up our onions.
We're also going to dice up
our garlic.
So about three cloves.
I'll throw it
right into this little guy.
[ Whirring ]
Look at that.
Your garlic is chopped up
for you.
We're just gonna sauté
and soften up our onions.
And we're gonna add our garlic.
♪♪
I'm also going to add
a little bit of salt into this.
I don't think that there's
anything better in the world
than the smell of onions
and garlic cooking.
It's just gonna sweat
and it's gonna soften.
So you're gonna see,
it's gonna get
nice and translucent,
and that's
what we're looking for.
Recently, like, I was
coming home for a weekend
down to Maryland,
where I'm from.
My mom makes a good lasagna.
And she's just like,
"Oh, what do you want me
to make you for dinner?
What do you want?" And I was
like, "I want your lasagna."
And I got home and she's like,
"Ooh, I got you lasagna."
And she literally bought
Trader Joe's frozen lasagna.
I was so pissed.
I was so pissed.
But anyways, my mom was like,
"That's so complicated.
Of course
you wanted a lasagna."
Now this is the opposite
of that.
This is a very simple recipe.
You're making this filling
then you're just layering it.
So it couldn't be simpler.
It really couldn't.
We're gonna add in
all these mushrooms.
I think it's like
three pounds of mushrooms.
This is also a good way
to lift weights.
If you're trying to exercise
and stuff,
you just go like this.
Then you switch arms.
Left arm.
Just go like that, okay?
That's about three pounds.
Okay, right on in here.
A key tip while you're
making anything
is to season as you go.
So make sure you're
seasoning your mushrooms.
Another tip for you
is to keep a drawer
where you're working
and keep chocolate in there.
Then you just eat chocolate
while you cook.
Going to drain this
into here.
♪♪
Just like that.
Ooh!
It's heavy.
But I'm so strong
because I've been doing
my lifts.
Mushroom lifts.
Okay. We're going to add
some more oil back into here.
We're going to add
the rest of the mushrooms in.
Into our filling
we're going to do
about three cups
of ricotta cheese,
six cups of mozzarella cheese.
I'm going to use about half of
it, so about three cups.
This we're going to use
to help assemble our lasagna.
What we have here
is about 30 ounces,
which is three packages
of frozen spinach.
I think that growing up,
my mom was making lasagna --
I used to love sitting there
while she made it
because she'd have
her marinara sauce going.
And my mom would add, like,
garlic powder and onion powder
into this mixture, and I would
sit there with a spoon
and, like,
dip my spoon into this
and then into the red sauce
and then put some, like,
beef on top of that, some cooked
beef, and just eat that.
So it was like a gluten free
lasagna, which was really good.
[ Sizzling ]
These mushrooms are done.
Add her on in.
♪♪
We're going to let these
cool down a little bit
and then we're gonna
add it back into here.
But first I'm going to make
my béchamel sauce.
So a béchamel sauce is like
one of those mother sauces.
When I say mother sauce,
I mean, like, there's these,
like, five sauces that are like
the essential sauces
that you should know as a cook.
We're gonna make a very
simple béchamel sauce.
So usually it's about
equal portions of fat to flour.
So the fat I'm using
is butter.
This is unsalted butter.
All-purpose flour.
Right on in there.
I don't want it to get
any color.
You can see, it's this
light color right now.
I'm kind of cooking out
the taste of flour,
is what's happening right now,
without burning it
and having it change color.
We're gonna slowly add in
your milk.
If you don't whisk it,
you'll get lumps.
You get a lot of lumps
in there, which isn't great.
So this is gonna cook
just for, you know,
maybe five to ten minutes
until it's a little bit thicker.
A little bit of salt.
And some black pepper.
[ Grinding ]
We'll set it aside
to cool slightly
before I add it back to
my mixture with the mushrooms
and all the good things,
okay?
So I can't stress enough
how easy this pasta recipe is.
You can do this by hand.
It's totally fine.
Two cups of semolina flour.
Two-thirds cup of water
into there.
I'm gonna add a little bit
more water in there.
Just like a tablespoon
at a time.
Like one tablespoon of water
to that.
So it's, like, holding
together, it's pliable.
[ Slapping ]
Look at that.
Vegan pasta dough.
Who knew? So easy.
♪♪
♪♪
Gonna add these into there.
♪♪
Gonna add our béchamel
right on in.
♪♪
Mix her all together.
Our pasta.
It's been refrigerated
for about two hours.
I've got some extra semolina
here just for dusting.
All right, I want to divide this
into four pieces.
♪♪
Just make it easier
to work with.
I'm going to lightly flour
my surface here.
Semolina.
And I'm gonna roll this out
into, like, a little
just a thinner piece.
This will make it easier
to feed the machine.
And I have
a electric pasta maker.
If you don't have one, you have
a hand-crank one, that's fine.
Probably do need a pasta maker
to do this.
Or you can just use
store-bought pasta in general.
So a little bit of
semolina on here.
[ Whirring ]
Just gonna feed it through.
[ Whirring continues ]
And again, you want to put it
through one more time.
And you can see every time
I put it through,
it's going to get longer and a
little bit stretched out more.
[ Click ]
Second from the setting.
[ Whirring continues ]
♪♪
[ Turns off machine ]
Okay.
We want it to fit into
a 9x13-inch pan,
so I'm gonna trim it
into 13-inch lengths.
♪♪
One piece right there.
Olive oil on the bottom
so it doesn't stick.
Three lasagnas on the bottom.
And then we're gonna do
about two cups
worth of filling per layer.
Two right there.
Right up to the edges, okay?
About a half a cup of cheese
per layer, okay?
So you can use the cheese
to kind of fill in
those little holes and stuff.
Then we're gonna do another
layer of pasta.
And that's it.
Like, this is --
Like I said, this couldn't be
an easier recipe.
♪♪
♪♪
Right up to the edges.
And don't forget...
the old Parmesan.
Okay?
More Parmesan on the top.
All over.
There we go.
Boom.
So, cover it with foil.
Put into a 375-degree oven
for 40 minutes.
Then we're gonna take
that foil off.
We're gonna jack the heat up
to broil or whatever
and just let it brown
on the top, and it's good to go.
All right.
Looks pretty good.
The first piece is always
the ugliest piece.
Like a piece of pie, you know?
Came out really well.
It's all held together.
Let's try it out.
Mmm.
The spinach and the mushrooms
makes it taste really healthy.
Wow, it's, like, creamy.
Nice and crispy and cheesy
on the top.
So good.
You can get that recipe
here in our cookbook,
"MUNCHIES Guide to Dinner."
Also, this recipe will be
available on our website.
Make it, cook it online,
hashtag #cookmunchies.
Thank you so much.
We love you.
♪♪
♪♪
