Alex Guarnaschelli Struggled With This Lasagna Ingredient On Alex Vs. America
Comfort food looks a little bit different for everyone. Maybe you like to scarf down a bowl of creamy macaroni and cheese. Maybe you prefer digging into a flaky homemade chicken pot pie. Or maybe, you enjoy a heaping slice of lasagna, with all of its cheesy goodness. In its most basic form, lasagna is layers of thick noodles and fluffy ricotta cheese, doused in tangy tomato sauce — it's like a warm hug in a casserole dish. As if that isn't enough, there are plenty of variations on the dish, like ones with ground beef, vegetables, assorted cheeses, and even some made without any pasta at all.
Even "Chopped" celebrity chef Alex Guarnaschelli is a big fan of the classic Italian dish. In a recent episode of "Alex vs. America" — which is the Food Network star's new cooking competition show where she battles chefs across the country — Guarnaschelli whipped up a noodle-free vegetable lasagna inspired by her Italian-American grandmother (via Yahoo). While making lasagna seems easy, there was one part of this particular recipe that Guarnaschelli struggled with on the show.
The Bechemel sauce gave Alex a lot of trouble
When Alex Guarnaschelli makes lasagna, she goes all in — no boxed lasagna noodles or jars of pre-made pasta sauce here. However, on the recent episode of "Alex vs. America," it wasn't the pasta or the filling that she had trouble with. "The hardest part of lasagna was not actually making the pasta dough," Guarnaschelli tweeted after the show. "It was making that Bechemel sauce. Sometimes it's the simplest parts of the dish that are the hardest to get right."
What exactly is that fancy sauce? Guarnaschelli's version includes "just milk and flour with a little bay leaf and a little red pepper ... to give it that kick" (via Today). She goes on to describe it as "that Italian-grandmother white sauce" which is typically spread over a white pizza. However, in this case, she uses it as the sauce for her noodle-free lasagna. Fans supported Guarnaschelli even in her sauce struggle. Many tweeted their praise in response, with one person agreeing, "It's the simplest things that are the hardest to get right."