Smash them up and put them in soup or serve with pasta sauce, says our overstocked panel of pasta pundits
• Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com
I’ve accidentally bought too many boxes of dried lasagne sheets. How can I use them up?
Jemma, by email
This is sounding all too familiar to Jordon Ezra King, the man behind the A Curious Cook newsletter. “It’s funny Jemma asks this,” he says, “because I was in this exact same situation earlier this year after over-catering for a client dinner.” The first thing to say is there’s no immediate rush, he adds: “It sounds obvious, but you can keep the boxes for a long time.” Fortunately for Jemma and her shopping mishap, however, lasagne sheets are also flexible, and their shape doesn’t have to dictate what you do with them.
With this in mind, soupy things are good to get on the weekly dinner rotation, be that pasta e ceci or minestrone, the latter being the go-to of choice for Mattie Taiano, chef and co-owner with Ravneet Gill of Gina’s in Chingford, Essex: “Just bash up the lasagne sheets with a rolling pin and chuck in all the bits.” Theo Randall, chef-patron of Cucina Italiana at the InterContinental London Park Lane, meanwhile, would break the pasta lengthways and cook it in boiling salted water: “Add that to a ragu-like sauce with some of the pasta cooking water and a generous knob of butter. Just make sure you cook the pasta and sauce together for at least three minutes, so they combine in texture and flavour.”
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