Yesterday we set out to make this wonderful looking open faced lasagna with melted cheese and sliced asparagus, all topped with an asparagus salad. The finished plate is shown below.

The assembled meal, looks beautiful but tasted bland

First we made pasta for the lasagna sheets by hand, which is something I find so peaceful to make. The nice thing is that we only needed six sheets so we were able to make enough other pasta that it will last us a week or two.

Then we moved on to slicing the parmesan and the asparagus.

Shaved Asparagus and Parmesan

While I was doing the above, Jo Ann was making the asparagus salad that will top the lasagna as well as buttering the cookie sheet we will bake them on.

Asparagus Salad

We then preheated the BBQ for almost 20 minutes to get it up to 500° so we could cook the lasagna sheets and asparagus as well as melt the cheese.

Open Faced Lasagne with melted cheese and asparagus

The end result was a beautiful looking meal, but one that I will never make again. Very bland although we can see a number of alternative toppings to use on the grilled lasagna sheets.

The assembled meal, looks beautiful but tasted bland

Of course after so much work, we were feeling fairly down. However earlier in the day we had made both home made Vanilla Ice Cream (thank you David Lebovitz for the wonderful cook book “The Perfect Scoop”) and Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Chocolate Oblivion Truffle Torte from Food 52. Thankfully, chocolate and vanilla ice cream can save just about any down day!

Rose Levy Beranbaum’s Chocolate Oblivion Truffle Torte with Home Made Vanilla Ice Cream