Making the Don Angie pinwheel lasagna as an obvious metaphor for trying again
spoiler alert: it worked :)
TW: Grief, romance
All year I kept saying “2023 was such a weird year for me!” with no real evidence or points on why I felt like this. As the end of the year finally approached, I can recognize that it was a hard year because it felt like a hard year.
2023 lacked joy for me. Like those true full belly laughs where someone says something so strange, so unique that your body makes a full guttural noise that works its way up from your diaphragm, slipping through your throat, spilling through your lips, the sound overtaking the room. It was a year where I didn’t have my usual ambition or energy to cultivate any new hobbies or interests. There’s reasons for this, but they’re kind of boring, and I promised my friends to tell me when I start veering into “cringe close friends” territory here, and I can already feel myself being dragged that way.
Surprisingly (to me) what 2023 didn’t lack was a lot of cooking. I spent a lot of time in my kitchen. At the end of 2022 I purchased a Le Creuset dutch oven, the gold star of all dutch ovens. Not only was it a bit of an obscene purchase, but I knew I had to make it count.
I spent the beginning of 2023 experimenting with different soups, beginning by reading recipes from Molly Baz, Carla Lalli Music, and Alison Roman to just see if I could follow a basic recipe. I wasn’t someone who picked up cooking during the pandemic, in fact, food had lost a lot of its allure for me during that time. I now felt compelled to try, but to start with small steps.
I made soups, I made stews, I attempted braising, I cooked things in the oven (I know the dutch oven is oven-safe, but it freaks me out everytime I put it in there) I moved onto making pasta (only sometimes, I’ll admit I did get lazy here and buy a lot of pre-made pasta) I tried making more intricate sauces, and like a fever dream I finally had the golden idea: I will make Don Angie’s pinwheel lasagna. It came smashing into me as a vision while I was on a walk. For the next 24 hours it was all I thought about. I would be washing dishes and the thought, “I will make Don Angie’s pinwheel lasagna” began to ring through my mind. While cleaning, “I will make Don Angie’s pinwheel lasagna” while out with friends, “I will make Don Angie’s pinwheel lasagna” the thought began to haunt me. I knew it was time to try something that my sources (the internet, mostly Tiktok) kept saying to make over 2-3 days, which after completing the recipe makes a lot of sense. But I thought: no. I desperately need the internal validation of making this layered, complicated recipe in ONE DAY. I must feast on pinwheel lasagna before the evening is over!!
Even with this determination to make it in one day, by the time I actually got up, left the house, got all the groceries (which took multiple stores!) it was like 2:30pm. I opened up the recipe from Thrillist, while also queuing up the video of the creators of the Don Angie lasagna making it themselves so I could closely follow along.
For folks unfamiliar with this dish, it’s a comical amount of prep work. It’s also a signature dish of the New York restaurant, Don Angie.
You need to make a besciamella sauce, an Italian sausage bolognese, and a San Marano tomato sauce. On top of all this, you need to make your own lasagna pasta sheets (I didn’t, no regrets!) or source them from your local Whole Foods (great choice and not just because this is what I did). You also need robiolina cheese, which I’m sure could be found at a specialty store, but I could not find this and used truffle salt Boursin cheese, and it was delicious.
Let me say, making the besciamella sauce was the easiest part, until I had to sieve the sauce and realized my colander was not thin enough, and watched as large chunks of herbs and garlic made its way into the sauce. Already, I was a little defeated. But I thought, ok, it now has character, it’s fine! My sauce was beige (??) compared to the pearl white of the sauce they use in the Don Angie video. I probably messed up on the roux which made the colour wrong; but, I was determined to continue. I then put the sauce in the fridge to completely cool.
The Italian sausage bolognese was where things began to go downhill fast. At the grocery store I convinced myself I could use hot italian and mild italian sausage for the filling, totally ignoring that I should probably have used half mild italian sausage, and half ground beef. The actual recipe calls for veal, but I’ve never cooked with veal, and I’m still a medium-beginner cook, so I wasn't ready for that kind of commitment. The two grocery stores (I couldn’t go to three, I was so demoralized already) didn’t have any pancetta, so I thought, fine, I’ll use bacon instead. The sauce also needs to simmer for two hours, which I didn’t calculate into my day correctly because I didn’t read that far down in the recipe.
And my bolognese tasted….fine. It was fine! But the combination of the two sausage meats, along with the bacon wasn’t a great flavour palette; however, this is what I get for veering so off recipe and essentially making an entirely new sauce.
Finally, I had to make the San Marzano tomato sauce. Before I purchased any San Marzano cans, I went to a trustworthy source (first Youtube video I could find) to see if they were worth the price over the generic tomatoes, and the answer is: yes. The taste does seem to be a bit sweeter, less acidic, and makes for a better tomato sauce. I sucked it up and bought a can at Safeway for $6.49 (!!?!) which is a fact I need to move quickly past.
The sauce was probably the easiest part. You simmer the tomatoes with basil and garlic for like 10 minutes, then let it cool off heat with the spices for about 30 minutes. It was perfect, I will be making this all the time in 2024.
And then it was somehow close to 6:30pm and I was tired. I wanted to complete this recipe in one day for no other reason than at like 11:00am that day I told myself I was going to. I am my own worst enemy.
After everything had properly cooled, around 7:30pm, I began what I can only describe as a psycho-horror tête-à-tête between me and rolling the actual pinwheels. I soaked the lasagna sheets, patted them dry, they were good to go. I watched the video of the man rolling the pinwheels no less than 50 times. I really thought I understood this process.
I started spreading the besciamella sauce onto the first lasagna sheet. Perfect, gorgeous, no notes. I layered another lasagna sheet on top. I put more besciamella on the top edge to seal the roll, which would be needed when the time came to actually roll them together. The second layer is where the italian sausage bolognese is meant to be spread out in a thin, delicate line. I have no tact, so it was clumpy, overstuffed, and the colour was a murky mud ground brown, not a beautiful harmonious blend between orange and brown (vibrant, lightly murky looking, but stunning) like the sauce is in the Don Angie video.
I immediately lost my patience, rolled up my four rolls, which varied in size (from overstuffed burrito to light nothingness) and varied in how many sauce stains were on the lasgana sheets from my rolling, which indicated how many times it took me to roll it back and forth.
I knew in my heart of hearts the recipe had defeated me. I needed to wait another hour for the rolls to chill in the fridge, because although the Don Angie video says you can cut them right away, my little creatures were not meant to be cut in the same night.
By this time it’s close to like 8:15pm, which is basically my bedtime, so I had to admit that the recipe had won, and I would not be eating lasagna pinwheels that same night.
Now, did I end up cutting the rolls and making them at 8:00am the next morning? You’re darn right. Once cooked in the San Mazano tomato sauce, all is forgiven. Added with truffle salt Boursin cheese and parsley, it’s a hit combination. Did my rolls look hideous, not meant to be shared with the world? Why, yes. Did I share them with everyone reading this anyways? Yes, it’s fine. The rolls have sustained me for days since. I have so many leftovers, I’m confident I could feed myself for most of January with just lasagna pinwheels.
For me, attempting this recipe felt like my first foray back to myself. I was overly competitive (against myself) I channeled my usually high ambition to complete the recipe in a day, I problem-solved (not well with the bolognese, but still counts) and I was able to spend the day cooking and listening to different Taylor Swift albums which reflected my mood back to me (frustrated, angry, jovial, accomplished, stressed out and in desperate need of a nap).
Since it’s officially January 1st, please allow me to just steam roll ahead into being cliche. I love a New Year, I love feeling like a reset on the person I was last year, the feeling that I can be someone different this year. I can work towards becoming the person I want to be. Which after 2023 is someone actually more chill, who can let things slide away easier, who doesn’t need to control every situation, who can make a medium-fine lasagna recipe and be proud of the amount of time I spent trying, someone who just tries, who isn’t afraid, who doesn’t need all the logistics worked out first. In 2023 I didn’t really try. I was stagnant, afraid, still. I held tightly onto things that didn’t want me.
Perhaps in 2024 it’ll be the first time I’ll hear someone say, “I love your friend Danielle, she’s so chill. She just goes with what comes her way.” Or probably something more like “I love your friend Danielle, she just tries things!” (said rudely, but I don’t care). I wonder what this version of Danielle will try this year?
