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How Thanksgiving Lasagna Became an American Staple

The Italian American tradition has been adapted by other immigrant families into delicious takes on the classic.

By Khushbu Shah

Justin Pichetrungsi is having lasagna this Thanksgiving, carrying on a tradition his parents started. But he’ll be making his from scratch. Thanksgiving was a rare day off for his parents, who ran a Thai restaurant, and they weren’t really turkey people. For the holiday, they often bought lasagna from the nearby Costco and served it with the store’s bagged Caesar salad tossed with its packaged Chinese chicken salad dressing. The spread was rounded out with a Cantonese seafood feast from a beloved local restaurant.

“Our table always had something Anglo-leaning and something Asian-leaning,” said Mr. Pichetrungsi, who is now the chef of the family’s restaurant, Anajak Thai, in Sherman Oaks, Calif.

In place of lasagna straight from the freezer aisle of the bulk food store, Mr. Pichetrungsi now makes one inspired by the flavors of nam prik ong, a meaty Thai dip made of pork, tomatoes and chiles. He uses both Thai basil and Italian basil for freshness and flavor, and Thai pantry staples like shrimp paste and soy sauce — but also a hefty amount of cheese, which he calls the “glue” of the dish.

Mr. Pichetrungsi’s Thanksgiving table is not the only one that will feature a tray of lasagna this year. The layered pasta, bubbling with sauce and cheese, can be found across the country in proximity to mountains of mashed potatoes, pans of stuffing and large turkeys. Though lasagna started out as — and remains — a fixture at many Italian American Thanksgiving meals, it’s also found a home on the tables of many immigrants, particularly those from Asia.

Lasagna was at the center of Calvin Eng’s family feast in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, when he was growing up. “We ate Chinese food every other day of the week, so Thanksgiving was the one day we actually ate American food,” Mr. Eng said. An owner and the chef of Bonnie’s in Brooklyn, Mr. Eng said his family would always bake a traditionally American lasagna with “whatever jarred sauce was on sale,” but would cook the meat sauce in the wok.

“The tomato sauce was so acidic, the wok would be silver and glistening after,” Mr. Eng said.

According to the food historian Amy Riolo, lasagna first appeared at Thanksgiving — often as a point of pride — in the late 1800s with the large-scale arrival of Italian immigrants to the United States. Many immigrants were advised by social workers and doctors to not openly eat Italian food and to adopt a more American diet of meat and potatoes. Ms. Riolo said they would celebrate Thanksgiving to show that they were assimilating as Americans, but would serve American dishes alongside beloved Italian dishes like lasagna “to honor their Italian roots.”

“There is definitely always pasta with Thanksgiving,” said Adam Erace, a food writer who grew up in a large Italian American family in Philadelphia. More often than not, it’s lasagna, given how well it can feed a group and adapt to dietary restrictions and seasonal ingredients. At the first Thanksgiving he hosted with his wife, Charlotte, Mr. Erace spent the day preparing a white lasagna with a butternut squash and quince purée to serve alongside the turkey.

Newer Italian immigrants (“those who came on airplanes,” Ms. Riolo said) often skip the turkey all together and just have lasagna as their main dish. “Lasagna is associated with celebrations in Italy. That’s when people will splurge and make such a luxurious thing,” she said. Built from scratch, it’s a dish best made on a day off.

Mr. Eng said in many ways, perhaps because he was raised in Brooklyn, Italian food was most commonly seen as the exemplar of American food. It would explain how lasagna made it to his Cantonese American family’s Thanksgiving dinner, and baked ziti to their Christmas table.

Ken Concepcion, the owner of Now Serving, a cookbook store in Los Angeles, said Mr. Eng is not alone in his experience. He was born into a Filipino family and raised in New Jersey, where Italian dishes were the “American recipes” his family would turn to, including a Bolognese- and ricotta-heavy lasagna at Thanksgiving.

A new generation of chefs, most often those raised in America by immigrant parents, have started to experiment more with lasagna, creating Venn diagrams of intersecting flavors and textures. Mr. Pichetrungsi said there are overlaps with Thai and Italian cuisines: chiles, tomatoes, garlic, basil and “an entirely matriarchal vibe when it comes to culinary techniques.”

The chef Mei Lin gained national acclaim at her Los Angeles restaurant Nightshade for her mapo tofu lasagna, where she swapped a traditional Bolognese for one inspired by the beloved Sichuan dish. When the chef Christine Lau cooked at Kimika in Manhattan, she made a lasagna that swapped pasta for tteok, chewy Korean rice cakes, and used a sauce made with Italian sausage and gochujang.

Because lasagna can be a vegetarian-friendly main that still feels special, it has found its way into South Asian households, including my own, where I prepare a lasagna layered with the spiced spinach and savory cheese of saag paneer.

Mr. Pichetrungsi is considering trying a version with rice noodles in place of standard wheat-based lasagna noodles in the future. Regardless of which pasta he uses, he knows lasagna will remain a staple on his Thanksgiving table.

“Lasagna is one of the few dishes you can pass through any cultural lens and it would be pretty good.”

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Nam Prik Ong Lasagna (NYT)

Saag Paneer Lasagna (NYT)

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My leftover pasta looked so beautiful in the microwave

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everyone look at my seal rolls

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Just saw an ad for fucking Kellog's cornflakes wherein a shirtless blindfolded man tied to a bed is like "Wait.. are you... eating??" and it pans across the bed to reveal that his partner is, indeed, too distracted to have sex with him bc she is chowing down on corn flakes. Now I've been caught up in wondering whether:

a) John Harvey Kellog would despise this ad; the mere proximity of bondage-play to his brand name and beloved anti-porn flakes is unforgivable

b) John Harvey Kellog would enjoy this ad, because it shows a young woman forsaking the temptations of the flesh in favour of eating a wholesome and nourishing bowl of cornflakes

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Autism is my favourite season cause I get to make my favourite pumpkin soup and eat it for 3 days straight

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remove the clutter from recipe sites that wanna give you a whole novel:

justtherecipe

cooked.wiki

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I attended a Dungeon Meshi themed dinner last weekend and wanted to share what was brought/devoured! Enjoy the comparison of what the dishes looked like irl vs the show

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breakfast with boy🙂‍↕️

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onigiri (おにぎり)

rice made portable, the classic comfort food for picnics (especially during the cherry blossom viewing), bento lunch boxes, grab-and-go snacks, hiking trips, movie snacks, etc.

japanese short-grain rice (sushi rice), such as koshihikari. do not substitute it with jasmine or any other types of rice, as they will fall apart.

nori seaweed

(optional fillings)

Wet and salt your hands. It’s important to wet your hands with water to prevent the rice from sticking. Prepare a bowl of water next to your working station. Salt both your hands and rub to spread all around. Salting helps to flavor and to preserve the onigiri for a longer time.

Cook rice.

Using a mold or your hands, make rice balls. Don’t forget to salt rice balls for food safety. Fillings are optional.

Wrap the rice ball with nori seaweed.

common fillings for onigiri:

shake (salted salmon)

umeboshi (pickled plum)

okaka (bonito flakes in soy sauce)

kombu (simmered seaweed)

tuna mayo

mentaiko/tarako (salted cod roe)

furikake (rice seasoning)

Deemed as the very first traveling food, onigiri were invented before the existence of refrigeration as a means to preserve fresh rice longer so it could be brought along to feed travelers, samurai, soldiers on the road, or farmers in the farm fields.

The method was to fill the rice with a salty or sour ingredient as natural preservatives and lightly compact them into portable food that can be carried along and eaten with hands. To keep the rice safe, salt was first used in making the onigiri.

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brown sugar and cinnamon are lesbian married

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If you've ever been disappointed by dragonfruit, especially if you felt like it tasted like nothing, then I'm like 90% sure you had unripe dragonfruit, which tastes like nothing. There's a small window of time where it tastes amazing. You must have the patience of a hunter. Do not strike until your prey is at its most delicious

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Here’s some history behind one of America’s favorite breakfast foods!

Note: There are also different myths/stories of how bagels came to be which are pretty interesting to read too!

Sources: The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York. The Bagel: the Surprising History

of a Modest Bread.

Dani Ishai Behan

Jewish Pride Always

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