Monday, March 16, 2009

Mangia Lasagna!




Sometimes I wake up and just want to eat Italian food. It was a cold, windy, rainy, all-in-all weather suck fest this weekend and to me, some slow-cooked Italian red sauce and a carb-fiesta is the ultimate remedy. Also, I had signed up to participate in the 8K Shamrock Run the following morning (why, I do not know), so I used the old "pasta dinner" high school athlete trick as my other excuse for the meal. I decided on lasagna and tried to experiment a little along the way.

The first step to most Italian sauces is a good old soffritto. In Italian, soffritto literally means "sub-fried" because of the low temperature used to sweat your aromatic veggies. The most common soffritto in Northern Italy is onions, carrots, and celery, and it is used as a base for many soups, stews, sauces, etc. The onions, carrots, and celery are traditionally in a radio of 2:1:1. French cuisine refers to this combination as a mirepoix, and in New Orleans they replace the carrot with green bell pepper and call it the "Holy Trinity." This is just another attempt at building street cred. I know I could have just said onions, carrots, and celery. But hey, now you have more interesting stuff to talk about in a moment of awkward silence.

So, I heated some olive oil in a large, heavy stock pot and softened up a soffritto of onions, carrots, and celery over low heat. I used one Washington sweet onion, one carrot, and one celery stalk. After they sweat it out and the onions were translucent, I then threw in about a tbsp of chopped fresh garlic and 3-4 tbsp of tomato paste. After everything was incorporated, I added two 28 oz. cans of Italian plum tomatoes (whole), a heavy dose of Italian seasoning, and some fresh basil leaves. I let this simmer for a while so everyone could get to know each other. After about 1/2 hr, I pureed everything (in small batches) until smooth and returned it to the pot. Added a chiffonade of about 8 large basil leaves (see, foreign words make you sound professional!), and tasted it.

Something was still missing...what the hell was it? Then I remembered my dad's words of wisdom:


"Amelia, you want to know the secret to good red sauce? Pork fat."

Well, he's damn right, and I had completely forgotten this important step, so I ran to the store and picked up some mild Italian sausage links. (I prefer half mild, half hot, but they had no hot so whatev.) Took the casings off, tore them in half and plopped them into the steaming pot. I also added some crushed red pepper flakes to make up for the mildness. This did the trick, as always. Thanks, Dad!

Experiment #1: Ameliorated Ricotta Filling

My boyfriend hates white creamy substances in his food. He loves lasagna, but the ricotta/cottage cheese/sour cream part has to be pretty well disguised. So, I decided the make it a little more healthy by reducing the amount of cheese without reducing the amount of filling. We eat with our eyes first, remember. I saw a recipe for parsnip puree recently, so that was my inspiration. Chop 5-7 parsnips (unless they're really big, then use less) and put them in a sauce pot with about 4 lightly smashed garlic cloves. Just barely cover with skim milk, add S&P, and simmer until fork-tender. Puree and season to taste. From there, I combined the parsnips with an equal amount of ricotta cheese and about half a bag of cooked spinach. The parsnips can have a strong flavor, but the ricotta really balances them out and it adds a great background sweetness to your lasagna. "Why is this so good?!" People will say. Never tell them it's because of parsnips.*

Experiment #2: No Boil Noodles

Alright, this wasn't really an experiment so much as laziness that I thought was well-founded. I've tried these before and never had an issue with them. Some people think it's wrong or whatever, but like I said, short cuts that don't disrupt the flavor or quality factor of your food are never wrong in my book. And wow, this really speeds up the process.

It was assembled as follows:
Spread some sauce on the bottom of a 9x13" baking dish. Top with 4 noodles. Top with more sauce, then a few slices of provolone, some grated mozzarella, and your secret ricotta mixture. Repeat until you have used 16 noodles. The top layer should just be noodles, then sauce, then mozzarella and some freshly grated Parmigiano. Now just cover and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, then uncover and bake for another 10-15 minutes until the top is bubbly and the cheese is browned.

I served this to 3 hungry dudes who had just finished a day of skiing/snowboarding on Hood and it was a hit. And two of them have Italian moms or grandmas who have been making this shit for them all their lives.

Oh, by the way, the sausage doesn't go in the lasagna. Just let people take it out of the sauce to enjoy on the side.
I forgot to photograph anything the night we ate this, so I reheated some for lunch the next day and this is it. Notice the mircowave splatter. I was about to wipe this off like a good little cook, but then I thought it looked kind of cool. Maybe reheated sauce splatters are the micro-wave of the food presentation future...

*Some info about the parsnip: it is actually higher in vitamins and minerals than its more popular friend, the carrot. It is an excellent source of potassium and dietary fiber. So, you can use this method to sneak healthy vegetables into things without anyone even knowing about it! Ha!

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Jesse's Pizza

As a self-diagnosed food addict, I realize that I am at high risk for also being afflicted by food snobbery. And in some ways, I welcome it. However, I actually do make a conscious effort to not let it "go to my head." (Thighs or love-handles, sure...go ahead.) I've asked my friends to slap me if I ever make a dish with gold leaves or foam. (No offense to those of you who use these ingredients. I know they have a time and place. I just don't think it's very often...) As I've mentioned before, Portland is a mecca for high quality grocery stores and markets that offer high quality ingredients, so when you're lucky enough to get something naturally fabulous...don't mess with it! Here's a great recipe that lets your awesome veggies shine. It's healthy, flexible, simple, AND always delicious.

First of all, one of my favorite Food TV pastimes is making fun of Sandra Lee with my mom. (Please also slap me if I ever start coordinating my outfits with my kitchen decor.) That being said, she does have a point. There is nothing wrong with taking short cuts if they don't take away from the quality of the result. If you are lucky enough to have a Trader Joe's in your town, check out the refrigerated section for their fresh pizza dough. You can buy it in plain, whole wheat, and garlic and herb, and it's always really good. This is short cut #1. For Jesse's pizza, we like whole wheat. (But if you think whole wheat dough is sacrilege, go ahead and use whatever you deem appropriate.) While we're talking about TJ's, their Mediterranean hummus is also chronic. Yes, chronic. We love it. We should probably buy stock in it. This is short cut #2. You can make homemade dough and homemade hummus for this recipe if you want, which I've done, but it's a lot more work and honestly, not THAT much better...

So here's what you need:

-one ball of fresh pizza dough
-your favorite hummus
-your favorite vegetables
-feta cheese
-your favorite herbs

What? I said it's flexible! OK, more accurately, here is what I used for this recipe:

-one ball of TJ's fresh whole wheat pizza dough
-Oregon crimini mushrooms
-Roma tomatoes
-Washington sweet onions (eat your heart out, Vidalias!)
-fresh spinach
-broccoli florets
-low fat crumbled feta cheese
-dried oregano
-freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
-freshly ground black pepper

Roll out the dough and spread with hummus. Top with veggies, cheese, oregano, and black pepper. Bake in a preheated 450 degree oven for about 15 minutes, or until the crust bubbles up and browns and the toppings begin to caramelize. Serve with crushed red pepper flakes and sea salt. We make this at my house almost weekly, and it's literally different every time. It's like a salad, but it's pizza, so it's fun!


(This is called Jesse's pizza because Jesse actually invented it. He would probably bathe in hummus if he could.)