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!