It was so lovely to meet you all. I put the lasagna recipes on this site, but also on my own brand new lasagna site, since who knows what Maria will do here... She could suddenly erase everything, if she thought my lasagna reports were flawed.
Go to Lasagna Underground to find the recipes from DRDKC Saturday night. Or scroll down and see if they are still on this page.
Happy cutting!!
Susan Wiegand (not la bella maria at all...)
Monday, April 7, 2008
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Tomato Sauce for Everything
Margaret asked for a recipe for tomato sauce and Bill also wanted to see this so I figured I would offer it up here. There is no making lasagna without sauce, that is for certain.
Mind you, it is a lot more fun to show someone how to do this than it is to talk about it, but here goes:
Cut up a medium onion. Mince up a few cloves of garlic.
Have a couple cans of diced tomatoes or one big can.
It matters what tomatoes you buy. If you have a bushel of fresh tomatoes and you peel them, seed them, and cut them into chunks, then you can use fresh tomatoes to make the sauce below instead of using the cans. Don't forget to add the juice to the sauce that comes out of the tomatoes while you are seeding and chunking. Also, remember to cook it a little longer, so that the pinkness leaves the tomato sauce and it starts to get a deeper reddish-orange. In the absence of fresh tomatoes, or if you just can't imagine going to all that trouble, look for the best canned diced tomatoes you can find. Locally my favorite is Red Gold petite diced. Anywhere that you can find S&W, those are my absolute favorites. They taste closer to fresh tomatoes than any other kind I have ever tried. We can't get them in the midwest.
In a medium to big saucepan, warm up a couple tablespoons of olive oil (when I do this just for me, I just use a bit of cooking spray). Toss in diced onion. Let it start to get translucent and add the garlic. Let them both get a little brown (caramelized). Then throw in the tomatoes. Then season with a little salt (maybe a teaspoon) and a couple tablespoons of sugar. When I make this for myself, I use Splenda instead of sugar. Stir it up. Let it cook as long as you can stand to wait, stirring occasionally. Taste it and add more salt or sugar as it seems to require. With cooking spray and Splenda, this is a 0-point food on Weight Watchers!
As far as herbs, my favorite is basil. I like fresh better than any other kinds of herbs. That's really all there is to it. Put this sauce over pasta and then if you like, you can drizzle grated Parmigiano-Reggiano over it.
Now, for the adjustments:
Do you want a thicker sauce? Throw in a can of tomato paste and only add the amount of water that gets the sauce to the thickness you want. Taste it and add more salt and sugar as needed. The rule of thumb for seasoning tomato paste is a half teaspoon of salt and 2 teaspoons of sugar for every 6 ounces of tomato paste.
Do you want a really special creamy sauce? Add a pint of heavy cream and let the cream thicken up a little before you serve it. I really like this one, but it is NOT a Weight Watcher's favorite!
Do you want to make it meaty? Throw in some meat of your own choice. I have lately grown very fond of pulled pork and pulled beef which I roast up separately and then cut up into bite-sized shreds. Italian sausage makes a very nice flavor in sauce. If you want to make a Bolognese sauce, you grate a pound of carrots into the sauce at the garlic-adding time, use a minimum of two kinds of meat, and then finish off the completed sauce with a little red wine (or any wine you happen to have open.)
Do you want to add veggies? Go for it. A very nice addition is sweet bell peppers cut up and added in at the garlic-sauté stage.
Do you want to add hot sauce or red pepper flakes? Why not!
And if you want to go all out, combine some or all of these adjustments. I used ALL of these adjustments in the sauce that was in the lasagna that I brought to the BBQ.
Always be cautious about adding too much salt. There is often salt in the meat, salt in the canned tomatoes, and so just taste and be sure. It is easier to add salt than it is to take the salt out. Now, having said this, don't be so cautious as to make your sauce too bland. Salt brings out the flavor. You could say the same for sugar, but I find that people are reluctant to use sugar anyway. Sugar, like salt, really brings out the flavor of the tomatoes and also clicks into those sweet receptors in your brain that trigger all kinds of happy memories in people.
If the spices taste overdone, add more tomatoes and carefully bring the seasonings back up to what you want them to be.
This tomato sauce freezes very well so go on and make too much and then put it into freezer-type ziplock bags that hold the serving sizes you will want to defrost later.
If you want to use your sauce to make people fall madly in love with you, just before you serve it over pasta, stir in a couple tablespoons of butter. Don't let the butter heat up too much or it will turn into oil. It is better when the butter just barely melts and is suspended in the tomato sauce. Very sneaky. Very devious. Very effective.
I think that the adjustments are what real cooking is all about! It makes your cooking different from anyone else's cooking. My mother's sauce does not taste like mine and hers does not taste anything like her mothers used to. It's like a kind of fingerprint, actually.
Let me know if you try this and how it turns out!
Good luck.
Mind you, it is a lot more fun to show someone how to do this than it is to talk about it, but here goes:
Cut up a medium onion. Mince up a few cloves of garlic.
Have a couple cans of diced tomatoes or one big can.
It matters what tomatoes you buy. If you have a bushel of fresh tomatoes and you peel them, seed them, and cut them into chunks, then you can use fresh tomatoes to make the sauce below instead of using the cans. Don't forget to add the juice to the sauce that comes out of the tomatoes while you are seeding and chunking. Also, remember to cook it a little longer, so that the pinkness leaves the tomato sauce and it starts to get a deeper reddish-orange. In the absence of fresh tomatoes, or if you just can't imagine going to all that trouble, look for the best canned diced tomatoes you can find. Locally my favorite is Red Gold petite diced. Anywhere that you can find S&W, those are my absolute favorites. They taste closer to fresh tomatoes than any other kind I have ever tried. We can't get them in the midwest.
In a medium to big saucepan, warm up a couple tablespoons of olive oil (when I do this just for me, I just use a bit of cooking spray). Toss in diced onion. Let it start to get translucent and add the garlic. Let them both get a little brown (caramelized). Then throw in the tomatoes. Then season with a little salt (maybe a teaspoon) and a couple tablespoons of sugar. When I make this for myself, I use Splenda instead of sugar. Stir it up. Let it cook as long as you can stand to wait, stirring occasionally. Taste it and add more salt or sugar as it seems to require. With cooking spray and Splenda, this is a 0-point food on Weight Watchers!
As far as herbs, my favorite is basil. I like fresh better than any other kinds of herbs. That's really all there is to it. Put this sauce over pasta and then if you like, you can drizzle grated Parmigiano-Reggiano over it.
Now, for the adjustments:
Do you want a thicker sauce? Throw in a can of tomato paste and only add the amount of water that gets the sauce to the thickness you want. Taste it and add more salt and sugar as needed. The rule of thumb for seasoning tomato paste is a half teaspoon of salt and 2 teaspoons of sugar for every 6 ounces of tomato paste.
Do you want a really special creamy sauce? Add a pint of heavy cream and let the cream thicken up a little before you serve it. I really like this one, but it is NOT a Weight Watcher's favorite!
Do you want to make it meaty? Throw in some meat of your own choice. I have lately grown very fond of pulled pork and pulled beef which I roast up separately and then cut up into bite-sized shreds. Italian sausage makes a very nice flavor in sauce. If you want to make a Bolognese sauce, you grate a pound of carrots into the sauce at the garlic-adding time, use a minimum of two kinds of meat, and then finish off the completed sauce with a little red wine (or any wine you happen to have open.)
Do you want to add veggies? Go for it. A very nice addition is sweet bell peppers cut up and added in at the garlic-sauté stage.
Do you want to add hot sauce or red pepper flakes? Why not!
And if you want to go all out, combine some or all of these adjustments. I used ALL of these adjustments in the sauce that was in the lasagna that I brought to the BBQ.
Always be cautious about adding too much salt. There is often salt in the meat, salt in the canned tomatoes, and so just taste and be sure. It is easier to add salt than it is to take the salt out. Now, having said this, don't be so cautious as to make your sauce too bland. Salt brings out the flavor. You could say the same for sugar, but I find that people are reluctant to use sugar anyway. Sugar, like salt, really brings out the flavor of the tomatoes and also clicks into those sweet receptors in your brain that trigger all kinds of happy memories in people.
If the spices taste overdone, add more tomatoes and carefully bring the seasonings back up to what you want them to be.
This tomato sauce freezes very well so go on and make too much and then put it into freezer-type ziplock bags that hold the serving sizes you will want to defrost later.
If you want to use your sauce to make people fall madly in love with you, just before you serve it over pasta, stir in a couple tablespoons of butter. Don't let the butter heat up too much or it will turn into oil. It is better when the butter just barely melts and is suspended in the tomato sauce. Very sneaky. Very devious. Very effective.
I think that the adjustments are what real cooking is all about! It makes your cooking different from anyone else's cooking. My mother's sauce does not taste like mine and hers does not taste anything like her mothers used to. It's like a kind of fingerprint, actually.
Let me know if you try this and how it turns out!
Good luck.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Two Lasagnas
One Meat Lasagna and one No-meat Lasagna.
(Together because some things were conveniently used in both of them.)
First of all, you must roast the meats. Yes, meats. Beef and pork. One roast of each. I put them both in my dutch oven along with a can of crushed tomatoes, several smashed cloves of garlic, and roasted all that, covered for 12 hours at about 210F for 12 hours, yes I did. Then I let it cool completely before pulling the meat apart, feeding all the fatty parts immediately to the waiting dogs, and generally making up two bowls of torn up meat, on beef, one pork, perfect for putting into a lasagna or other sauce. I had never done this before, and was a little skeptical of the whole idea, but it worked out just fine.
But wait! We are not done with the meat part yet. I also got two packages of locally made, fresh Italian sausage, one normal, one hot, not in casings. I cooked up each of them on the stove, browned nicely, and now I had two plates of sausage to go with my two bowls of meat.
The tomato sauce needed to get going. The recipe is on Lasagna Stories, but the basic idea is olive oil, onions, garlic, a lot of tomato of some kind (crushed, diced, both in my case, or fresh if you are like that), cook cook cook, basil basil basil, a big splash of red wine, a handful of sugar, a little salt, hot pepper flakes. That's it. Add a small can tomato paste if you want the sauce to be a little richer. I did. Cook cook cook, until the sauce has taken on a slightly roasted color.
Two lasagnas, remember, so when the sauce was done, I put about half, maybe less of it in a separate pot and added cream. Yes, I did. I added heavy cream, as Maria taught me to do a good twenty-five years ago now. People devouring my cream-sauce lasagna sometimes ask me if I am Italian.
Then, as instructed by phone by Maria, I sliced up red bell peppers and an onion (could have been any color of pepper), and sauteed all that in olive oil and garlic, and added just a small splash of balsamic vinegar at some point. She didn't mention anything like that, but I like the balsamic with the red peppers. Not much at all. Maybe I put a tiny bit of salt and pepper in this stuff. Cook cook cook, slowly, no burning just carmelizing. I used a cast iron skillet, which works great for this sort of thing.
This pepper onion stuff is the guts of the no-meat lasagna.
I also put cream in the other pot of sauce. And I strained and then reduced the tomato broth from the meat roasting pan, and put that in this sauce for the meat pasta. I didn't know what else to do with this stuff that clearly had a great deal of meat and tomato flavor. So I did that. Remember. Only put that in the sauce for the meat lasagna.
Then I took another bowl (there is a stack of stainless steel bowls in my kitchen, if you were wondering about all these bowls) and put a handful or two of each of the beef and pork, and some of each of the sausages, and then put in enough sauce to kind of hold it all together.
This is the guts of the meat lasagna.
Ricotta cheese!!! Maria instructs me to add an egg to every lb of ricotta, but I only do that sometimes. For the ladies, I didn't think they needed that extra layer of richness. So I put a whole bunch of pesto in the ricotta, mixed it all up, and called it good.
There are no amounts here, because I have no idea what the amounts would be. There was lots of everything left over, since I was overestimating wildly to make sure there was plenty for the crowd, but I think I will be able to make at least on more lasagna with all the leftover ingredients. You can make your own estimations a little more carefully.
I can tell you though, that I used all of a very large container of whole milk ricotta, from Costco. Yup, I emptied the container right into the bowl.
Here is the surprise: Use a combination of grated cheese, not just mozzarella. I used Mozzerella, Fontina and Fresh Asiago. I was tempted to try included some of the extra sharp white cheddar I am so devoted to, but I didn't think it was time for experiments. I was starting to have to watch the clock to make sure I got the lasagnas in the oven in time for dinner for the ladies at 7:30, which is a good half hour, or two hours, before I usually get dinner on the table.
In a very big bowl I put two or three cups of each of the shredded cheeses and tossed well to blend them. They all look alike, so you just have to toss toss toss and hope they are mingling. Not that it much matters.
I had aged asiago on hand, which served for the hard cheese. And a bag of fresh baby spinach leaves. And a bag of julienned sundried tomatoes.
And of course, a pound of lasagna noodles, which I did not pre-cook at all. Maria assured me it would be fine, as long as you have enough sauce.
I was making two lasagnas in traditional lasagna pans. If I had made the extra deep lasagnas Maria is making these days, I would have needed two pounds of lasagna, and I would have used up all the ingredients. But for the ladies, I decided a normal sort of lasagna would be more welcoming, less intimidating. I am absolutely going to make the extra deep lasagnas for the next crowd of guys I cook for, since the extra depth gives so much more room for fun layers. Ah well.
OK. Now I have all my parts: Lasagna noodles, meat mixture, vegetable mixture, spinach, pesto, ricotta, soft grated cheese, hard grated cheese, sauce. All that takes up a lot of counter space, so you might want to plan ahead. I was stacking bowls on top of each other to make room for the lasagna pans. I put a paper towel over the meat, and put another bowl on top.
Now to begin the layering:
I think I remember Maria telling me to put butter in the bottom of the pan, but couldn't find the instructions I had written down, so I did not do that. But butter is always a nice addition.
So I started with sauce. A layer of sauce on the bottom of the pan. Just enough to moisten, really, so the pasta is not the very very bottom thing.
Then pasta.
Then the ricotta pesto mixture, placed about and smeared around the pasta. She said I could use a pastry bag for this, but I didn't.
Then, for the meat lasagna, a layer of the mixed meats and sauce. For the no-meat lasagna, a layer of the pepper and onion stuff.
Then a layer of sauce, and plenty of it.
Then a layer of the grated cheese mixture.
Then a very spare layer of the hard cheese.
Then pasta again.
Then ricotta again.
Now, on both lasagnas, a layer of fresh baby spinach, to which I had done nothing. I thought about sauteeing it quickly with some garlic, but didn't. Like I said, the clock was running out.
Now I was running out of vertical space, so I put sundried tomatoes all over with the spinach. On one of them, thinking ahead, I placed the tomatoes directly on the ricotta, which was easier, and made me more confident that there would be sundried tomatoes in every bite. In any case, spinach and tomatoes.
Then more sauce!!
Then a layer of the grated cheese mixture.
Then a final layer of the hard cheese.
The end.
Pat them down so they are in the pan as much as possible, and then put them in the oven at about 325 for an hour. They will make a big mess in your oven, which is a good reason to have deeper lasagna pans. But it will be worth the trouble to clean your oven.
Let the lasagnas rest for 15-20 minutes before cutting into pieces of heaven, and putting the pans out for the crowd to devour.
Make a not too complicated, dark green salad and very garlicky garlic bread, too, and be sure to put out bottles of red and white wine, and sparkling waters and sodas.
Oh! At the last moment, it occurred to me that there hadn't been alot of vegetables in the building during the decoupage adventure. So I threw frozen stir-fry vegetables in a cast iron pan with a little little bit of olive oil, and let that cook up. I hate vegetables, and am always surprised when people just scoop them up and eat them. But they did. Big old clean plate club on Saturday night. Sweet ladies, all took seconds and asked for recipes. So polite.
So, you know, there are a lot of people who would just as soon not eat meat, but are much more interested in not eating eggplant or okra or mushrooms, or whatever slimy vegetable or fakery someone has substituted for meat. One beautiful lady was looking at the "no-meat" lasagna and murmured wistfully, "I suppose that means it has eggplant." Oh no! I replied. No eggplant or mushrooms, or anything unlikely. Just the things you would expect in a lasagna, and just not meat. She was thrilled and dove right in. Good thing I was standing right there.
(I get teased/harrassed for being a finicky eater. But since no one is more finicky than I am, it is almost never that someone finds something they don't like in the food I make. Hence, the clean-plate club on every occasion. Nothing not to like. I still worry endlessly, though, that someone won't like something, won't be able to eat something, and if only I had known I could have made it differently...)
Desert was somewhat neglected, since I was pretty sure no one would have room. I did make cannolis in pre-made shells, but mostly I dashed to the amazing Christopher Elbow chocolate shop and bought a selection of the beautiful, decorated and divine chocolates, which made all the ladies gasp when the cover came off the box. Amazing, and like I said, divine. You must get some.
(Together because some things were conveniently used in both of them.)
First of all, you must roast the meats. Yes, meats. Beef and pork. One roast of each. I put them both in my dutch oven along with a can of crushed tomatoes, several smashed cloves of garlic, and roasted all that, covered for 12 hours at about 210F for 12 hours, yes I did. Then I let it cool completely before pulling the meat apart, feeding all the fatty parts immediately to the waiting dogs, and generally making up two bowls of torn up meat, on beef, one pork, perfect for putting into a lasagna or other sauce. I had never done this before, and was a little skeptical of the whole idea, but it worked out just fine.
But wait! We are not done with the meat part yet. I also got two packages of locally made, fresh Italian sausage, one normal, one hot, not in casings. I cooked up each of them on the stove, browned nicely, and now I had two plates of sausage to go with my two bowls of meat.
The tomato sauce needed to get going. The recipe is on Lasagna Stories, but the basic idea is olive oil, onions, garlic, a lot of tomato of some kind (crushed, diced, both in my case, or fresh if you are like that), cook cook cook, basil basil basil, a big splash of red wine, a handful of sugar, a little salt, hot pepper flakes. That's it. Add a small can tomato paste if you want the sauce to be a little richer. I did. Cook cook cook, until the sauce has taken on a slightly roasted color.
Two lasagnas, remember, so when the sauce was done, I put about half, maybe less of it in a separate pot and added cream. Yes, I did. I added heavy cream, as Maria taught me to do a good twenty-five years ago now. People devouring my cream-sauce lasagna sometimes ask me if I am Italian.
Then, as instructed by phone by Maria, I sliced up red bell peppers and an onion (could have been any color of pepper), and sauteed all that in olive oil and garlic, and added just a small splash of balsamic vinegar at some point. She didn't mention anything like that, but I like the balsamic with the red peppers. Not much at all. Maybe I put a tiny bit of salt and pepper in this stuff. Cook cook cook, slowly, no burning just carmelizing. I used a cast iron skillet, which works great for this sort of thing.
This pepper onion stuff is the guts of the no-meat lasagna.
I also put cream in the other pot of sauce. And I strained and then reduced the tomato broth from the meat roasting pan, and put that in this sauce for the meat pasta. I didn't know what else to do with this stuff that clearly had a great deal of meat and tomato flavor. So I did that. Remember. Only put that in the sauce for the meat lasagna.
Then I took another bowl (there is a stack of stainless steel bowls in my kitchen, if you were wondering about all these bowls) and put a handful or two of each of the beef and pork, and some of each of the sausages, and then put in enough sauce to kind of hold it all together.
This is the guts of the meat lasagna.
Ricotta cheese!!! Maria instructs me to add an egg to every lb of ricotta, but I only do that sometimes. For the ladies, I didn't think they needed that extra layer of richness. So I put a whole bunch of pesto in the ricotta, mixed it all up, and called it good.
There are no amounts here, because I have no idea what the amounts would be. There was lots of everything left over, since I was overestimating wildly to make sure there was plenty for the crowd, but I think I will be able to make at least on more lasagna with all the leftover ingredients. You can make your own estimations a little more carefully.
I can tell you though, that I used all of a very large container of whole milk ricotta, from Costco. Yup, I emptied the container right into the bowl.
Here is the surprise: Use a combination of grated cheese, not just mozzarella. I used Mozzerella, Fontina and Fresh Asiago. I was tempted to try included some of the extra sharp white cheddar I am so devoted to, but I didn't think it was time for experiments. I was starting to have to watch the clock to make sure I got the lasagnas in the oven in time for dinner for the ladies at 7:30, which is a good half hour, or two hours, before I usually get dinner on the table.
In a very big bowl I put two or three cups of each of the shredded cheeses and tossed well to blend them. They all look alike, so you just have to toss toss toss and hope they are mingling. Not that it much matters.
I had aged asiago on hand, which served for the hard cheese. And a bag of fresh baby spinach leaves. And a bag of julienned sundried tomatoes.
And of course, a pound of lasagna noodles, which I did not pre-cook at all. Maria assured me it would be fine, as long as you have enough sauce.
I was making two lasagnas in traditional lasagna pans. If I had made the extra deep lasagnas Maria is making these days, I would have needed two pounds of lasagna, and I would have used up all the ingredients. But for the ladies, I decided a normal sort of lasagna would be more welcoming, less intimidating. I am absolutely going to make the extra deep lasagnas for the next crowd of guys I cook for, since the extra depth gives so much more room for fun layers. Ah well.
OK. Now I have all my parts: Lasagna noodles, meat mixture, vegetable mixture, spinach, pesto, ricotta, soft grated cheese, hard grated cheese, sauce. All that takes up a lot of counter space, so you might want to plan ahead. I was stacking bowls on top of each other to make room for the lasagna pans. I put a paper towel over the meat, and put another bowl on top.
Now to begin the layering:
I think I remember Maria telling me to put butter in the bottom of the pan, but couldn't find the instructions I had written down, so I did not do that. But butter is always a nice addition.
So I started with sauce. A layer of sauce on the bottom of the pan. Just enough to moisten, really, so the pasta is not the very very bottom thing.
Then pasta.
Then the ricotta pesto mixture, placed about and smeared around the pasta. She said I could use a pastry bag for this, but I didn't.
Then, for the meat lasagna, a layer of the mixed meats and sauce. For the no-meat lasagna, a layer of the pepper and onion stuff.
Then a layer of sauce, and plenty of it.
Then a layer of the grated cheese mixture.
Then a very spare layer of the hard cheese.
Then pasta again.
Then ricotta again.
Now, on both lasagnas, a layer of fresh baby spinach, to which I had done nothing. I thought about sauteeing it quickly with some garlic, but didn't. Like I said, the clock was running out.
Now I was running out of vertical space, so I put sundried tomatoes all over with the spinach. On one of them, thinking ahead, I placed the tomatoes directly on the ricotta, which was easier, and made me more confident that there would be sundried tomatoes in every bite. In any case, spinach and tomatoes.
Then more sauce!!
Then a layer of the grated cheese mixture.
Then a final layer of the hard cheese.
The end.
Pat them down so they are in the pan as much as possible, and then put them in the oven at about 325 for an hour. They will make a big mess in your oven, which is a good reason to have deeper lasagna pans. But it will be worth the trouble to clean your oven.
Let the lasagnas rest for 15-20 minutes before cutting into pieces of heaven, and putting the pans out for the crowd to devour.
Make a not too complicated, dark green salad and very garlicky garlic bread, too, and be sure to put out bottles of red and white wine, and sparkling waters and sodas.
Oh! At the last moment, it occurred to me that there hadn't been alot of vegetables in the building during the decoupage adventure. So I threw frozen stir-fry vegetables in a cast iron pan with a little little bit of olive oil, and let that cook up. I hate vegetables, and am always surprised when people just scoop them up and eat them. But they did. Big old clean plate club on Saturday night. Sweet ladies, all took seconds and asked for recipes. So polite.
So, you know, there are a lot of people who would just as soon not eat meat, but are much more interested in not eating eggplant or okra or mushrooms, or whatever slimy vegetable or fakery someone has substituted for meat. One beautiful lady was looking at the "no-meat" lasagna and murmured wistfully, "I suppose that means it has eggplant." Oh no! I replied. No eggplant or mushrooms, or anything unlikely. Just the things you would expect in a lasagna, and just not meat. She was thrilled and dove right in. Good thing I was standing right there.
(I get teased/harrassed for being a finicky eater. But since no one is more finicky than I am, it is almost never that someone finds something they don't like in the food I make. Hence, the clean-plate club on every occasion. Nothing not to like. I still worry endlessly, though, that someone won't like something, won't be able to eat something, and if only I had known I could have made it differently...)
Desert was somewhat neglected, since I was pretty sure no one would have room. I did make cannolis in pre-made shells, but mostly I dashed to the amazing Christopher Elbow chocolate shop and bought a selection of the beautiful, decorated and divine chocolates, which made all the ladies gasp when the cover came off the box. Amazing, and like I said, divine. You must get some.
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