Heralding Fall

Posted on October 7, 2010 by Chelsea

A few weeks ago, N. and I took some friends to Agate Alley bistro, and one of them ordered the Pumpkin Enchiladas. I was intrigued. I took a mental note: these would soon appear in my humble little kitchen.

Then summer came to a close. School started. And that means I went crazy. This is my first year dissertating, which means I need to stop playing on the internet and start playing with ideas. And so the pumpkin enchiladas, and my ability to post here, went on hold.

But Tuesday night, magic happened. In celebration, perhaps, of the second day of the second week of my second-to-last year as a graduate student (fingers majorly crossed, folks!), I decided to take a few hours with my nose out of books. And they were pretty incredible (the hours off AND the results). With my own twists and considerations about ingredients, I put together:

Pumpkin, Roasted Garlic, and Goat Cheese Enchiladas in quick mole sauce.

Enough people have asked me for my recipe (hah!) that I’m going to post in a more traditional ingredient-and-process list format, to make it easier to follow. This is approximate, however, so tweak and twiddle as you so desire. I ended up making 5 enchiladas.

Ingredients:

1 whole head garlic, split horizontally

1 – 2 shallots, sliced thin

corn tortillas

1/2- 1 cup pure pumpkin puree

crumbled goat cheese

crumbled queso fresco cheese

handful of pumpkin seeds

Quick Mole Sauce, or your favorite mole, ready to go at the time of assembly.

(I know, this is not a “homemade” mole sauce, and it doesn’t taste exactly the same. But it’s a good shortcut, I think, and let’s face it: if you want to make these enchiladas to enjoy on a weeknight, most of you aren’t going to take the time to make a mole from scratch. I’m not ashamed. I added extra unsweetened chocolate to this recipe, but otherwise kept it mostly the same).

Preheat your oven to 400F. Place the garlic halves in a small dish, drizzle with oil, salt and pepper, and cover tightly with aluminum foil (or just wrap loosely in foil). Roast in the oven for about an hour, or until cloves are very soft and very golden. Burnished but not burnt. Cool, then squeeze the cloves out of the papers and mash them into a paste. During this time, you can take advantage of the oven being on to roast your pumpkin seeds. They will only take 5-10 minutes, though, so don’t lose track of them or they will burn.
Caramelize shallot slices in a skillet. They should be dark, dark, like French Onion Soup onions. Set aside to cool.
Turn oven down to 350F. Spread the bottom of a baking dish (I used glass) with mole sauce.
Prepare and assemble enchiladas: working with one tortilla at a time, spread the tortilla with the garlic paste, then top with 2-3 TB each pumpkin puree, goat cheese, and shallots (or to taste). Carefully roll up the tortilla and fit it, loose edge down, into the baking dish, pressing each enchilada tightly against its compatriots.
Top enchiladas with a thick, even layer of mole sauce. Sprinkle with goat cheese and queso fresco crumbles to your liking. I say the more, the better when it comes to cheese, but that’s just me…
Bake for 30 minutes, or until the cheese is soft and the sauce is bubbly. Queso fresco and goat cheese, depending on which types you use, don’t melt and burble the way other cheeses do, but they will soften and collapse on themselves a bit.
To serve, sprinkle with toasted pumpkin seeds and enjoy with spicy refried black beans, Spanish rice, guacamole, or whatever you so desire!

I was a bit concerned, at first, that the mole would overpower any other flavor, but it didn’t. This dish executed an intriguing and intricate dance between dinner and dessert. Ingredients that often appear in sweet circumstances remained decidedly savory. The pumpkin and the goat cheese were so creamy and rich, like a harvest cheesecake enfolded in a tortilla. I could have used more roasted garlic paste, but there’s always next time. The chocolate in the mole, too, holds the expectation of sweetness but none of the sugary suggestion of a dessert. Instead it provided a perfect bite of creamy-spicy-chewy-oozing-warmth, with an almost unexpected nutty crunch from the pumpkin seeds.

Also good were last scrapings and bites of loose cheese crumbles, sticky caramelized mole sauce in the bottom of the baking dish, and a last, perfect, creamy green square of avocado.

Dark beer, perhaps even a chocolate stout, would be a lovely accompaniment.

Gourmet

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Chelsea

On a warm, July day, when a person (and her husband) is unjustly required to spend the shining hours of the afternoon working, teaching, holding office hours, what better treat could there be than to come home and indulge in a little gourmet dinner?

As I’ve divulged previously, I like cannibalizing from restaurant menus. Usually it’s not the dish I order, but another that was second or third on the list… or just barely missed the final, nervous, rushed decision as the server hovers above me… and I jot down the description on a slip of paper somewhere and try not to lose it in the subsequent weeks.

This time it was that Americanized, fancified Italian food-of-the-common-man: pizza.

Several weeks ago N. and I celebrated Friday by meeting some friends to drinks and dinner. We’d already eaten, so we swore to each other we would only drink one pint (for him), and one glass of wine (for me). Then we went to Agate Alley with our friends and ordered a huge, gluttonously greasy, spicy, salty, decadent basket of onion rings. I ate so many…

While we patted our fingertips on napkins to try and assuage our greasy shame, our friend S. ordered a personal size pizza topped with prosciutto, gorgonzola cheese, brandied figs, and a bright salad of fresh raw arugula, piled high right in the middle. I had never thought of putting figs on a pizza before, but it seemed so inspired. Though S. ate hers without the porky delights of prosciutto (one of those vegetarian types, you know), the idea of wafer-thin slices of cured pork-belly lingered in my mind when I recalled the recipe.

So I, so often operating as Dr. Frankenstein in the kitchen, decided a recreation was required. This pizza would be a hybrid – a loving, daring combination of Agate Alley’s delectable pie and the prosciutto and caramelized onion darling Ree of The Pioneer Woman has developed. With a hunk of gorgonzola languishing in my cheese drawer, it was just the right thing to do.

Ingredients (mostly approximated):

1 lump pizza dough (I shamelessly bought mine, pre-made, from Trader Joe’s fridge section)

1 medium to large sweet onion

2 TB brown sugar

4-6 oz. prosciutto

5-8 dried figs, sliced

1-2 oz. gorgonzola cheese, crumbled

1 cup (at least!) shredded mozzarella cheese

Big handful of arugula or basil

While my pizza stone heated in the oven, I caramelized my onions per the Pioneer Woman’s directions. Then, while I prepped all my other ingredients (grating cheese, slicing figs, playing with the dough), I forgot about the onions for a little bit too long and the brown sugar started to burn. But I decided to just call that “extra-caramelized” and be happy with it.

With the dough stretched, plunked onto the hot, cornmeal sprinkled stone and already starting to shrink back in on itself (it never wants to stay in a 12-inch circle; why not?), I quickly piled on the toppings: a drizzle of olive oil, evenly spread mounds of mozzarella, trailing slices of salty hammy goodness, cheese crumbles, figs, and dark, dark mahogany clumps of onion.

Into the oven at 450F it went, and about 12 minutes later, gasping, I edged it out and clunked it down on my stovetop. Lacking arugula, I sprinkled baby leaves of basil atop the whole thing.

It looked glorious. The crust was crunchy on the bottom, the cheese was golden and bubbling, the prosciutto had crinkled and crisped, and the figs were these dark, seeded pockets of mystery.

We ate. We ate more. The combination of salty and sweet has been hyped for years now, but that’s because it works. The sweet onions and tangy, sugary figs balanced the rich creamy funk of the gorgonzola and the perfect saltiness of the prosciutto. I would have preferred arugula to basil, because the licorice overtones of basil weren’t the perfect match, but the fresh greenness was definitely welcome.

I would never have thought of figs on pizza, but I would urge you to try them in this combination (or just figs and prosciutto, I won’t tell). Sliced thin, they warmed in the oven and just started to create their own glassy brulée atop their honeyed interiors. With chewy dough, creamy bubbling cheese, crisp-chewy ham, soft sweet onions, the crunch of the little seeds inside each slice of fig, popping between the teeth and tickling the taste buds, was the perfect final flavor of each bite.

This would be perfect enjoyed with a crisp, semi-dry white wine, though the beer we drank with it was just fine. It is supposed to be simple fare, after all.

Post-partum parcels of joy

Posted on March 2, 2010 by Chelsea

After passing my exam a couple weeks ago, I went and spoke with my adviser to find out what I should be doing to keep on track. She told me to rest. Rest! Actual, warranted permission to lie around, to catch up on terrible reality television series, to take naps and sleep in, uninterrupted by guilt about conferences, articles or (gulp) the dissertation!
Of course this didn’t last long. Like any kid after the first few weeks of summer vacation, I got bored. So I turned to the kitchen, as usual, to vent my new creative focus. I spent my weekend on a few special projects. As I’ve mentioned before, it has become something of a hobby of mine to “collect” menu descriptions from restaurants and try to recreate them. On this occasion, I didn’t even have to do that much guesswork.
Pasta Piatti in Ashland is a favorite of mine, and I’ve mentioned it before. When N. and I had dinner there in celebration of our second wedding anniversary this past summer, I had their butternut squash ravioli in a brown butter sauce with sage, crumbled biscotti cookies, and “Oregonzola” cheese from Rogue Creamery. It looked like this:

Gloriously, the restaurant posts recipes for some of their dishes on their website, and the filling for their extravagantly delicious squash ravioli is one of them. Make this at home? Yes, please.

It’s a process, but I think it’s worth it. See the recipe for detailed directions, but note that there are a few inconsistencies (i.e. do you food process the onion along with the squash and garlic, or just fold it in?). It took about an hour for the squash to cook and the garlic to soften and fill the house with its sweet buttery aroma. I processed together the squash, garlic, sauteed onion (though I used shallot), and egg yolks, but folded in the cheeses so they wouldn’t melt or gum up the blades of my food processor.
When the filling is cooled, you can address containment. Though you could certainly make your own fresh pasta, or maybe even stuff large shells or manicotti, I addressed a package of square wonton wrappers.

Made from wheat flour and fairly flexible, wonton wrappers are a good, easy substitute for fresh pasta. I loaded up each square with about ½ a tablespoon of filling, wet the edges, and folded them into semi-clean, somewhat isosceles triangles. How that word survived in the memory banks astounds me. Geometry was a long time ago. After spreading the little packages on a well floured cookie sheet, I stowed them in the refrigerator for an hour or so to let the seal set while I got everything else ready. With water heating on the back burner to boil my squash-stuffed parcels, I readied the rest of the arsenal:

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 TB fresh sage, minced or in chiffonade
½ – 1 cup graham cracker crust crumble (recipe follows)
2 oz. Oregonzola cheese, crumbled (or any gorgonzola or mild blue cheese)
salt and pepper to taste

1. During a downtime in the cooking process (either while the butternut squash and garlic are roasting or as the ravioli are cooling down in the refrigerator), mix together about a cup of graham cracker crust with 2 TB brown sugar and 2 TB melted butter. Spread the mixture on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and bake at 325 or 350 until deep golden brown and crumbly. Crumble up and cool. Pasta Piatti uses crumbled almond biscotti. I just used what I had in my pantry and it worked out very well.
2. While you wait for the water to boil for the raviolis, melt the butter in a large pan over medium heat. When foam subsides, the butter will begin to turn a deep gold and then brown. As it moves from gold to brown, toss in the sage and allow it to fry until almost crisp; crunchy little shards of herbage. You may at this point have to turn down the heat so the butter will not burn while the ravioli cook.
3. The ravioli will only need 3-4 minutes to cook in rapidly simmering, salted water. I let the water cool from a rolling boil before dropping them in a few at a time because I wasn’t sure how well sealed they were, and I wanted to forestall explosions or leaking. I was mostly successful. When they float to the top of the pot, scoop them out with a strainer or a slotted spoon and deposit them carefully into the butter sauce, draining off as much water as possible before adding them to the skillet.
4. When all raviolis have joined the dark golden buttery bath, fold them gently into the sauce and add the cookie and cheese crumbles. Mix again gently and serve with bread and salad.

We had a ciabatta loaf from Trader Joe’s and a salad of romaine, arugula, thinly sliced Granny Smith apple, pomegranate seeds, and walnut halves as a side. I made a quick dressing from finely diced shallot and sage, with honey, white wine vinegar, and mayonnaise. Thanks to an impromptu Trader Joe’s trip for the gorgonzola cheese, the pomegranate seeds and the ciabatta, I was able to pair dinner with a TJ’s special: Green Fin white table wine. This is made from organic grapes, which supposedly eliminate some of the problems caused by tannins (headache, bad hangover), but also tastes delicious. It’s a bit on the sweet side, which seems good for this meal; the sweetness of the butternut squash and the cookie crumbs in the sauce offers the peril of bitterness to an ordinarily lovely white wine.

But let’s get on to the important bit: the ravioli. The filling is soft and luscious, since it has been blended, and the wonton wrappers are so delicate after their boiling bath that they almost dissolve on your tongue. With a whole head of roasted garlic in the mix, you might expect a stronger garlic flavor, but because it is roasted it just melts into the background as a sweet, mellow support for the squash. Sage and squash are a natural pairing, and the herb adds a little freshness to the nutty, almost caramel notes of the brown butter. These flavors all blend so well, but the real glory of the dish in my mind is in the contrasting crumbles. The cookies and the cheese are such opposites in flavor and in texture; the cookies are crisp and sweet-crunchy, even after a dunk in butter, while the cheese maintains its structural integrity for a while as the dish cools on your plate (ahem, it would, if the dish had long enough to cool on your plate before you devoured every last bit) and provides a creamy, slightly chewy counterpoint. Since gorgonzola is not terribly sweet and, in fact, has its own definitive funk to it in flavor and in aroma, it coats your palate a bit, protecting it from the potentially overwhelming sweetness of the squash, the butter, the cookies.
This is a beautiful dinner. It would also make a rich, out-of-the-ordinary dessert, and an unconventional but satisfying breakfast. But we didn’t leave enough for all that…

Pillows of Delight

Posted on November 16, 2009 by Chelsea

Following my new habit of “borrowing” recipes from restaurants by pillaging their menu descriptions, I want to report another recent triumph. “Borrowing” and “pillaging” sound so naughty, as though I’ve done something vaguely wrong or shameful. But most of the time I’ve never even tried the dish, I’m just taking suggestions about ingredient combinations. Really it’s more sensible behavior. Sensible and well grounded, and a little bit sly and spicy. Like this dish, in fact. How convenient!

Gnocchi with butternut squash, carmelized pears, and swiss chard in a nutmeg brown butter sauce

Ingredients:
2 boxes pre-made refrigerated gnocchi (ours were from Market of Choice)
2 pears, a little underripe
1 big bunch of swiss, red, or rainbow chard (the Saturday Market had enormous bunches of the most beautiful rainbow chard I have ever seen)
1 medium butternut squash (a back garden triumph!)
olive oil
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
salt and pepper
freshly grated nutmeg
splash of white wine (optional)

Procedure:

* I preheated the oven to 350F while I peeled, halved, de-seeded, and diced the butternut squash into squares about the same size as the gnocchi. Then I tossed the chunks in olive oil, salt and pepper on a baking sheet and baked them until the squash is tender, maybe about 45 minutes. When they were soft inside and gave slightly to the touch outside, I set them aside to cool.

* When the squash was close to done, I began melting the butter over medium to medium-high heat in a big pan. At the same time, I put some salted water on to boil for the gnocchi in a pot.

* With the butter melted and starting to darken in color a little, I added the two pears. Like the squash, these should be cubed in about the same size as the gnocchi. If all the major players are about the same size, they play better on the fork and in your mouth. I cranked up the heat to medium high so the pears could take on a little color, being careful not to break them up when I gently turned them so they could coat in the hot buttery bath. After about ten minutes, when they were just getting golden, I added salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste. Then, for a little tang, a splash of white wine.

* While pears were cooking (oh mighty multi-tasker I), I prepped the chard, tearing the leaves off the stems and chopping the stems up into fairly small pieces. For extra flavor and extra vegetation, I mixed the stems in with the pears and let them cook until they got tender, which probably took another five or ten minutes. I sliced the remaining chard leaves into manageable, fork friendly slices.

* With the water boiling, I plopped in the little pillowy gnocchi to the pot and the chard to the vegetable pan at about the same time. Though the chard almost overflowed my largest skillet, while I gently incorporated it into the pears and butter sauce it wilted down amazingly quickly.

* When the gnocchi floated to the surface (that’s not true, they boiled up and threatened to overflow my stovetop!) I drained them well before adding them and the reserved butternut squash squares to the pan for some gentle incorporation. Bearing in mind the constant food show recommendation to season each layer of a dish, I added more salt, pepper, and more grated nutmeg to taste. When the squash squares were heated through to my liking, I served up big bowlfuls.

The combination was delicious. The gnocchi were soft and chewy, and though the pears and butternut squash were also soft, I didn’t feel that there was an unpleasing lack of textural variety in the dish. The pears almost melted when they touched my tongue, and the butternut squash had taken on some crunch on the outside from being in the oven. The bitterness of the chard with the sweetness of the pears and the warmth of the nutmeg worked amazingly well together. Best of all, the next day the flavors had really had time to mingle and meld, and the spice of the nutmeg deepened into a more pronounced seasoning throughout the dish. A freshly brewed, well-spiced hot cider or rum punch might be a delightful and unusual accompaniment to this, but I just had a glass of some of the chardonnay that I added to the sauce. And that was good too. I told my Mom about this one, and she demanded it as a weekend-after-Thanksgiving-remedy-from-too-much-turkey. Sounds like a win to me!

In homage to California produce

Posted on September 19, 2009 by Chelsea

One of the things I’ve learned about myself as a cook is that while I am very good at choosing, following, and accurately executing recipes, I am not particularly imaginative – or impressed by my results – without them. To combat this, as should be clear from my recent exposition on lasagna, I have been paying closer attention to ingredient combinations on restaurant menus. With more practice and likely greater culinary training than my own, chefs in restaurants have an understanding of how ingredients work together, and which ones will meld together well, which is something that I am still learning.

So, I have been taking notes and copying descriptions from meals that I enjoy and establishments that I have been impressed by, and trying to recreate them in my own way. Inspired by the ridiculously beautiful shelves of greenery in the Raley’s grocery store in N.’s hometown, I wanted to make something fresh and delicious with plenty of produce. We eat out quite a bit when we visit our parents, because with time to make the trip down to California only twice a year, it tends to be a festive week or two. Therefore, one evening when N.’s parents were out bowling, my vision turned green. There were bright, dripping bunches of broccolini, and rapini, and dandelion greens, and kale and turnip greens, and that was just the beginning. I don’t think I’ve ever seen dandelion greens in a grocery store before, and was tempted, but forced myself to be realistic. I thought back to our trip to Ashland in July, when N. had this:

Gnocchi in an herb, wine and garlic sauce, topped by a rosemary-grilled breast of chicken, bell peppers, and broccolini. Inspiration achieved. I grabbed both broccolini and rapini from the produce shelves, a beautiful orange bell pepper, and some pre-made gnocchi from the refrigerated area. N. has been yearning after these pillowy little fluffs of potato pasta, so I was happy to oblige.

Surrounded by emerald leaves, buds, and juicy stems on the kitchen counter of my in-laws’ house, I chopped up the greens and steamed them briefly to reduce some of the bitterness that I know hides in these lesser-loved brassica hybrids. When they were just tender, I drained off the water and moved them to a deep skillet, where I stir-fried them with thinly julienned bell pepper slices while the gnocchi boiled. I added some garlic, and at the last minute tossed in the gnocchi, some leftover parsley from a previous night’s adventure, and a few small chunks of butter. It wasn’t the most sophisticated sauce, but the colors were just gorgeous. We topped our bowls with parmesan cheese and filled our bellies with vegetables.

It was so simple, but so fresh, and the flavors were strong and tasty. I like bitter vegetables a bit more than N. does, so to make this again I would steam the broccolini and rapini a bit longer, and perhaps in chicken or vegetable broth rather than water. This would probably also make a silkier sauce, as would a dash or two of a full-bodied white wine. However, this fresh burst of vegetables reenergized and refreshed us, and boosts my confidence about my plan of attack. With N.’s Ashland dinner recreated, and three butternut squashes slowly swelling in the garden, my meal from the same night may be next on the “restaurant recreation” horizon. Squash stuffed ravioli in a sage brown butter sauce with crumbled biscotti and gorgonzola cheese, anyone?

My First Lasagna

Posted on September 6, 2009 by Chelsea

Since I’ve been in California for roughly the past two weeks, I haven’t shared any foodie experiments or revelations. Yes, I cooked and ate delicious food on my trip, and yes, I brought my camera with me. However, I neglected to bring the correct cable to plug the camera into a computer and upload the photos. I’m home now, and certainly have things to share, but for the moment I’m much more excited about tonight’s dinner, which is currently just starting to emit cheesy delicious aromas from the oven.

I have never made lasagna before. I’ve heard a lot of complaints about how it’s labor intensive and time consuming, and since two of the major ingredients are ground beef and tomato sauce, I’ve steered clear. I like ground beef in hamburgers, and occasionally in burritos or meatloaf, but I’d prefer that it stay away from my pasta. As for the tomato sauce, since I’ve entered adulthood cooked tomatoes in almost any form upset my stomach. Therefore I have found a large number of alternative pizza and pasta toppings so I can still enjoy Italian cuisine. But lasagna… that was always a roadblock that I wasn’t overly inspired to circumvent.

Then N. and I went to Ashland for our two year wedding anniversary. In addition to the delicious food that we ordered from Pasta Piatti on Main Street (a must-visit, in my opinion), I salivated over most of the options on the menu, including, to my surprise, their take on the perennial classic: lasagna. Here’s their description, and tell me this doesn’t sound amazingly delicious: roasted wild mushrooms, layered pasta, spinach, ricotta, parmesan, arugula pesto, white sauce. I mean, I guess if you’re not a mushroom fan then it wouldn’t sound amazingly delicious, but I suspect substitutions could be made. I scribbled down this description on the back of a receipt that I’d jammed in my wallet, and it traveled through the state (and into the next!) with me for the next few weeks. Then we saw a dip into what might be the beginning of the fall season. The temperature dropped. The rain returned for the morning. It was conveniently Saturday so that I could go and pick up a few things from the Saturday Market. It was cool enough to turn on the oven, and so I decided to brave the lasagna.

It was a little bit time consuming, if only because there were multiple steps, but I wouldn’t call it particularly labor intensive. Here’s what I did:

Reconstituted a package of shiitake mushrooms in a mixture of warm water and white wine for half an hour (tip: never buy dried shiitakes in the produce section; they cost about twice as much for about half as many mushrooms as they do in the Asian foods aisle!)
Chopped and blanched a bunch of Italian kale and about ½ lb. of baby spinach, drained and cooled in a colander.
Sliced and fried a generous handful of crimini mushrooms in butter, adding some pepper and the drained, squeezed, sliced shiitakes when the criminis were about half done. When both kinds were done to my liking, I deglazed the pan with some white wine (I had about a ¼ of a bottle I was trying to finally evict from my refrigerator) and then continued to cook the mushrooms just until the liquid had evaporated. Then I set them aside in a bowl to cool.
While the mushrooms were cooking, I made the arugula pesto. I must confess, I love the idea but hate the practice of making my own pesto. I can never seem to get the ratios right. But for this dish, I had what I must call an ingenious fix. I had a container of store-bought pesto in the fridge, and I combined four or five TB. of this with probably 2 cups of arugula in my food processor and pulsed them together. Flawless, and so much easier than making it from scratch.
Using the same pan as I cooked the mushrooms in (I’m big on reducing the number of dishes needed for a meal), I made a roux with about 3 TB. each of butter and flour, then added between 1 and 2 cups of milk to create a white sauce. When it was thickened, I added some pepper, freshly grated nutmeg, and the last few tablespoons of that pesky bottle of wine.
Then it was time to assemble. Since I’ve never made this before, I actually found deciding which order to add ingredients to be the most challenging part. I put down some sauce first, then a layer of no-boil pasta, then a mixture of ricotta cheese and arugula pesto, topped by the veggies and sauce. Then I repeated, confining myself to three layers of pasta so our dinner would be heavy on the vegetables. On the top layer of pasta, I spread the last little bit of sauce, a little bit more ricotta and pesto, and then a generous layer of grated parmesan cheese. When I stuck it in the oven, it looked like this*:

When it came out 45 minutes later, it looked like this:

The cheese was browned and crusty, the sauce was bubbling up around the corners, and miraculously, my worst fears did not come to fruition, as the no-boil lasagna noodles were soft and chewy. I was secretly afraid they would be crunchy, because I’m not familiar enough with the product to know how they work. Here’s my review: the mixture of both greens and mushrooms was great, and made the dish taste satisfyingly healthy (well, as healthy as cheese-laden pasta gets, I suppose). The arugula pesto added a satisfying bitterness, which I’m sure was helped along by the kale. And of course, it was creamy and cheesy and actually came out of the baking dish in servable pieces, rather than collapsing all over itself in messy piles. Actually, if I may toot my own horn for a moment, the whole thing was rather beautiful. Somehow, despite not really knowing what I was doing, I got the proportions of fillings to cheese to pasta to sauce pretty much right. A nice crisp white wine would go nicely with a large square of lasagna, which is convenient as you could simply drink the wine you were also soaking and deglazing the mushrooms with.

All in all, it was a good, tasty dinner, but it’s definitely a work in progress. N. and I both decided that, lacking the usual piquant, acidic bite of the tomatoes in a red sauce, the dish was actually missing something. The flavors of the cheese, the pesto, and vegetables were good, but they were a little muddy without that sweet tangy top note of tomato. For next time, I will be making a few additions. To attempt to compensate for the missing acidity of the tomatoes, I’ll add extra lemon juice to the pesto mixture. We both agreed that maybe adding a sprinkle of parmesan cheese along with the ricotta in each layer would add a nice touch; I don’t use much salt when I cook, and sometimes the deep greens like spinach and kale need some to enhance their flavors. Extra parmesan mingling with the vegetables while they bake might accomplish this without actually having to add salt. I might also add some of my beloved Penzey’s Black and Red pepper blend the next time to the white sauce, just to spice it up a little bit. It was creamy and thick and good, but really, milk, butter and flour cooked together have only so much flavor on their own.

Other additions, or accompaniments, that have occurred to me since dinner include mixing finely chopped sundried tomatoes into either the white sauce or the mushrooms. They would add that intense tomato flavor without the heavy sauce that upsets my stomach. Thinly sliced fresh tomatoes in between each layer, or maybe only on the top layer underneath the parmesan cheese, might accomplish the same thing. Finally, an old friend from high school T. just told me about a sauce she makes of roasted tomatoes and red peppers that might do the trick, and I wonder whether a plain old roasted red pepper sauce would have the same zippy tang as tomatoes? Certainly it would be pretty, even if it was drizzled over the top or added plate-side. Lasagna #1: down. Lasagna #2 awaits…

* Nota bene: as a geologist’s daughter, I am all but obligated to understand and appreciate cross-sections as a method of conveying information. Conveniently enough, this seems like a perfect strategy for photographing lasagna!

"blackberry-eating in late September"

food, in so many words.

Category Archives: Restaurant Recreation