Old Fashioned Neapolitan Lasagna

Why is this an old fashioned lasagna?  Well, no idea.  That is simply the title Maria Luisa has chosen to provide so we're sticking with it.  Old fashioned or not, it proved to be a tasty lasagna, an opinion seconded by the friend I had over for dinner that night.  Since it was more meat and less veggie, I chose to serve it with a side of Brussels Sprouts Parmigiana.  Also tasty.  My only complaint is with the Brussels sprouts...yet again it's a 2 inch long recipe taking up space for no real reason.  I realize I sound like a cranky old lady, but I truly believe that recipes in a cookbook should involve more than boil sprouts, put in dish, add melted butter, sprinkle on cheese, bake.  I probably would have done that anyway.  I put cheese on everything.  I might not have baked it since baking the sprouts added I'm not even sure what.  Oh, whatever.  I'm over it.  At least the lasagna took some effort.

Maria Luisa did not get very specific with the type of beef she wanted me to use, just that it needed to be chopped.  I chose to go with stew beef that I then cut into even smaller pieces.  I have to say, it was really nice biting down into a hunk of meat as I was eating the lasagna.  Mixed in with the beef was some spicy Italian sausage, so there were pieces to sink your teeth into and a little heat as well.  This was definitely a meat lovers lasagna.  The Debbie Downer aspect was that, once again, we were expected to use tomato paste diluted in water....yuck.  I had a jar of marinara in the fridge so I substituted that for the diluted paste.  This also aided in the flavoring of the sauce and helped to keep the acidity down.  The additional flavors were essential.  Maria Luisa did get a little crazy this time around, we put a whole 1/4 teaspoon of marjoram in with the meat.  However, that and the single garlic clove that was removed halfway through is not enough to flavor lasagna sauce.  I highly suggest following my lead and using a basic jarred pasta sauce....no one will ever know.

Old Fashioned Neapolitan Lasagna

Lasagne Napoletane all'Antica

Ingredients:

8 no boil lasagna noodles

2 slices bacon - finely chopped

4 Tbsp butter

1 clove garlic - leave whole

1/2 a medium onion - finely chopped

2 Tbsp carrot - finely chopped

1 Tbsp celery - finely chopped

1 tsp. parsley - chopped

1/2 lb beef - chopped

2 spicy Italian sausage links - casings removed

1/4 tsp. marjoram

1 large can diced tomatoes

2 c. marinara sauce

1/2 c. dry white wine (I went with Villa Marchesi Pinot Grigio)

1/2 lb. ricotta cheese

1/4 tsp. salt

1 egg - beaten

1/2 c. Parmesan cheese - grated

1/2 small mozzarella cheese - diced

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

In a large saute pan, melt butter then saute bacon, garlic, onion, carrot and celery for 5 minutes.  

Discard the garlic and add the beef, sausage, marjoram, and parsley,  Simmer until the meat has browned, approximately 5 minutes.

Drain off some of the excess juice then add the wine.  Cook until the wine has evaporated, about 10 minutes.  Add the diced tomatoes and tomato sauce.  Simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes.  Season to taste and then continue cooking until sauce is thick, about another 10 minutes.

Mix the ricotta, egg, Parmesan cheese, and a bit of salt and pepper together.  Cover the bottom of a 9 x 13 baking dish with sauce.  Make a layer of lasagna noodles then one of cheese.  Dot with some of the mozzarella then repeat.  Cover with sauce and a few mozzarella pieces.  Bake in an oven preheated to 375F for 30 minutes.

Brussels Sprouts Parmigiana

Cavoletti alla Parmigiana

Ingredients:

2 boxes frozen Brussels sprouts

4 Tbsp butter - melted

1/4 c. Parmesan cheese - grated

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F.  Cook Brussels sprouts in salted boiling water for 5 minutes  Place in a buttered baking dish, pour butter over them, sprinkle on cheese.  Bake for 20 minutes.

Yea, that's an actual recipe in Maria Lusia's cookbook.  She's lucky it tasted good, otherwise I'd scream.

And there are my two Italian dishes on my Hungarian map table runner.  I was feeling very international that evening.

Sausage Lasagna

I have always found lasagna to be one of the best "throw together" meals.  It requires four basic ingredients - lasagna noodles, marinara sauce, ricotta cheese, and mozzarella cheese.  After that it's up to you, which means you have been given carte blanche over your meal.  Add meat, add vegetables, add both...go crazy.  Of course, for some less experimental people, this could be your version of food hell.  Me, I have both gotten experimental as well as stuck close to a recipe.  What follows in this post is my adapted version of my absolute favorite lasagna recipe - Ina Garten's Turkey Lasagna.

I found this recipe six or seven years ago and fell in love because it uses creamy goat cheese to add a bit of tangy kick to the cheese mixture.  Another aspect that I really enjoy is that the sauce and the meat are cooked together.  For me, I feel that it creates a better flavor.  Plus, we're not putting together a dinner version of the 7-layer dip, we don't need individual layers for each section of the lasagna.  Some basic changes I've made to the original recipe include using a flavored goat cheese and crushed tomatoes with basil.  Using a flavored cheese adds a bit more depth (not that it's actually necessary) and having basil with the tomatoes means I was able to cut the amount I needed otherwise.  The result is a dish of fabulous everyone loves!

Ingredients:

Olive oil
1 c. onion - chopped
3 garlic cloves - mincesd
1 1/5 lbs hot Italian sausage - casings removed
1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes with basil
1 6-oz can tomato paste
1/4 c. Italian parsley - chopped
2 Tbsp. partially dried basil - chopped
15 oz. part skim ricotta cheese
4 oz. crushed red pepper flavored creamy goat cheese
1 c. Parmesan cheese - grated
1 large egg
1 lb. fresh mozzarella - thinly sliced
1/2 box no-bake lasagna noodles

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400F

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium heat.  Add the onions and cook until tender, approximately 7 minutes.  Add the garlic and give a couple of stirs.  Add the sausage and cook for about 10 minutes.

As you cook, break the sausage apart into small chunks.  Once it is no longer pink add the crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, 1/2 the parsley, and the basil.  Reduce heat to simmer and cook for another 20 minutes.  You want the sauce to thicken up.

While the sauce simmers, put together your cheese mixture.  In a large mixing bowl, combine goat cheese, ricotta, Parmesan cheese, the rest of the parsley, and the egg.  Don't be afraid to get your hands in there to ensure everything is well mixed.

On to the layers!  Start with 1/3 of the sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 inch baking dish.  Next is a layer of noodles - no overlapping.  Follow with 1/2 the mozzarella, 1/2 the ricotta mixture, and 1/3 of sauce.

Then repeat, topping with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.

Bake in the oven for approximately 30 minutes until the sauce is bubbling.  Let rest for a couple of minutes before digging in.  It'll still be a sloppy mess on your plate, but I promise it is tasty!

Steak and Pesto Pinwheel Bread

I do believe I have already established my love of the Great British Bake Off and so once again we return to a show inspired dishes.  During Season 5, Richard made a Pesto Pinwheel Bread that, according to the judges, looked and tasted quite good.  The look of it is in fact rather intimidating but, I decided I was up for the challenge. 

However, I wanted something a bit heartier than Richard's original recipe.  I wanted something that I felt confident I could just tear off a couple twists, take to work for lunch, and feel completely satisfied.  This is why my version is made with steak.  This bread can be made with anything though.  Pick a few items that entice your own taste buds and make a great party appetizer or fun lunch item for the week.

Ingredients:

Dough:

1 lb 2 oz white flour
1 Tbsp salt
1 oz superfine sugar
10g quick-rise yeast
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
2 eggs - beaten
1/4 c. milk
1/2 c. warm water
olive oil for greasing

Filling:

1 lb stew beef - quarter each cube
1 red onion - quartered and sliced
1 red bell pepper - sliced
5 Tbsp pesto
olive oil for drizzling
1 egg - for egg wash

Directions:

The night before, marinate stew beef in 2 Tbsp pesto.

For the dough:

Put the flour, salt, yeast, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, and 1/8 c. of warm water in your stand mixer.  Using a bread hook, mix until just combined.  Add 1/8 to 1/4 c. of warm water and mix again.  Continue adding portions of the water and mixing until you have a soft dough. 

Turn out the down onto a lightly floured work surface.  Knead for approximately 10 minutes.  You want the dough to be smooth and elastic.  Put the dough into a greased bowl and let rise for one hour.

The vegetables:

Preheat oven to 325F.

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper - one for onions and the other for bell pepper.  Drizzle with olive oil and roast for 15 minutes.

Putting it all together:

Turn out the risen dough on a lightly floured work surface and knead for 20 seconds.  Split the dough in half, set aside one portion.

Roll out the dough into a circle with a diameter of approximately 12 inches.  Let rest for 5 minutes and then roll again to diameter of 13 inches.  Place on a pizza tray.

Spread remaining pesto onto the bread then layer with beef, onions, and peppers.

Repeat the above rolling instructions for the top layer.

Wet edges of bottom layer with water then lay down the top layer and join together.

Place a small bowl in the center of the pinwheel and cut 16 equally sized striped coming out from the bowl.

Twist each strip twice.

Set aside to rise for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375F.

Brush the top of the pinwheel with a beaten egg.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

The dough is a bit on the sweeter side, which surprised me at first but I really like.  Don't worry about the sturdiness of the twists, I have not had a problem with the filling falling out once they are ripped off the pinwheel.  It should turn out to be a sturdy bread and it can handle heavy fillings.  Finally, if you cannot find superfine sugar, do not despair.  Use a blender or coffee grinder to turn granulated sugar superfine.  Just a couple of pulses should do the trick.

I wish you the best on your own pinwheel experiment!

Pork Patties

I have a bad habit of cooking like I have an army residing in my house.  Truth be told, it is just me.  Thankfully, I am all about the leftovers.  Sometimes though, I am able to catch myself before cooking too much food but not before I've purchased it.  When I was shopping for the pork pie I bought two pounds of ground pork but only used one pound.  Into the freezer went the extra pound.  The other day I decided to pull it out and make pork patties.

Ingredients:

1 lb ground pork
6 strips bacon
1 sprig thyme
2 sage leaves - chopped
1 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. salt

Take the 6 strips of bacon and chop them up using a food processor.  You can just finely chop the bacon, but it is faster and a bit more thorough when done via the food processor.

mmmmm, yummy :)

Combine all the ingredients, thoroughly mixing them together.  I recommend just getting in there with your hands.

Divide mixture into four equally sized patties.

Pan fry or grill until thoroughly cooked and the juices run clear.

Living in an apartment with no balcony, I went the pan fry route.  Because my patties were fairly thick, it took about 10 minutes per side.  I flipped several times to avoid burning the outside before the inside cooked through.

Dress as you please.

As I was eating my fabulous pork patty, I felt that it reminded me a bit of a breakfast sausage.  I think the combination of the bacon with the sage and thyme give it more of a sausage taste over the mild flavor pork normally has.  Personally I loved it, but that's my own humble opinion.  Also, I should stress that anyone planning to pan fry these might want to consider making them smaller.  Make 6 or 8 patties versus the 4  that I made.  Unless you want a thick patty, to which I say, crack on!

The Great Greek Chicken Escapade

Oddly enough, while I was in high school, I excelled at English and found myself in the AP English class my senior year.  At one point we were doing a Greek mythology section and to cap it we were all assigned a food dish and Greek god/goddess.  We were to make our dishes, dress up, and attend an end-of-section feast at our teacher's house.  My dish was Greek Turkey.  I followed the original recipe to the letter but have since adjusted it to my own taste.  Don't ask for the original recipe because this was *cough* 17 *cough* years ago in the dark ages of AOL and Prodigy dial-up connections.  My teacher just handed me a sheet of paper with the recipe on it.  What became of it is anyone's guess.  What I can tell you is that whether you use my recipe or go to Google or Pintrest for other versions, it will make your entire house smell like food nirvana.

For today's kitchen adventure however, we start with a substitution.  We are doing Greek Chicken.  I am a single lady and as much as I enjoy cooking for an army, the average turkey is a bit much, so a smaller chicken it is.

Greek Turkey Chicken

 

Ingredients:

 

1 oven - set to 350F

1 roasting pan

1 whole chicken - 8 - 10 labs
3 lemons (plus 1 optional squirt of lemon juice concentrate)

6 cloves garlic

2 Tbsp oregano

1 stick butter

 

Preheat oven to 350F.

 

Wash bird inside and out, then place in roasting pan.

 

Put 1 Tbsp of oregano and 4 whole garlic cloves inside the bird.

Cut lemons in half.  Now, here you have a choice - be neat and juice them into a bowl or do what I do.  Squeeze out juice from lemons onto bird and dump 1 Tbsp of oregano onto it as well.  Rub down the bird.  Take 2 of the used halves and place inside the bird.

Take the other 4 halves and place 1 into each corner of the roasting pan.

Place the bird in the oven.

On stove top melt butter, add 2 cloves of garlic - crushed, and the optional lemon squirt.  This is used for basting.

My preferred basting schedule is as follows:

• After first 30 minutes - baste with butter mixture
• Then, baste every 15 minutes for a total of 1 hour - baste with butter mixture
• Then, baste every 30 minutes until bird is done - baste with own juices.

If you are heavy handed with the basting brush and run out of butter before my suggested end time, don't worry about it.  By the time you run out, there should be plenty of buttery lemony goodness in the roasting pan to use.

I absolutely adore this recipe.  For me, it is simple and easy as long as you have several hours set aside for cooking.  It smells amazing and because the primary flavorings are lemon and oregano, the turkey chicken has a light fresh taste.

If you are wondering about sides, I am a huge fan of the sweet potato.  I would also suggest roasted fingerling potatoes.  Fingerlings roast up pretty quick and can therefore be done while the bird rests.  For greens, whatever is in season is always the most flavorful, but otherwise some salted green beans can add some nice crunch to the meal.  I went with salad on this particular occasion.



My Great British Bake Off Obsession

Thanks to PBS I recently discovered the greatness that is The Great British Bake Off.  I watch it before Downton Abbey on Sunday nights and I binge watch old episodes and clips on Youtube.  Oh, Youtube, you destroyer of all my evening plans! So, it's really GBBO that we all have to thank for my return to blogging and this time blogging about food.  I watch the show and all I want to do is recreate the dishes they make.

Sadly, PBS Food does not have every GBBO recipe however, it has some, including the recipe from Season 5 for Kate's plum, apple, and rhubarb pork pies.  Now, when you go grocery shopping on January 30th in New England it is unlikely that you will find rhubarb.  So we are already wading into the world of recipe adjusting.  Add that to not finding boned pork shoulder (no, I had no desire to spend an hour cutting around a bone, I'm too lazy for that) and wanting to get rid of the puff pastry in my freezer versus making hot water crust pastry and you have a not even remotely like Kate's pie result.  However, I don't care.  Why?  Because I am making a recipe inspired by Kate so I have decided it counts.  And, I have never made a meat pie so I get that added challenge element to the whole deal.

So, welcome to my Fruit and Pork Pie Concoction

Ingredients

Oven preheated to 400F
9" pie dish
1 gala apple - peeled, cored, diced
6 pitted prunes - chopped
1 1/2 oz superfine sugar
1 lb ground pork
2 strips bacon - chopped
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/4 tsp. ground mace
1 sprig fresh thyme - leaves picked and chopped
1 sage leaf - chopped
1 bay leaf - chopped
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tsp. sea salt
2 sheets puff pastry

Because I couldn't find superfine sugar I used regular granulated sugar that I then put into my coffee grinder.  You don't want confectioners so be mindful not to grind the sugar for more than a pulse or two.  I am also a prep first cook second person, so all my ingredients were measured out and ready to go before I moved over to the stove.

In a sauté pan over medium heat cook apples, prunes, and sugar.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 5 - 10 minutes.  You want all the excess liquid evaporated.  (For those of you who watch GBBO, you know Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood's utter distaste for soggy bottoms!)  Set aside in bowl to cool.

Now, on to the meat.  Cook the bacon first then just before desired crispness add the ground pork to brown.  Just before that is done add the spices.  Mix to just incorporated, drain excess liquid, then add to fruit mixture.  Squish the two mixtures together then transfer to prepped pie plate.

The pie plate:

Grease and flour a 9" pie dish.  Roll out thawed puff pastry on floured surface and roll to appropriate size.  Transfer to pie dish.  Check for holes and cracks.

Once the mixture is in the pie dish, roll out the second pastry sheet.  Brush with egg wash and place on top of pie. Crimp edges together.

Bake for about 30 minutes, or until top is golden brown, in 400F oven.

The prunes give the mixture a nice burst of sweetness.  The ground mace gives a really good flavor to the meat, but be careful.  Too much and it will take over the dish and not in a good way.

All in all, a successful foray into the world of meat pies!