Lasagna

One of my favorite meals of all time - Lasagna.

I believe it started with Garfield and my desire to be a fat orange cat when I got older. In my late teens when I realized I would never be a fat orange cat, my love for lasagna persisted. Having toured the worlds greatest lasagna places (the olive garden, that Italian place down the street, and my Mom's house) I can definitely say that my lasagna rocks. I learned how to make lasagna from my Mom at an early age (I learned most of what I know from her), and once I was on my own I modified the recipe to fit my tastes better.

To start with, this blog post is a little different than the normal. For the most part what I post is stuff I invented, then posted, from stuff I had at home. This time I went and bought the stuff, because I really wanted lasagna. I don't measure or have a recipe anywhere besides my head though, so in that sense it is always an experiment.

First off we need to reserve a hefty amount of counter space to hold all the ingredients.



Like normal, I would suggest having access to some sort of food processor, otherwise this will be a lot of stirring and chopping...

Now that we have deprived a small country of a weeks worth of food, lets begin the delicious cooking journey. I start out by throwing all the meat into a pan (ground beef (2 lbs), Italian sausage (1 lb), and spicy Italian sausage (1 lb)).



While that is beginning to brown whack up an entire large yellow onion, or food processor it. I like to use my food processor at a later stage so I chopped the onion by hand.



Next take a truly obscene amount of garlic, peel, and smash. I realized I have never given out one of my secrets before, so here it is. To peel garlic real easy just cut off the base, give it a light smash with the side of a knife, and squeeze the tip. The garlic will just shoot out. Alternatively, you could make roasted garlic cloves--I will have to put that up here some day--for now you can find out how through Google.



Next up dump all that garlic and onion in with the meat mix. I also threw in a pound or so of chopped mushrooms. I was lazy with this and got some pre-chopped mushrooms. Nothing fancy here, I can't afford better than generic portobello mushrooms. Along with the veggies I put in the oh so yummy spices. This consisted of two tablespoons of ground black pepper, oregano, basil, thyme, parsley, and rosemary. One tablespoon of crushed red pepper flakes, half a tablespoon of salt, and half a teaspoon of fennel seeds.



While attempting to stir this all I realized that in typical Scott fashion I had failed to appropriately select the pan size... Using my world renowned dumping skills I managed to transfer roughly 90% of the mix into an appropriate pan. Then I let it get all nice and brown.



To finish the sauce off I dumped in a big ol can of crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, and tomato paste. Followed by three dried bay leaves. Next we add the secret family ingredient, powdered milk. About half of one of those packages of powdered milk will do nicely. The powdered milk contains a decent amount of sweetness to really blend the flavors together, and has calcium to take the acidic edge off the tomatoes. Just add it to any red sauce you are making in the future and you will thank me when your friends beg to know how you make such a smooth sauce.



Now that we have the sauce done, it will need to simmer for at least an hour. My favorite thing to do is to simmer for an hour then put in the refrigerator overnight. Letting it sit overnight really gives the spices time to blend together.

While the sauce is simmering we move on to the cheese (there is no rest for the hungry in this dance). Like I stated before I use my food processor for this step, but if you do not own one a whisk, big bowl, and Arnold Schwarzenegger style forearms should do the trick. Combine 3/4 of a container of ricotta cheese and cottage cheese in a food processor. I really think ricotta cheese is too dry so I like to substitute half of the cheese mix with cottage to keep it moist and delicious. Then crack two eggs in there. Now put in around half a tablespoon of all the spices you used in the sauce (except for the bay leaves). next a tablespoon of garlic powder and two tablespoons of onion powder. Blend that stuff up for about ten seconds.



After that I like to add a few cups of spinach to the top. Spinach is great for you and when blended into the cheese sauce no-one will ever be able to tell, and its cheap.



Once you have all that blended together--I usually run it for 45-60 seconds--set it aside for later. I usually just pop the bowl off my food processor and stick the mix into the fridge.

Now we get to make the final cheese layer. This one is pretty easy to make so you can look forward to rubbing that Bengay on your arms if you did this without a food processor. Essentially, take a medium sized bowl and combine cheddar cheese, Colby-Jack cheese, Parmesan cheese, and mozzarella cheese. I typically do around a pound of each. For the mozzarella cheese I like to cut up string cheese so I have little marshmallow style chunks in my finished product, but this is entirely up to you.



Throw that bowl in the fridge as well and wait for the sauce to be done.



Oh goodness that looks good...

Remember to fish around inside your sauce at this point and retrieve the bay leaves, throw them away. If you forget to retrieve the leaves someone is going to get a very bitter surprise :)

I like to turn off the heat to my sauce at this point and let it settle while I make the noodles, that way it isn't too hot while you are combining everything, and it will minimize burns.

If you are like me you will instantly select the worst possible pan for the job of boiling water and cooking the noodles.



I like to cook my noodles in salt water with a splash of vinegar. Vinegar will prevent the starch from breaking down in your noodles and prevent them from sticking together. Olive oil will NOT do this, that is a myth. Look it up if you don't believe me. Once the noodles are done and strained start the stacking process.



I start with a sauce layer on the bottom, then noodles, sauce, cheese sauce, cheese mix, noodles, sauce, cheese sauce, cheese mix, etc. The top layer should be noodles, sauce, and the last of the cheese mix (no sauce).



You could very well have enough left over to make a second lasagna in a smaller pan. I usually do and I like to freeze the uncooked lasagna for cooking later (it will take a really long time to thaw and cook though). Cover the lasagna with tin foil and pop in a pre-heated 375 degree oven. After half an hour remove the foil and bake for an additional half an hour.

Pull it all out of the oven and let cool for 15 minutes before becoming the best cook your friends have ever seen. During this 15 minutes I would suggest getting some garlic bread in the oven and starting your guests on a salad.



Recipie
Prep time ~ 30 minutes
Cook time ~ 2 hours 30 minutes
Ready in ~ 3 hours

2 lbs Ground Beef
1 lb Italian Sausage
1 lb Spicy Italian Sausage
1 large yellow onion, chopped
8 cloves garlic, smashed
1 lb portobello mushrooms, sliced
2 1/2 tablespoons black pepper, ground
2 1/2 tablespoons oregano
2 1/2 tablespoons basil
2 1/2 tablespoons thyme
2 1/2 tablespoons parsley
2 1/2 tablespoons rosemary
1 tablespoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
3 dried bay leaves
1 big can crushed tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
1 can tomato paste
1 package powdered milk
8oz ricotta cheese (that's about how much I used)
8oz cottage cheese
3 eggs
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2 - 3 cups spinach
1 lb cheddar cheese
1 lb Colby-Jack cheese
1 lb Parmesan cheese
1 lb mozzarella cheese
1 to 2 boxes of lasagna noodles

Bad Bad Boy

Whelp I have not just dropped this blog, I have just been swamped with school stuff! Now that the semester is over I can go back to a semblance of normal life--after my three days of nothing but sleep--and write up a few cookingventions. Without keeping you waiting with bated breath I will post THREE stunning new things that I made, while hungry, from stuff I had in my cupboards.

Part I - Chili

I really only have the vaguest sense of what Chili is; alas my upbringing had only chili served directly from a can. Anyone who has had chili from a can, will attest to it's startling similarity to a can of dog or cat food. I can take this one step further and say that there is in fact quite a taste difference between the two...
What!? I was hungry and it was right there, don't try and tell me you haven't ever wondered just what it was like...

ANYWAY, I decided that chili really can't be that hard to make. You have some meat substance, chili's, beans, onion, garlic, and well that's it right? Well let us go down this path.

Step 1 - Gather your ingredients


That would be a bit of ground beef, two halves of onion (one sweet, one Spanish), a can of diced tomatoes, a can of tomato paste, a can of tomato sauce, a can of kidney beans, and a few cloves of garlic. I was feeling like I had neglected my food processor at this point, so I put the garlic and onion in there and let it work its magic for a few seconds.

Step 2 - Select a pan which is entirely too small.


One thing I repeatedly tell myself when I cook is "make sure this pan will be big enough for what you intend," I then repeatedly ignore this advice and select a pan that is just too small...

Step 3 - Oblivious to the fact that your pan is too small, begin to cook things!


I started out by throwing the onion and garlic in some nice hot oil. After the onion just started to turn translucent I threw in the ground beef.



I stirred it all up into a yummy meat-onion mess and then decided that I should probably put spices in this food at some point.

There is a nice dark photo of some spices on my counter. I figure if all my pictures are dark you will just have to take my word about what is happening. The spices here are ground black pepper, parsley, oregano, salt, ground cumin, red pepper flakes, chili powder, Cheyenne powder, and chipotle powder. I went and dumped varying amounts of these into the pan of meat-onion mess and stirred it up. (mostly around a tablespoon each, less for salt, more for chili powder and oregano).

Once it was all nice and mixed I let it finish cooking down a bit. If you don't use the cheapest ground beef money can buy (beaf-product) it probably won't be as soupy. I however think the top of the food pyramid is the most essential, so this is life giving grease.



Step 4 - Decide that my chili is boring and it needs other stuff.. So I dumped in some noodles (no I don't know why, I just did)


In retrospect, the noodles are a great way to spread out your chili meal and add something to absorb that life giving grease. I would add it much later than this step though to prevent the noodles from becoming little more than starch mush.

Step 5 - realize your pan is too small while holding the rest of the ingredients.
I switched over to a bigger dutch oven style pan at this point, with a simple dumping maneuver. This will get approximately 80% of the food into the new pan, the rest will go on the floor and stove.

Having solved two problems at once (too much food and too small of a pan) I figure its time to add the rest of the ingredients.


In went the tomato paste, sauce, and diced tomatoes. And hey, what is this, beer? Why shouldn't my chili have some beer too, since I am enjoying a cold one? So I cracked open another bottle and poured that in too. Oh and I don't normally drink beer of that quality, it was a gift from a friend.

Step 6 - Wonder how long this is supposed to cook.
I settled on half an hour (i.e. when I ran out of beer). It looked like this


Since it looks exactly the same in a bowl as it does in a pan I neglected to take pictures of the final product. The rest of the batch got frozen to provide me with a good week of eatings. The week taught me that many things can make chili better, like grated cheese, sour cream, take-out, and alcohol...

As I stated at the beginning I really know nothing about chili so you should check other places for recipes before starting. Whatever I made--chili or not--was fairly tasty, and certainly not the worst thing I have ever made (there have been some truly horrifying dishes).

Recipe

prep time ~ 5 minutes
cook time ~ 45 minutes

1 can tomato paste
1 can tomato sauce
1 can red kidney beans (drained)
2 Tablespoons ground cumin
2 Tablespoons parsley
2 Teaspoons oregano
1/2 Teaspoon salt
1 Teaspoon ground black pepper
1 Tablespoon chipotle powder
1/2 sweet onion, chopped
1/2 Spanish onion, chopped
a bunch of twisty egg noodles
1 to 1 1/2 pound(s) ground beef
1 six pack of beer (one bottle for the chili)