Merry Christmas 2010!

Merry Christmas! Our holiday this year was cold but lovely and filled with family, friends, and good food. We kept it fairly simple--but not boring--and had for dinner a big, cheesy lasagna and salad. For dessert, we had a creamy peppermint bark cheesecake. The cake includes peppermint bark both inside and on top as well as peppermint whipped cream.  The recipe is pretty simple.  For the base cake, I made a variation on the Barefoot Contessa cheesecake (which, yes, makes a lot), but I used one less egg yolk, no lemon zest, and about 2 tsp of vanilla.  I also added 8-10 oz of broken up peppermint bark (this is a guess--use enough so you can see it mixed in, though it will sink down when baking.)  Once baked and chilled, I topped the cake with fresh whipped cream mixed with a few drops of peppermint extract (it's strong stuff, so go slowly ... I didn't want a ton of peppermint in the cream) and then decorated with crushed candy canes and more peppermint bark.

Just a slice ...


Just another slice ...

Roasted Butternut Squash Lasagna

This recipe has become one of my favorite versions of lasagna. Butternut squash is roasted til slightly crispy and caramelized. It's then layered between sheets of fresh pasta with béchamel and tomato sauces and lots of Parmesan cheese. When baked, the cheese on top melts, the exposed edges of the pasta toast, and the lasagna puffs up so it's big and beautiful and delicious, with bits of bright orange squash peeking through.




Roasted Butternut Squash Lasagna

1 med. butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cubed
6 sheets fresh lasagna (or 1 box dried)
Bechamel sauce (1 stick of butter, 1/2-3/4 c flour, 5-6 c warm milk, salt and pepper)
Tomato sauce (I cheated this time and used one large jar of WF brand organic tomato-basil sauce)
1 - 1.5 c Parmesan cheese
salt, pepper, and olive oil

1. Put the cubed squash onto a cookie sheet lined with foil. Toss with salt, pepper and a little olive oil and roast at 400 degrees (425 if you're impatient) til the squash is tender and the edges are lightly browned/caramelized. Remove from the oven and let cool.
2. Cook the pasta according to the box or, if using fresh, parboil and rinse in cool water to stop the cooking.
3. To make the bechamel, melt the butter in a med. saucepan. Then add the flour and whisk well. Let it cook for a couple of minutes, and then slowly whisk in the milk. Keep stirring til thickened. Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. Assembling it all:
a. Spoon about 1/2 c of tomato sauce into the bottom of the baking dish and spread it around. This will help keep the pasta from sticking to the bottom.
b. Put down a layer of pasta, trimming it to fit, if nec. (with the sheets of pasta I use, I get about 3/4 of a sheet per layer, and then I combine the shorter pieces for middle layers.)
c. Then spoon in 1/2-3/4 c of the bechamel and spread it around. Sprinkle with 1/3 of the butternut squash cubes (or use 1/2 if you don't want to make as many layers.) Sprinkle with a little parmesan
d. Add another layer of pasta. Cover with 1/2 c or so of tomato sauce and then more bechamel sauce. Sprinkle with parmesan.
e. Repeat the layers of bechamel/squash and tomato/bechamel twice more (or once each if you're just doing two layers of squash)
f. Top with a last layer of pasta and spread a little more bechamel and parmesan on top.
5. Bake at 350 for 45 min. or so til hot and bubbling. Let sit for 10 min. or so before serving, so you can slice it a bit more easily.

Dinner With Friends

Thanksgiving is tomorrow night, but last night we had 14 at our table. Because there's such a huge meal just around the corner, dinner was fairly simple: two lasagnas--butternut squash and plain, with a bolognese sauce on the side--salad, and French bread. The kids had pasta: with cheese, with tomato sauce, with meat sauce, and only with butter. For dessert we had KAF's Guaranteed Fudge Brownies

Butternut Squash Lasagna

The pictures don't really do this dish justice. From the outside it just looks like random lasagna. But inside, there were seven layers of fresh lasagna noodles interspersed with layers of roasted butternut squash, bechamel sauce, and tomato sauce, all sprinkled with parmigiano-reggiano. Just a piece ...

Signs of Fall

Apple crisp, using honey crisp apples from Spring Valley Farm and Orchard, oatmeal, cinnamon, ginger, butter and brown sugar. The recipe comes from King Arthur Flour. Beef stew, rich with tender beef, sweet potatoes, carrots, rosemary and lots of red wine. Not pictured: a butternut squash lasagna that was eaten too quickly to be photographed.

Happy Easter

Joyeuz Pacques everyone! It was a quiet Easter here, but nice ... very relaxed. I made a tomato-bechamele lasagna--with nine layers, per Marcella's recipe--a big mixed greens salad, and shrimp ... most of which were left because the rest was plenty. I also made Nathan Lyon's nutmeg bundt cake with apple compote, which was delicious. It's a very light cake, using half butter and half apple sauce, and the nutmeg flavor is strong but not overwhelming. For the compote I used only 1/4 tsp of ground cloves, vs. 1 tsp, because I just couldn't imagine using that much--and the 1/4 tsp seemed plenty to me, blending nicely with the cognac and the nutmeg flavor of the cake.

Happy Mother's Day!

For Mother's Day dinner last night, I made Marcella's artichoke lasagna, a spinach salad with strawberries and fresh feta, and a banana cream pie for dessert. The lasagna is not the typical lasagna--there's no tomato sauce, no ricotta, and no mozzarella. The recipe, from Marcella Hazan's Essential of Italian Cooking, looks daunting--with many steps and references to other sections of the book. However, I took a few shortcuts, using fresh lasagna noodles bought from a local Italian store and also frozen artichoke hearts (I'm sure the fresh are much tastier, but these were A LOT easier to prepare, and cooked in creamy sauce, they were still very good.) Fresh pasta makes a huge difference in the flavor and texture of the dish, and while you still have to cook them (and wring them out!), you're only doing a parboil, and the whole process takes the same amount of time as cooking dried noodles, possibly less.

Artichoke Lasagna
(based on the recipe from Marcella Hazan)

Fresh lasagna noodles (enough for six layers--I used six noodles, but you might need more, depending)
Hearts of 4-5 artichokes, sliced thin (or one bag of frozen artichoke hearts from Trader Joe's)
Bechamel sauce (4 Tbs butter, 3 Tbs flour, 2 c milk, 1/4 tsp salt)
2/3 c parmesan (give or take, but use the real thing)
1 Tbs butter for the top

Place the artichoke hearts in a saute pan, add 3 Tbs butter, and enough water to just cover. Turn on high til they boil, then reduce to a steady simmer til all the liquid is cooked away and the artichokes are lightly browned. (This could take a while, so start before you do the pasta.)

Parboil the lasagna noodles (mine were big enough so I could only do one at a time, but they only cooked for about 30 seconds), then rinse each under cold water, wring out very gently, and lay on a clean towel (the kind for glasses, not the lint-y kind.)

In a small sauce pan, bring 2 c of milk just to a boil. In a larger sauce pan, melt 4 Tbs butter, and then add 3 Tbs flour. Cook for 2 minutes, and then add half of the hot milk, 2 Tbs at a time. Then add the rest of the milk and the salt, whisking til it's smooth. Cook on medium til the sauce is the consistency of heavy cream. Add more milk if it becomes too thick. Set aside about 1/2 c of the sauce.

Combine the cooked artichoke hearts with the rest of the bechamel sauce. Don't worry if they start to break apart -- it works better this way, actually. Then, spread about 1 Tbs of sauce over the bottom of a 9x13-inch pan. Fill the bottom with a single layer of noodles, trimming the pieces to fit. Then spread a thin layer of the filling on top, and sprinkle with a little parmesan cheese. Continue til you have six layers (you can do more or less, of course, but Marcella says you must have at least six layers, so I did.) These will be very thin layers--very different from the usual American-style lasagna. On top of the last noodle, spread the last of the Bechamel that was set aside and then sprinkle with the rest of the cheese. Dot the top with the 1 Tbs of butter.

Bake at 350 degrees for 15 min., until lightly browned. If this doesn't start to brown after a few minutes, turn up the heat, but don't cook much longer than 15 min. I broiled mine at the end for added color.