Lasagna

[cjsmith]

Welcome to the latest installment of CJ Feels Stupid In The Kitchen!

This time it's lasagna, a dish even I cannot usually screw up. I decided to add Italian sausage, not in the sauce, but just adding it in between the sauce and the cheese. I made all the layers and remembered to leave a big bunch of mozzarella to put on top. I'm so smart.

When I grated that mozzarella, I took a good chip off the base of my thumb, a minor but painful goof I haven't made for years. Considering that I know better than to serve this to anybody but myself, I figured this attempt was just barely still a success. I spread out the cheese prettily.

Then I noticed the other two-thirds of the sausage, still waiting. Dangit. The only layer I remembered to put sausage on was the bottom one. So I dumped that large pile of crumbled sausage on above the cheese, pressing it down in the hopes the cheese would sort of bubble around it. Durrr. It's going to look like pizza.

But the whole thing is baking now, and mmm the smell. I adore Italian sausage.

I better get cracking if I want bread today. This will be the first time I ever try rye.

Comments

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

Some of my best dishes have been from oopses in the kitchen. So this is just one of your very special adjustment to a proven classic.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

*laughter* My oopses in the kitchen are usually worthy only of a quick burial!

The lasagna is out of the oven now, and it's DELICIOUS. I suppose I like sausage pizza, so that isn't a surprise. :-)

I think I will make sure that future versions do not contain any human bits, however. (There's a chunk missing. This dish definitely contains human. Not what I'd want to feed to anyone else.)

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

I treat it as sort of like swallowing a bug - extra protien, but not an ingredient you want in there for company.

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

After it cools off, cut it into portions and freeze them. Then you can nuke 'em for a quick meal.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Me too. :)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

This stuff is definitely going in the freezer, after I pitch a couple ancient things to make room. I adore lasagna.

[just-cyd.livejournal.com]

mmmmmm, lasagna!!!

glad you figured out about the sausage BEFORE you put it in the oven. and shredding your finger - OUCH!!! i do that, too. :(

i find with lasagna, that no matter how prettily you arrange things, it all goes to hell after you take out tha first piece and it all slides around and makes a big mess. i DELICIOUS mess, but still a mess.

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

yum yum yum yum

lasagna is good even if it isn't all pretty - hell, you can make lasagna with broken noodle bits scattered in there and it's still joyfully tasty.

have fun with rye bread, it tends to not rise as much and will be a bit chewier no matter what one does. either enjoy it like that, OR mix with a bit of Other Flourz.

yay for trying new things!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Yeah, lasagna tastes good even if it doesn't look good at all. I love lasagna. (It also works excellently with whole wheat pasta, at least to my low class taste buds. Some pasta dishes just don't. Lasagna fillings overwhelm any pasta flavor.)

This rye bread recipe is half and half rye / all-purpose white [wheat] flour. That's not what I'd prefer; I'd like a higher percentage of whole grain or at the very least bread flour. Given that it also requires brown sugar (!!), I'm definitely going to mess with it or find other recipes. For this first try, though, it's right from the book. I'll post about how it comes out. And mmm, I love the smell of caraway seeds!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I usually don't shred myself in the kitchen. Y'know the theory that there are burn people and cut people? I'm a burn person in the kitchen. (I'm a cut person when sewing. I am the only person I know who has both removed a tiny piece of fingertip with a rotary cutter AND sewed through my own thumb with a machine.) Man, this time, though, I did a number on myself. That'll take a while to heal up.

And yeah, lasagna gets messy. Fortunately, the taste makes up for any lack of artistry. :)

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

I use preshredded cheese in my lasagna. I prefer someone else to use the dangerous equipment :)

Where do you get whole wheat lasagna noodles? There is such a limited selection in the whole wheat, fiber rich pastas :(

[justetthon.livejournal.com]

so, what does the Robster think of all these culinary delights cooking in your kitchen? We all live vicariously for your cooking! Spinach lasagne is good, too. We don't ever make lasagne here, but we love it, too! :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

*laughter* I usually don't even bother shredding; I just dump blobs of cheese all over the place and it melts into everything just fine. But for the top layer, I dug out the grater. No good deed goes unpunished I suppose! :)

The brand I found is called Ronzoni Healthy Harvest "whole wheat blend", and I suspect the "blend" part is they added semolina and whole flaxseed meal. It looks pretty good on the nutrition facts panel on the side of the box.

Speaking of lasagna tasting good even if it doesn't look great (as other commenters have mentioned), you could do an excellent lasagna with other shapes of pasta, too. I've done it with penne. It's not quite as tidy-looking but my taste buds don't care.

It's frustrating how little whole wheat choice there is as yet. I figure the more people back away from over-refined carbs, the more choices we'll eventually get in whole grain foods. Fingers crossed!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

The Robster is fortunate enough to be a couple thousand miles away, flying over central Florida in search of various multiengine / seaplane licenses. (His trip there will end in a week, when he calls C-Gulls and then comes home.) I try to limit my smellier cooking escapades to times he's not home. The smell of melted cheese, for example, can drive him to seek a hotel room.

Mmmmmm, spinach lasagne! With white sauce, or red? I've never made spinach lasagne, but it can't be that hard, can it? It's just layers of schtuff, isn't it? I would like to try it sometime!

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

I have an excellent recipie for spinach lasagna :)

[deege.livejournal.com]

I think lasagna with a top crust of sausage sounds incredible. I would consider making it that way on purpose. Both you and otterpop58 sliced hunks of your thumbs off in the past few days. Is this the new thing? :) Luckily it doesn't count as cannibalism if it's your own flesh.

As for Healthy Harvest pasta, the bad news is that it actually contains no whole wheat flour. (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-145387249.html) It is mostly refined flour with some wheat bran and wheat fiber added. There are some equally tender and delicious real whole wheat pastas out there that would probably work just as well.

Overall sounds very yummy, though!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, slicing one's thumb is the new fashion!

How odd: the ingredients list on the side of the box specifically states "durum whole wheat flour" as the first ingredient. Somebody's got wrong information somewhere, and I'm a bit surprised. I agree with you, though, that any (real) whole wheat pasta would work just fine.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ooo! Share? :) :)

[lesliepear.livejournal.com]

http://lesliepear.livejournal.com/542765.html?view=1718317

[deege.livejournal.com]

Maybe they've changed the formula since this information was published. I do remember there being a few articles when the product came out, taking Ronzoni to task for the discrepancy between its marketing and its actual ingredients.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thank you! LJ-memoried! :)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Could be. In fact, now that you mention it, that's the explanation that makes the most sense to me. I bet the penalties for having a misleading product name are much less stiff than those for having outright lies in the ingredients list, so given today's ingredients list, yeah, they probably changed the product.

I love ingredients lists. (Also nutrition facts boxes, inexact though that set of measurements may be.)

makes me hungry just sending this to you...

[justetthon.livejournal.com]

A spinach lasagne recipe: try this!
INGREDIENTS:
1 pound "no-boil" lasagne
36 ounces chopped or crushed tomatoes
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 T. dried oregano
1 T. dried parsley
1 pound ricotta cheese
3 ounces grated Parmesan cheese
8 ounces grated mozzarella cheese
2 eggs, slightly beaten
10 ounces frozen chopped spinach (I would thaw and squish out all the water, otherwise it might be too runny).

PREPARATION:
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Put the frozen spinach in the bowl of a food processor, and process until broken up and nearly flaked. Add the garlic, oregano, parsley, ricotta, eggs, and mozzarella. Process briefly until the mixture is uniform.
Pour about 1/4 of the tomatoes on the bottom of a 9" by 13" baking pan. Cover the pan with a layer of lasagne noodles (uncooked). Spread 1/3 of the spinach/cheese mixture over the noodles. Repeat two more times with tomatoes, noodles, and spinach/cheese mixture, ending with a layer of plain noodles on the top. Pour the remainder of the tomatoes on top of the noodles. Sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese. Cover tightly with foil. Bake for 1 hour. Remove the foil, and bake for an additional 15 minutes. If any of the noodles have not softened after the first hour, carefully tuck them under the sauce to be sure that they will soften during the final baking period. Let the lasagne sit for about 10 minutes before serving.

[justetthon.livejournal.com]

hee hee hee. Your smellier cooking escapades! well, we all still live vicariously... !

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, most scents are pretty icky to Rob. You do know that the local tape group calls Rob "a princess"? :) (Hee! He's going to kill me now. They do, though, and he's quite good-natured about it.)

If you want to live vicariously through some good cooking, try walton_eats. That's the cooking journal of a local friend of mine, and MAN, can she create wonder in the kitchen. Me, of course, I can create humor, which is a different skill entirely. :)

Re: makes me hungry just sending this to you...

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ooo, thank you! I've got to try to make spinach lasagna... AFTER I finish eating this panful I just made. I'm out of Tupperware.

[eichin.livejournal.com]

> It's going to look like pizza.

You say that as if it were a *bad* thing :-)

The thing with lasagne, is that it's a particular instance of a general class of "yummy things with pasta + sauce + cheese + meat". It's all refinements from there; sauces, different pastas, cheeses... for the last chocolate party, we made a fairly generic lasagne (a bunch of ground beef, ricotta, parmesan) with a normal red sauce... to which we added, mmm, 2 or 3 oz melted dark chocolate to 32 oz of red sauce, and a bunch of vietnamese cinnamon added to the chocolate. It was devoured :-) (and it was suggested that we add *more* spices next time.)

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

The lasagna sounds fantastic.
One trick I enjoy is using Italian Sausage flavored Ground Turkey. It has wonderful flavor and being turkey is easier on all those things we are supposed to be watching.
I also took an idea from Paula Dean (who used regular spaghetti), and use whole wheat angel hair for the noodle. It dishes up easier.
And I also buy pre-grated cheese (I use 4 Cheese Mexican). I love the flavor and the fact that I won't grate my fingers (again).
I frequently take a batch to potlucks, and it goes away pretty quickly.

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

Whole wheat pasta for the win!!!

I love that stuff. It's a bit hard to find, because you gotta read the labelz. People in marketing will say all sorts of stuff to get you to buy it, but the label is the final answer.

Since My Sweetie went onto South Beach for blood sugar management, we are doing a lot more wholegrain eating. Tasty and satisfying, and I'm getting more used to reading labelz. It's a pain, because I assumed that Food I purchased would be Food and not Mystery Chemical Crap, but in a modern supermarket you can't assume that, you gotta check labelz.

You -can- do 100% rye, but it doesn't rise worth a tinker's damn. Depends on what you want. If you want 100% wholegrain, get some King Arthur whole wheat flour and use the recipie on the back of the bag. I was hooked on that stuff for years. It's nutty, tasty, and rises well enough to be good even for finicky people. (I don't care if my bread doesn't rise high, I am still happy. Other folks are pickier.)

[recordersmith.livejournal.com]

Oooh. I have to try that. OK, the next lasagna I make is getting chocolate added in.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

There are only two brands of whole-wheat-ish pasta at my supermarket, so reading the labels wasn't even all that onerous! I picked the one that claimed no sugars on the nutrition panel.

I'd like to look into South Beach. It sounds like approximately what I'd want: a heartfelt plea to my nutrition-related body parts saying please do not make me diabetic soon.

King Arthur whole wheat flour bags have a rye bread recipe on the back? Awesome! Thank you!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ooo, I'd like to find Italian sausage flavored ground turkey. That would definitely be an improvement from my point of view.

I've done penne instead of lasagna noodles. That works well too, but it kind of wants to overflow the pan (because the holes in the penne are taking up space).

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Heck, I've seen lasagne without meat or cheese or even red sauce -- one I'm remembering was a scrumptious veggie lasagna with white sauce. Perhaps the only thing it really has to have is the noodles. Well, and probably it has to still be a savory dish, but the addition of chocolate is now making me think of a dessert variant... chocolate and cinnamon and noodles and whipped cream, anyone? :)

[eichin.livejournal.com]

Note that in this case it was still savory - the chocolate served more like it does in a Mole' sauce.

Also, "without meat or cheese ..." gives it away, linguistically: it's still a lasagne because it's defined in terms of those ingredients, if only by their absence - otherwise it's a "very wide fettucini alfredo" :-) I'm including, for example, ziti casserole in the same class of substitutions.

(Had something last night called "Dessert Ravioli" - fried pastry pockets with molten chocolate and caramel inside. Served with ice cream because it would have been too sweet (!) without it. Mmmm.)

Mostly what I'm getting at is that this really is a fundamental "element" of dinner-food-cooking, which is very amenable to changing any and all parameters - it's a "safe" space to explore :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ah, but I'm guessing ziti casserole would not be viewed by most as a lasagna, while a vegetable variant with white sauce (and the wide flat noodles, in layers) would. At least, I've seen the latter at a restaurant as a lasagna.

I see the point, though, I think: this is a basic unit that is easy to mess with. Pasta plus red sauce plus cheese plus (optional) meat is pretty good no matter what you do with it. As long as the meat gets cooked. :-)

Dessert ravioli sounds really good. I'd want to opt out of the caramel (too sweet) but that sounds absolutely scrumptious. Now I want to make it. :-)

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

White sauce, cinnamon, noodles - Now that's a Kugel. They can be sweet or savory and they are always Yum. Food Network has recipes for both, just search on Kugel.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

Jenny O make the Italian Sausage flavor, and I get is at Safeway.
And the way Spaghetti lays down and makes a nice mat is why I like to use that in place of lasagna noodles. You still get the bed of noodle but it is easier to cut up and serve (you can even just serve it with a spoon if need be). Easy Eating Too.
And it is easily available in Whole Wheat! Life is yummy.
Have you noticed since you've switched to Whole Grain foods, the white stuff tastes Way Too Bland? I don't like to use white flours/pastas nearly as much now. :-[

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh excellent - I'll look for that Jenny O stuff!

I've noticed that grocery store white bread is bland. (Bland and sweet; it's like somebody took bread and forcibly mated it with whipped cream.) I don't use pasta enough to know really.