When in Doubt, Make Lasagna

This doesn't happen very often, but I made a crappy spaghetti sauce the other night.

The inspiration for this came when I was walking by the meat section in the LOGS (local overpriced grocery store) and there were some nice sausages on sale. They were pork souvlaki sausages. There were four of the suckers there for under $3! How could I resist? Thinking of the flavours in souvlaki, I thought these would be great in spaghetti sauce. When I unwrapped them, the smelled of garlic & oregano and no lemon; I thought I was safe.

Ugh. I didn't like the sauce. I had one meal from it with pasta and wondered what to do with the rest of the pot. I certainly didn't want to waste it at all. I am too cheap to do that.

Would this be any good in lasagna, I wondered? I had ricotta cheese left over from cross-border shopping; all I really needed was some mozzarella cheese. I went for it.

Thank God this worked out! The sauce made a far better lasagna than a spaghetti sauce, which was a huge relief. I guess you can add ricotta cheese to anything and it'll turn out (right Palidor?). Or maybe the flavours had some time to mellow. I don't know, but it was a kick ass lasagna, and 7 out of 8 pieces of it went into the freezer! Woo-hoo!

Lunch at The Hume Hotel

Another week, another trip to Nelson to take advantage of Save-On Foods' weekly specials. Which also means a lunch out with my most constant dining partner nowadays, my dad.

This week, I suggested the Hume Hotel, which has a salad bar I was interested in. My appetite being what it is these days, I needed the flexibility the salad bar had to offer. That, and I really wanted some soup. The salad bar comes with soup of the day, which that day happened to be white bean & chorizo. Not my bag, so I subbed in the French Onion Soup.

Now, if you read this post, you'll see that the Hume has a history, and part of that history for me, involves a spectacular French Onion Soup I had there when I was a kid that had beer in it. To this day, it is the yard stick against which I measure all other French Onion Soups! In fact, my dad is the same - he still rhapsodizes about that soup. I knew, however, from our last lunch there that the recipe had changed and the beery soup was no longer on offer, but the current soup is supposedly made with sherry, as specified in the menu's description.

After having a sampler from the salad bar, my soup finally came. And...
...Well, it was good, but not that good. A bit weak, and not tasting too much of the sherry. It also didn't have very many onions in it. Also - they hadn't taken the bay leaves out and had used small bay leaves, so twice I took a spoonful and chomped down on bay leaves. I was a little annoyed.

My dad had ordered the lasagne, which came with garlic toast and a surprise Caesar salad. The salad was a surprise because the night shift had just come on and they put salad with their dinner entrees, so Dad got lucky.He said the lasagne was really good and enjoyed it very much.

The shift change might explain the slowness of the service. Because it was S-L-O-W.

Dad was full, but I wanted dessert, and I knew that the Hume has a great dessert list. I opted for the lemon meringue pie and was not disappointed at all - except, once again, it took forever to come out. But it was delicious and I realized I hadn't had lemon meringue pie in ages. Yum!
So, while the food was good, the service was iffy. Perhaps they were having an off day. It happens.

Life is a Box of Chocolates, and Father's Day Dinner & Updates

So, one weekend my cat gets sick, the next weekend I get sick. There is obviously something in the water up here. Yesterday, I had to bail on work, but I was feeling well enough to go in this morning and bake, so that's what I did.

Technically, what I do at this place is categorized as volunteering, though I do get a supplement to my disability pension that makes life a lot easier for me, but the organization itself doesn't pay me. They are always telling me how well I do my job and how good the kitchen smells when I'm in there baking, and today I was presented with a lovely gift from the staff as a token of their appreciation. I got a really nice card, a huge box of chocolate, and a gift certificate to a store I regularly haunt. I was so surprised - even more so because I was up to my elbows in muffin batter at the time of presentation!
Nice, eh? It felt so great to be so appreciated. I can't tell you what this meant to me!

Sunday was Father's Day, as many of you might know, and my family & I celebrated with a dinner I held at my place. I made this chicken lasagne, which my father had been nagging me for since my article containing the recipe came out. My brother brought some focaccia bread from Safeway, and for dessert I served a selection of desserts: spicy molasses cookies, snickerdoodles, and sour cherry loaf.
And here is Juno, the cat who caused me so much stress a couple of weekends ago! She loves to roll onto her back, tuck up her feet, and show me her belly. I don't know why, because if I try to tickle the belly, she bites me. I always find it funny when she assumes this position; it reminds me of a seal!
FYI, I talked to the cook today about last week's Hawaiian Rice adventure, and he said it was great and that it was very much like a rice pudding! He really liked it, and said the residents did, too!

101 Uses for a Roasted Chicken #12: Chicken & Mushroom Lasagne

OK, so it's been a while since I wrote a post in this series - and I've had two roasters in the freezer for like ages! Ah well. Last Friday I had the opportunity to go cross-border shopping, and I found that ricotta cheese and oven ready lasagne noodles were about half the price they are up here! So, of course I grabbed what I wanted, took out a chicken to thaw on Saturday, roasted the sucker, and made the lasagne on Sunday.

Check out this post for the ingredients and method.

I used about 3 cups of mushrooms in this version, and I used low fat ricotta cheese instead of cottage cheese. The tub I got in the States was way bigger than the tubs I usually get here, 907grams as opposed to the usual 500g.

This was a bit of a drier lasagne, but it was still delish!

La-la-la-Lasagne!

On Sunday night, I decided to make lasagne, even though I was sick and didn't feel like it. I'd gotten some Ragu on sale for 99 cents for 750mL at my local overpriced grocery store, and some less expensive low fat ricotta at a cheaper grocery store. Mushrooms were also on sale, and so the idea for a vegetarian lasagne was born.

As stated previously in this post, where more detailed instructions for lasagne-making can be found, the cardinal rule for lasagne made with oven-ready noodles is sauce (about 3/4 cup) noodles sauce. After that this is the order I used for the layering: mushrooms & onions, cheese (mixed with 1 egg, a few cloves of garlic, some grated Parmesan, and 1 tsp dried basil), noodles, sauce, 1 bunch spinach, noodles, sauce, cheese.

I usually have to bake this longer than the noodle package suggests - around an hour at about 375- 400F, covered with foil, and then about half an hour longer to get the top nice and brown. Then, I highly recommend leaving the lasagne to sit for at least 15 minutes after taking it out of the oven so that all the cooking liquids can get absorbed. Your lasagne will serve much easier and be way less soupy.

This veggie version was is and light and tasty, and should give me meals enough for this week, so it is also very economical. In every way totally excellent!

Russian Lasagne

This is a regular hot special entree where I work, and I have to say it's pretty popular.

What is it, you ask? I like to call it Death on a Plate. But, a less sarcastic response would be that it is layers of lasagne noodles, mashed potato, bacon, onion, and cottage cheese, topped with more cheese. And it probably has lots of butter in it, too.

I say "probably", because I cannot share the recipe with you. I might not be so appreciated at work anymore (similarly, I cannot share with you the recipe for the best ever borsht, which I make on a regular basis - sorry!). I have never actually made this myself, but, if you've read my previous posts on lasagne-making (here and here) you'll see that lasagne is actually a simple meal to prepare, and that this Russian version, which we describe to customers as "a perogie in lasagne form," is a good example of thinking outside of the box. (And speaking of boxes...Hint, hint: you can't use oven-ready lasagne noodles, OK?)

We divide a 9x13 pan into 12 portions. Trust me, you don't need a big helping of this stuff because it is very, very rich. The picture is of the piece I brought home for my dinner, and I could barely finish it. Usually, I'm not a fan of anything with mashed potatoes in it, but this is an instance in which the addition of bacon will make me eat just about anything.

Please - try this at home, and let me know how it goes.

101 Uses for a Roasted Chicken #5: Chicken, Spinach and Mushroom Lasagne

After recovering from my lasagne-making phobia, I seem to be plotting my next lasagnes on a regular basis. It's just so easy and satisfying to make a pan of this stuff, and the oven-ready noodles are a God-send. Usually, I make my own pasta sauce, but once in a while, buying one is perfectly acceptable to me, especially if I want to make a lasagne quickly and with even less fuss. This chicken version is awesome.

You will need, for a 9x13-inch pan (lined with parchment paper for ease of both serving and clean-up; or line pan with foil and spray liberally with cooking spray):

both breasts from 1 roasted chicken, skinned and diced or shredded
1 large tub (500g) 1% cottage cheese
1 egg
1 tsp each oregano and basil
3 cloves garlic, crushed, finely chopped or grated
1 bunch spinach, washed, dried and coarsely chopped
2 cups sliced mushrooms
3 cups pasta sauce, your choice (I used Ragu because it was on sale; it was fine)
2 cups part skim mozzarella cheese, grated
approx. 15 oven-ready lasagne noodles

Assembly: the golden rule with lasagne and oven-ready noodles: sauce, noodles, sauce.

So, here is how to assemble this version: 3/4 cup sauce, noodles (3 length-wise, one broken in half at the width end), sauce, spinach & mushrooms, noodles again as previous, sauce, cottage cheese mixture (mix cottage cheese with the egg, chicken, oregano, basil, and garlic), noodles again, the rest of the sauce, mozzarella cheese.

Cover with foil and bake at 400F for 30 minutes. Stab it in the middle with a knife and see if the noodles are pretty much softened, and, if so, remove the foil and continue baking for another 30 minutes, or until a deep golden brown.

When it's done, let it sit for about 15 minutes before serving. This gives your lasagne a chance to sort of "tighten up" and absorb any extra cooking liquids. It'll be much easier to serve and less soupy.

Nutritional info here.

Conquering Lasagne

It may sound ridiculous considering all the things I've cooked, baked, served, and decorated in my life, but lasagne has always been intimidating. I know why. When I was growing up, lasagne was always a very special occasion dish that my mother rarely made. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I remember my mom cooking up a lasagne, and I got the clear impression that it was a time-consuming, laborious thing to spend a day doing. When I had lasagne at other people's houses, I was always impressed and felt very honoured that someone would go to the trouble of making it. Sometimes, I got funny looks when I expressed this.

The first ever lasagne I ever made was 10 years ago when I was visiting Italy. I found fresh lasagne noodles at the grocery store, along with mozzarella cheese that looked nothing like the mozzarella cheese I was used to back home. Because we were on a budget, it was a vegetarian lasagne, filled with fresh spinach I found at a local green grocer's. The oven at the apartment I was staying at was gas and had no temperature indicators, and no one in the house had used it for the year they'd been slumming it there.

It was edible. More or less. The mozzarella didn't behave the way I was used to mozzarella behaving; it melted into almost a sauce-like consistency and pooled on the top in large puddles, as opposed to melting and browning and being all gooey-stringy. I should have figured something would be different about it when I tried to grate it. It didn't grate, and seemed more like the texture of raw meat than what I was used to. The spinach had a funny flavour - metallic, almost.

Because we were broke student backpackers, we ate it. But I never made another lasagne until I worked at The Centre nearly three years ago now. We had lasagne pretty regularly, but usually on a day when I was off. I got to eat it, but it only happened that I was on shift once when the lasagnes were actually made. I was surprised at how easily they went together and how quick it was to make enough for 150 people.

Still, I never made it for myself - until today. My roommate frequently makes a veggie version from a Weight Watchers recipe, and she whips it up in no time. I have no idea why I've been so resistant to trying it. Too much lasagne baggage, I suppose.

I happened to have a whole whack of spaghetti sauce I cooked up in the fall, portioned out into 1 cup servings and frozen in small containers. The sauce is made with locally-produced beef sausage seasoned with sundried tomatoes and basil - yum! But for some reason, I'm not interested in eating spaghetti these days. I decided to make a lasagne because I could use up a good amount of the sauce all in one go, and I had some other ingredients already on hand, like ricotta cheese. I marched down to my local overpriced grocery store today and bought oven-ready lasagne noodles and some mozzarella cheese.

Basically following the directions on the back of the box and asking for some advice from my experienced roommate, I assembled and baked the lasagne.

It was absurdly simple.

Apart from needing to bake it twice as long as the box directed, it turned out fantastically! It was a stunning, amazing success! I can't believe I've been afraid of this for so long. And, of course, I now have a week's worth of meals out of it, so I don't have to do much cooking in the coming days. I baked it in a parchment-lined dish to make clean-up easier (we are all familiar with those dish detergent commercials with all the caked on guck...lasagne is frequently the implied culprit).

Here it is...
Not bad, eh?

What's next?