Okay, so I totally can't sleep due to my consumption of fine beverages at Culture Espresso Bar and I've decided to finally update this blog which has been very neglected over the past months. I have continued to experiment with weekly recipes - not all worth posting - so although my blogging may have trailed off, happily my cooking has not.
For the past month or so, I have attempted to omit meat from my diet (I use the word "attempt" because bacon is still and forever will be one of my weaknesses). Being somewhat pescetarian allows me to eat more healthy things - like vegetables. My weekly source of fresh, organic vegetables is through my farm share which I love and I wrote about here. The farm has been providing beautiful, ripe tomatoes as well as yummy swiss chard - a perfect culinary combination. Last Sunday, I invited my family over for dinner and planned to make some vegetable lasagna. Well, the family never made it to my apartment due to the torrential rains, but the lasagna did make it in and out of the oven - despite a minor accident resulting in Strawberry Shortcake band-aid triage - and it was delicious (the lasagna, not the band-aid).
An adaptation of several recipes from the Joy of Cooking (the best cookbook in the history of cookbooks)
Serves 1 - 2 hungry people over the course of about 3 days
Serves 1 - 2 hungry people over the course of about 3 days
Ingredients
12 super ripe, hierloom tomatoes: quartered and then totally smushed
1 tbsp. tomato paste
Sugar to taste (balances the acidity of the tomatoes)
Garlicky homemade pesto from farm-fresh basil (leftover, in fridge)
3 garlic cloves, crushed with knife
4 scallions, diced, white and light green parts only
1 lb. swiss chard: rinsed and cut into strips
Ronzoni oven-ready lasagna (cuts the cooking time in half, says the box)
15oz. ricotta cheese
1 large egg
1 cup Parmesan cheese, shredded
Nutmeg, a dash
Mozzarella cheese: shredded says the recipe, sliced messily says me
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 375F. Line a baking pan with foil.
2. To make sauce: place quartered tomatoes into a medium stock pot. Admire the beautiful orange colors of the fruit. Decide that you can either stew the tomatoes slowly, which will take hours, or crush them up with your hands and then bring to a boil which would yield a similar result... choose the latter. Smush and mush the tomatoes between your fingers like Play-Doh. Giggle with glee! Create fun shapes. Indulge in playing with your food. After tomatoes are well-mushed, juices released and pulpy, place pot onto a medium flame. Stir in tomato paste and some sugar. Taste. Bland. Decide you will need a heck of a lot more kick for this sauce. Open fridge and see leftover pesto which was overly garlicky when you made it a week ago, but perfect for giving flavor to fresh tomatoes that are fated to be a sauce. Bingo! Stir in pesto. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, stir occasionally and taste often.
3. To make vegetable base: While the tomatoes are "getting happy" with the pesto and garlic and sugar and such, heat olive oil in a large saute pan. Add in crushed garlic cloves and listen to the sizzle. Feel the urge to add an onion-y flavor and find scallions. Dice four scallions at once like a pro. Add scallions to pan. Lightly saute for 1 minute. Toss in strips of swiss chard. Gently toss until the leaves begin to wilt. Then add remainder of pesto. Bam.
4. Check on tomato sauce which is a bright orange color. Amazing. Stir and taste. Add sugar, salt and pepper as needed. Once the flavors are perfectly balanced (and they will be eventually!), remove lid from pot to allow sauce to thicken. Ragu would be proud.
5. Return attention to the chard, which should be completely cooked and a dark green color. Remove from heat and let cool a few minutes. While veggies are cooling, pick up the fresh ball of mozzarella you bought from the market and prepare to shred the cheese. After 30 seconds of shredding on your Microplane, remove the mozzarella from the now completely gunked-up and backlogged grater. Great... curse the stupid soft cheese and the too-small holes in the shredder. Decide instead that you will slice the mozzarella - it all melts anyway, right? Eat a few slices to ensure that the cheese is of the highest quality.Test again. Maybe try some from the grater. Yeah, okay, now you're good.
6. Bring your attention back to the chard. Stir in the ricotta, egg, and Parmesan. Mix thoroughly. Add salt and pepper. Want to perform a taste test, but get a bit freaked out by the thought of ingesting a raw egg in light of the salmonella scare, so instead sniff the mixture. The smell reminds you of spinach dip... which always tastes better with...what is that spice? Oh yeah, nutmeg! Add a few dashes of nutmeg. Sniff again. Move on when it smells about right.
7. Give the now bubbling, bright and beautiful tomato sauce a few final stirs. Shut off the flame and prepare to fill lasagna pan. Grab the box of Ronzoni and read directions.
8. Decide that Ronzoni has no concept of how many layers of lasagna can fit into a pan because you certainly have no room for four layers. Start filling the pan and agree to stop whenever you reach the top. Start with one layer of tomato sauce. Cover with vegetable/cheese mixture. Blanket with slices of mozzarella. Layer with three oven-ready lasagna sheets, allowing enough space for expansion. Repeat - sauce, chard mixture, mozzarella slices (ok, chunks, who are we kidding?), lasagna sheets. Do this about three times or until your pan is about to overflow. Top with remaining mozzarella and Parmesan.
9. Cover pan with foil. Hobble over to the oven and place carefully on top rack. Bake for 35 minutes.
10. After you've done whatever you're going to do for 35 minutes (I can't remember what I was doing), return to the oven and remove the foil from the pan. Be careful not to burn your forearm while doing so, otherwise you will flinch, scream really loudly and need to wear a band-aid over the burn mark for days (I am still wearing one as I type this). What's worse, you might end up with a scar (yet to be determined, sad face).
11. Bake for another 10 minutes until cheese on top is bubbly and brown. Ice down your burn while you wait. Whine about it. Seek solace and compassion. Seek Neosporin and a band-aid, finding only the Strawberry Shortcake ones. Once cheese is perfectly golden and lasagna is ready, wisen up and ask someone else, like a boyfriend perhaps, to help you to remove the lasagna from the oven. (Burn victims should not have to lift heavy things or do the dishes, especially burn victims wearing Strawberry Shortcake band-aids. Any doctor would agree.)
12. Allow lasagna to cool for a bit and then serve on plates. Enjoy the wonderfully savory flavors of the fresh tomato sauce, the garlic and basil from the pesto, the perfectly melted mozzarella, the soft pasta and the delicious chard - as you listen to the rain outside. Feel a little bad that your family missed out on such a yummy meal, but there will be other times and other fresh veggies from the farm.
*In case you're wondering, when the meal was over, the burn victim didn't lift a finger or a forearm.
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