Lasagna Reconsidered

Lasagna -- layered with massive quantities of ricotta, mozzarella, sausage and ground beef -- was always a great idea for feeding a crowd at a big family event. You could make it ahead of time, and it was heavy and filling. It was so enormously time consuming, we rarely made it, so it was always a treat. Since I've been cooking just for two, lasagna hasn't appeared on the menu. But the recent extended spate of sub-freezing weather inspired a craving.

The introduction of no-boil noodles has shortened the preparation time immensely. Cooking noodles doesn't sound like such a big deal -- it's just boiling water, isn't it? But that step easily adds an hour to the process. I know the no-boil varieties have been around for awhile, but this was my introduction.

A big difference in the recipe: the no-boil noodles require a huge quantity of sauce, so a regular 9 X 13" pan uses only 3/4 of the box. You'd need a 3" deep pan to hold all that extra sauce and the extra layer of cheese and noodles. As it was, the sauce came very near to boiling over into the oven.

Barilla's recipe also yields a lighter meal than I recall. Lasagna will never be mistaken for a soufflé, but the recipe on the box was excellent. It calls for only 15 oz. of ricotta for a 9oz. box of noodles, so the layers are considerably smaller than our old family version.

I was originally going to make fewer servings, using a loaf pan, but the uncooked noodles looked way too small to work. It turns out the flat noodles swell enormously as they absorb the moisture from the sauce, so next time, I'll have to experiment.

Barilla's recipe:
Preheat oven to 375F

9oz uncooked noodles (regular box, which looks like it's half the size of the traditional curly-edge noodles)
2 eggs
15oz ricotta cheese
4 C (16oz) shredded mozzarella (divided)
1/2 C grated Parmesan cheese
1 lb cooked, crumbled Italian sausage
2 jars (26oz each) sauce.

Beat eggs in medium bowl. Stir in ricotta, half the mozzarella, and the Parmesan.

For a regular 9 X 13" pan. Spoon half a jar of sauce in the bottom of the pan, and layer with four sheets, overlapping if necessary. Spread half the ricotta and meat, and remaining half jar of sauce. Add 1 C mozzarella. Layer 4 more sheets, remaining ricotta and meat, and half of 2nd jar of sauce. Top with 4 sheets, remaining sauce and one C mozzarella. (You will have 4 sheets left over.)

Cover tightly with foil. Bake, covered, until bubbly, 50-60 minutes. Uncover and continue cooking until cheese is melted, about 5 minutes. Let stand 15 minutes before cutting. Recipe makes 12 servings.

Of course, I couldn't follow the recipe -- I reduced the amount of mozzarella, used less sausage, added 10oz of frozen chopped spinach, thawed. And made my own sauce from 2 28oz cans of tomatoes, one whole, one crushed.

Barilla has an enormous recipe cache on its web site, if you are looking for any inspiration -- seach by sauce type, noodle type, vegetarian... or browse a huge list.

For the rest of February, the company is also offering free downloads of The Celebrity Pasta Lovers' Cookbook. The company pledged $100,000 for Second Harvest, donating $1 for every download until they reached their goal. That took barely more than a week. The PDF booklet includes some meatless recipes. One that caught my attention was Mario Battali's Pumpkin Sage Butter Tortellini -- it sounds like a great launching point for some experimenting, since there is no way I could ever make a pasta sauce using a half pound of butter and a half cup of pumpkin purée.

Soup for Supper: Season to taste and cook until done.

When the outside thermometer is frozen in the teens, soup and stew seem like the only sensible things to cook or to eat -- warming both the kitchen and the diners. Even better, add some fresh-baked bread and you've got a satisfying meal. We don't often eat dessert, but in honor of Valentine's Day, I added poached pears with chocolate sauce as the finishing touch to Wednesday's chicken soup supper.

When a dish is simple and has only a few ingredients, improving the quality of any of those ingredients can make an enormous difference. For chicken noodle soup, that means the stock and the noodles.

After taking an excellent knife skills class at Cooks Wares, I've been practicing dismembering chickens with my freshly-honed chef's knife and super-sharp Wusthof boning knife. Of course, Jacques Pepin could bone an entire chicken in the time it takes me to think about where exactly I'm going to make my first cut, but it's still a pleasure to work at developing some competency. Since I've switched to buying whole chickens at Findlay Market here in Cincinnati, I have plenty of backs and wings to use in stock this winter. The additional benefit: cups and quarts in the freezer for quick suppers, without the tinny, super-salty taste of canned.

Five or six years ago, I adopted the Cooks Illustrated method for making stock -- it doesn't take all day, but yields a rich, flavorful broth. Since my daughter absconded with The Best Recipe, and I haven't gotten around to replacing it, this is from memory. But the technique works well!

The trick is to cut the chicken into small pieces (say 3 inches), brown the chunks briefly, then sweat them, covered, in a heavy pot for about 20 minutes. At that point, there will be lots of savory juice in the pot. Add water, celery, parsley, carrots, an onion stuck with a couple of cloves, thyme (fresh if you have it), a bay leaf, pepper and a touch of salt (we're trying to cut back on sodium). The stock needs to simmer only briefly (30-60 minutes) before you can strain it and it's ready to use. Hmmm... I realize this sounds a bit cryptic, since there are no amounts, but this is really a recipe that doesn't require measuring. Just follow the terribly helpful instructions from an old cookbook: season to taste and cook until done.

After sweating and simmering, the chicken gives up all its goodness (really -- taste a bite, and you'll find it has no flavor left at all), so if you want flavorful chicken chunks in your soup, poach a fresh piece for 15 minutes or so.

Wednesday's Chicken Noodle Soup started with poaching half a breast in hot stock. While that was cooking, I diced a couple of small carrots, a couple of stems of celery, an onion, and a handful of Italian parsley. After removing the chicken, I added the carrots and celery and simmered for 20 minutes or so, before raising the temp and adding a couple of handfuls of the best egg noodles we've ever tasted.

Cincinnati seems to have a lot more interesting regional brands than Connecticut did (or maybe Connecticut's were mostly spagetti sauce). These noodles are from Das Dutchman Essenhaus. (It turns out there are a lot more Amish in Ohio than in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, but I guess they have a less active marketing department.)

After seeing that an "Amish" fresh cake at a local market contained margarine and about half a cup of food coloring, I've learned to read beyond the "Amish" on the label... but these truly are extraordinary noodles. The ingredient list? Wheat flour, egg yolks, water. Turns out the company makes a variety of noodles, and they're laminated, not extruded. Translation: toothsome, light noodles that taste homemade. If you're making a big batch of soup to have leftovers, you should probably cook the noodles separately and add on serving (although I never do). Otherwise, the noodles continue to absorb broth, and the soup will become more like stew. Yummy carbs, but not very soup-y.

When the noodles are about done (a solid 10 minutes, at least), I add a handful of frozen corn kernels and the diced chicken. Last night, I also added a carton of diced tomatoes, just because we've had the standard recipe a couple of times in the last month. If you've got stock in the fridge, you can whip this up in 45 minutes. Start by tossing Farmgirl's beer bread together and into the oven, and bread and soup will be ready at the same time. Simple, but oh, so delicious.

Revisiting Coq au Vin

Coq au Vin was a dim memory for Ed and me -- one of those recipes that appeared about the same time Julia Child did, in the early 70s. We both recall making it, but neither of us thought it was worth the effort to try it again. I just checked my copy of The French Chef Cookbook and the Coq au Vin page is spotless, so I must have used a different recipe. And perhaps that's the source of the old lackadaisical results.

Inspired by success with other recipes from Molly Stephens All About Braising, I tried her version -- and it was so unbelievably good, we both wondered why we had stopped making it.

A possible difference, then and now: ingredients. Granted, chickens weren't machine products in the 70s, the way they are now. But we used the wonderful chicken from Mairose Grocery (which, alas, is closing.) The wine today is so much better (since we couldn't afford good French wine back then.) I used an Australian Yellowtail Syrah -- inexpensive, but very drinkable. The mushrooms are a lot fresher -- it was hard to even find non-canned mushrooms back in the dark ages. And (confession) Birds Eye makes pearl onions a whole lot easier to prepare these days. ... And the no-nitrate smoked bacon from Kroeger & Sons is soooo much better than Oscar Meyer. So essentially all the raw ingredients are better these days (except for the chicken, unless you're willing to pay more).

For a simple braise of chicken in red wine, Coq au Vin has a lot of steps... and therein lies the secret to its flavor, and endurance as a recipe. I suspect you'd be hard pressed to find this on a restaurant menu these days -- too bad, because if you follow the real recipe, this is so much more than chicken and stewed veggies.

Basically, you sauté a couple slices of diced bacon. Remove from pan, along with most of the fat, then sauté cut-up chicken. Add most of a bottle of decent red wine, garlic, thyme, bay. Then braise in a low oven. Meanwhile, sauté sliced mushrooms in a hot pan, to get them nice and brown, add pearl onions (prepared or simply frozen), and a little of the red wine from the braise. When the chicken is done, remove from the sauce, and then boil it down to thicken a bit. Add back the chicken, veggies, and bacon, and reheat. It would be easy to make this ahead of time for a dinner party -- the house would smell fabulous as the braise reheats, but there would be zero cleanup.

Taking the time to prepare the onions and mushrooms properly is a big part of the success of the dish -- the veggies stay toothsome, instead of soft. This is definitely going on the favorite winter menu list.

Not-Sweet Cider

Although you wouldn't know it by this afternoon's temperature (it hit 62° at 2 p.m.), this is the time of year for slow food -- the delicious braises and stews that make tough cuts of meat fork-tender, while filling the house with mouthwatering fragrance.

The ideal pot, whether you're cooking on the stove or in the oven, is enameled cast iron. Le Creuset is the favorite, of course, but I could never bring myself to spring for $250+ for one. Fortunately, other brands are filling the gap. Cooks Illustrated and Fine Cooking both tested a variety of brands recently, and found terrific alternatives to the high-priced French pots. Both liked Target's offering -- so much so, that Target took them off the web site and doesn't have them in the stores anymore. Dang.

I don't usually go for TV-chef-endorsed anything, but made an exception for this Mario Batali pot, which I found on Amazon (it appears to be pretty widely available). Love the green color (also available in red and orange). Its only drawback (which CI noted) is its heft -- it's extremely heavy.

Having finally acquired the right pot, I'm trying more recipes from Molly Stevens' All About Braising. Although chicken doesn't need slow cooking to be tender, it does benefit from long contact with savory ingredients to punch up its often-bland flavor. Her "Chicken Breasts Braised with Hard Cider & Parsnips" introduced me to hard cider, something I've heard about but had never gotten around to sampling. Turns out it's fairly popular here in Cincinnati, OH -- sold in 6-packs like beer. The very helpful clerk at Kroger's showed me the half-dozen brands, and suggested that Hornsby's is the most popular.

Although it looks like beer in the bottle, hard cider has none of beer's bitterness. It has a distinct apple flavor, but it's not sweet -- most of the sugars ferment into alcohol. It would be great with pork, too.

The recipes in the Braising book tend to follow the same pattern: dry the meat (usually cut up) and brown it well. Remove from the pan, and deglaze with wine, cider, or broth, and add the aromatics -- the rosemary, thyme, garlic, onion, carrot, etc, and cook for a few minutes. Return the meat to the pan, add more liquid if needed; then cover and bake, usually at 300° to 325°. For chicken, you need bake only for about an hour. To finish, remove the meat from the pan, degrease and boil the sauce down. Usually, you'll remove the vegetables and herbs, since they've given up all their goodness after very long cooking, but that's not necessary with the chicken variations that cook relatively briefly.

For this recipe, you start by browning several slices of thick-cut bacon, diced. (The no-nitrate bacon from Kroeger & Sons at Findlay Market is superb, and makes a difference.) Remove the bacon and most of the rendered fat, then brown the cut-up chicken (I used both white and dark meat). Remove the browned chicken, quickly sauté a minced shallot, then add 2 cups of hard cider to deglaze the pan, stirring with a wooden spoon to free up the tasty browned bits. Boil the cider down, add a tablespoon of minced rosemary and another 1/2 cup of cider and reduce again a bit. Add peeled, roughly chopped parsnips, bacon, salt and pepper, and place the chicken pieces on top. Cover the pan and bake at 325° for about 45 minutes.

Sweet and delicious -- the cider complements the sweetness of the parsnips.

Chicken Fricasee for the 21st Century

When I first glanced at one of The Best American Recipes series several years ago, I didn't find much I cared for, and I ignored subsequent editions. That must have been a bad year (or a bad day for me), and I'm so glad I browsed through [and then bought] the 2005-2006 edition -- it's loaded with delicious soups, main dishes, veggies, and desserts we've tried in the last month, with lots more Post-its marking pages for the future.

[I predict the next edition will have a lot of recipes calling for corn meal -- that seems to be the product of choice in magazines and books this year...] The series is edited by Fran McCullough and Molly Stevens. Molly is a contributing editor to Fine Cooking and author of All About Braising, a celebration of slow food -- the fragrant stews, pot roasts, and melanges that are the definition of winter comfort food.

Mairose, our local grocer/butcher around the corner on Monteith Ave. (in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Cincinnati), has the best chicken we've eaten in a long time -- unfailingly fresh, juicy, and flavorful. Eating chicken no longer feels like punishment for trying to cut back on red meat. I've been buying whole birds, and practicing my knife skills. It's a lot more economical than buying precut parts, and yields backs, wingtips, and odd bits for stock. Using the Cooks Illustrated technique for stock takes only an hour or so, and makes the house smell wonderful. A great little project for a wintery Sunday afternoon.

I borrowed The 150 Best American Recipes (the best of the best) from the library, and immediately found half a dozen recipes to try.

The fabulous Cincinnati Public Library makes it very easy to find and request books and music, so I'll never have to buy a cookbook without checking it out first. Sometimes a book will sound great, or have a mouthwatering cover, but then turn out to have nothing new, have dubious techniques, or recipes that try to combine too many conflicting flavors.

Carole Peck is a renowned chef/restaurant owner in Woodbury, CT, but I didn't particularly enjoy her food -- yes, it was beautifully prepared, fresh, and as local as possible -- but I found it impossible to put together a meal there; we tried twice, then never went back. It seemed like every single appetizer, entree, side, and dessert was loaded with at least half a dozen Asian and Mexican herbs and spices. The menu felt like the culinary equivalent of the Tower of Babel. Delicious elements, but kind of a mess when you throw them together. I don't want ginger and cilantro on everything, just one thing. And in the case of cilantro, only on alternate Tuesdays. I enjoy it when I have it, but that's rarely.

The Best American Recipes series caters to my prejudices -- the recipes are designed for home cooks, not professional chefs; they're tested rigorously; and they're pretty easy to prepare, with excellent instructions. Some are more complicated than others, I suppose, but nothing seems onerous. Although not very difficult, the recipes are loaded with flavor.

Last night, I made Chicken Fricasee with Lemon, Saffron, and Green Olives, which was heavenly -- complex flavors in a light sauce finished with some heavy cream. I made mashed Yukon Gold potatoes to serve as a bed for the veggies and chicken, but a nice crusty bread would also be tasty -- you definitely want to sop up that cream sauce. I served the dish in shallow soup bowls, to make spooning easier.

After my kvetching about Carole Peck, this ingredient list is going to sound long -- but there's no dissonance, just a bright note or two. Of course, I omitted two ingredients because I didn't have them -- no preserved lemons, just ordinary ones, and no cilantro, because I just don't keep it in the fridge -- I used Italian parsley instead. And Ed limited his olive intake -- I love the salty burst with just a touch of bitterness, so I enjoyed them.

Chicken Fricasee with lemon, saffron, and green olives
From The 150 Best American Recipes

1 - 3 1/2lb chicken, cut in 8 pieces
coarse salt and fresh black pepper
1/4 c olive oil (I used a lot less)
2 medium carrots, peeled and diced
1 large onion, diced
1 rib celery, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 c dry white wine
1/2 c chicken stock
2 large tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped. [I used what was left of a can of crushed tomatoes from another recipe, which made the sauce a lovely orange color]
2 ounces pitted green olives (1/4 c)
1 tablespoon freshly crushed coriander seeds
1-2 large pinches of saffron
juice of one lemon
3/4 c heavy cream [I used less]
1 preserved lemon, quartered and sliced; or a small fresh lemon, not peeled, thinly sliced
1 bunch fresh cilantro, leaves only, chopped [I used Italian parsley]

Serves 4

(My instructions are briefer than the book's)

Season the chicken with salt and pepper and sauté in oil over medium-high heat, browning on all sides. Add carrots, onion, celery, and garlic and sauté until vegs are limp but not browned. Add wine and bring to a boil. Add the chicken broth, tomatoes, olives, coriander seed, saffron (and lemon slices if using fresh) amd return to a boil.

Cover tightly, reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for about 45 minutes, or until chicken is tender.

Transfer chicken to a serving platter and keep warm. Increase heat to medium-high, add lemon juice, and scrape up any fond on the bottom. Add the cream and preserved lemon slices and boil until sauce is reduced by high or until lightly thickened. Season with salt and pepper to taste, pour over chicken, scatter cilantro over top and serve immediately.