It’s that time again! Whether you are having a traditional family gathering with lots of old favorites, or a funky gourmet “Friendsgiving” – I hope that you find some inspiration here. Happy Thanksgiving, my lovelies!
Start by cooking lasagna noodles and filling them with a mixture of cooked chicken, bacon, and Alfredo sauce (made with butter, garlic, cream, cream cheese, and Parmesan). I made some changes to the original, using 12 noodles instead of 8 and more filling per noodle to use up all the filling. I didn’t like how, in the video, there was chicken and bacon on the top instead of all contained. (more…)
It’s Secret Recipe Club time again! This month I was assigned Sarah’s Kitchen – a name that I love, obviously. Sarahs of the world unite! Sarah is from England, but now lives in Texas – which is kind of funny because I’m from Texas and once lived in Ireland (which I realize is not the same as England, but is geographically/culturally similar). Spooky.
I had a plan to make spinach and butternut squash lasagna roll-ups last week. But then I decided to add chicken so that Jasper would be more likely to eat it (note that this plan failed, ha). And then I thought it would be good to make my own spinach whole wheat noodles, which turned out to be too fragile to roll up, especially with the heavy chicken added. So it turned into a regular layered lasagna instead, and I’m not even sad. The colors were so pretty, and it was gooey and cheesy and filling.
So here’s where I made a mistake – I thought I would be clever and puree the spinach in the food processor instead of the blender before adding in my flour in order to reduce the number of dirty containers. Except that the food processor didn’t really puree the spinach very well. I even had a moment where I stopped and thought I should transfer it to the blender and decided against it, *sigh*. All those little flakes of spinach made the dough very fragile and difficult to work with, but I stuck it out.
The noodles turned out fine (and they certainly tasted good) when cooked, but they were still too fragile to roll (and not very pretty).
So I just layered them instead and all was well. Now, remember earlier this week when I talked about having leftover butternut squash? Well, this is where it went. I pureed the roasted squash and shallots together to make a sauce. A little of that went on the bottom of the pan, then a layer of noodles. (more…)
Oh my gosh, you guys. This might be my favorite butternut squash pasta since the life-saving mac and cheese.
Sheets of homemade pasta filled with roasted butternut squash, apple, onion, sausage, and three cheeses; topped with a creamy sage bechamel. It’s totally swoon worthy.
The filling is a little complicated, but totally worth it. While your butternut squash is roasting in the oven, mix up and brown your sausage mixture. Did I mention that you are creating your own sausage, so you can adjust the spices to your liking? And you can be sure that there are no weird preservatives or sugar? Awesome. Anyway, next you saute some onions, garlic, and apple. Plus a little white wine – aww, yeah.
Oh my gosh this filling. It’s insane. You may want to make extra to use in other ways. I’ll talk about that later. (more…)
I’ve written about my favorite lasagna recipe before, but it was years ago and I think it needs to be revisited – especially now that my neighbors confirm it is the best lasagna they have ever had.
The cast of characters is pretty simple, but I think what makes this lasagna stand out is the use of veal and white wine. It’s a bit different from the standard, but that’s what makes it special.
I really like for my veg to be finely diced for this ragu, so that there aren’t any big chunks. But I did not make those perfect cuts on my own – I use a veggie chopper. It’s fast and it makes everything uniform.
The other thing that makes this ragu great is that it is simmered for up to 5 hours. That low and slow cooking brings out all the flavor. I highly recommend using San Marzano tomatoes in this, they are just the best.
Americans might be used to the type of lasagna with ricotta and mozzarella, which is fine but not very authentic. This version has a creamy bechamel (aka my favorite food) and tons of Parmesan, and it is just so dreamy.
I really went all out for this batch and made my own lasagna noodles for the first time. It is certainly not necessary to do that, but I do think it took it up one final step to perfection. I did have several issues while doing this, though. The learning curve is pretty steep. Don’t try to be clever when you roll out your own pasta and leave the sheets really long – trust me, it makes them almost impossible to cook. Now I know why the store-bought ones are short. I’m also going to edit the pasta dough recipe in the original post because it was awful and really soft and hard to work with.
Anyway, go make the best lasagna of your life. You will thank me. Recipe here.
About a month ago I got really excited about juicing after watching a documentary called “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.” The man in the film goes on a 2 month long juice fast, which I was definitely not prepared to do. I wasn’t even prepared to do the more standard 7-10 day juice fast. But I did like the idea of using juices to consume large quantities of raw vegetables in a more palatable manner. So I bought a ton of veggies and went to work.
I started with a recipe from the doc’s website and added a little to it, using carrots, bell pepper, apple, ginger, golden beet, fennel, and mango.
Gorgeous color! I used too much ginger, though, it had quite a kick. (more…)
White lasagna with shredded chicken, spinach, butternut squash, whole wheat pasta, and low fat cheese for a super delicious, creamy, but light dinner? Yes, please! (more…)
Last week, I stumbled upon this really cool concept blog called Food ‘n Flix that invites bloggers to watch a movie, make a dish inspired by the movie, then blog about it. This month, the movie is Big Night (hosted by Spabettie) starring Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub as two hilarious Italian brothers that own a restaurant together. In order to save the restaurant from bankruptcy, they risk everything they have on one extravagant dinner to impress a celebrity singer.
I loved the movie, it was cute and funny and well acted, and it made me SO HUNGRY. It inspired me to make a Tricolore Lasagna in the colors of the Italian flag (green, white, and red). (more…)
