Lasagna Is Not an Appropriate Summer Dish

“Why are you making lasagna when it’s 9 billion degrees outside?” tweeted @amycrea, a tweeple who has become an IRL friend. (And who ought to know better than to ask.)

Why? Why?? What do you mean, “why?”

• I got a new blue Le Creuset earthenware pan for my birthday! Yay! Now I’m feeling adventurous!
• I read an article about lasagna on Slate.com in a series called “You’re Doing It Wrong.” Nothing pisses me off more than being told by Internet hipsters that I’m doing something wrong. Plus, for someone who’s telling everyone they’re doing it wrong, the author holds a rather shallow understanding of what makes a good tomato sauce. Rrr! Now I’m feeling vindictive!
• I have promised to bring dinner to my friends Deb and Sean, who are new parents. Now I’m feeling all protective.

So add it up: if you had the whole clear blue sky before you; and THEN you had to one-up someone; AND you could feed it to your loved ones—well, doesn’t that equal lasagna? Weather be damned!

Ridiculous, Ridiculous, Ridiculous
I followed Slate’s suggestion and made mushroom lasagna, except they don’t know what they’re doing so I fixed their recipe. They ARE right, however, about ingredients: get the best stuff you can find. There are three parts to the recipe: sauce, cheese filling, and assembly.

The ingredients PLUS a beadwork snail

Sauce

Olive oil
1 onion, chopped
½ head garlic, chopped
½ to 1 lb mushrooms, chopped
1-2 sage leaves 1 t dried rosemary
3 cans crushed tomatoes
1 can tomato paste
1 cup wine
1 big sprig basil, leaves plucked and torn
Salt and pepper to taste

I overfilled ol' Bluie again. Relax, though, it's a double recipe

 Heat the olive oil in a heavy pan. Sauté the onions and garlic for a few minutes until translucent. Add the mushrooms and continue sautéing until they release, then resorb, their juices. Add the sage and rosemary; then the wine, crushed tomatoes, and tomato paste. Simmer this while you do the next parts, and take your time; it would be best to simmer for an hour. Or more, even! Throw the basil in right at the end before assembly.

Cheese Filling
1 lb fresh spinach
1 lb ricotta cheese
8 oz shredded parmesan, pecorino, asiago, or other dry aged Italian cheese. Hey, shut up. No jokes about my grandma!
1 egg
A dash of freshly grated nutmeg
Salt and pepper to taste

Wash and steam the spinach. Drain it, turn it out onto a cutting board, and chop it. When it is cool enough, squeeze as much water out of it as you can.
Whisk the egg in a medium bowl. Dump in everything else and blend.

Giant mess

Assembly
1 lb lasagna noodles
Olive oil
1 lb mozzarella cheese (fresh or shredded, either is fine.)
Cook the noodles according to the package – I’d throw several tablespoons of salt into four or five quarts of water and boil them in that. Pull them out of the water and drain them, then toss them with a little olive oil to keep them from getting sticky.

Preheat the oven to 375°. (On this, Slate and I agree.) Grease your big old lasagna pan with olive oil, then coat the bottom with sauce. Put down a layer of noodles. Then spread another layer of sauce; drop half the cheese filling in little blobs all over the sauce and smooth it out into a layer as best you can. Put noodles atop this. Do sauce, cheese filling, noodles again. Top with a thin layer of sauce and then cover it up with mozzarella.

Just-a like-a that.

Bake the lasagna until it’s toasty on top and bubbly on the bottom. Watch it carefully, and if it is melted and bubbly but not toasty, you may want to run it under the broiler for a minute or three. Remove the lasagna from the oven and take the time to make a salad before slicing it and serving to acclaim.

Mangiamo!

Soba Noodle Salad

This week I realized something: I suck at grocery shopping.

I don’t suck at cooking, but I need something to cook against. I need a constraint—a limit on time or ingredients, or a request to fulfill, or a combination of dietary restrictions to take into account. Otherwise, with no rules and endless possibilities, my response is to give up and eat a cheese sandwich over the sink while swigging milk straight from the carton.

If I just had interesting food, I could cook it! But the malaise starts at the grocery store. No particular item stands out to me. They all look equally attractive; I want all of them; then, ultimately, I want none of them. Many times I’ve left even the farmer’s market empty-handed because I couldn’t decide which thing I wanted over all the others.

That’s why I’m so glad I got my CSA information in the mail this weekend. Soon someone will decide for me! Food will happen to me, I will react to it, and it will be delicious. I’m already daydreaming about the first deliveries: lettuce, radishes, spring onions, maybe some pea pods. And that’s when I realize… hey, I’m actually developing a craving for fresh things, sprouting and green…

I have to go grocery shopping!

Soba Noodle Salad
This recipe (which came off the back of a box) called for edamame, spinach, and red onion. That would be good, too; but I switched some vegetables, fixed the dressing a little, and adjusted the proportions. This will serve four people as a main course or six as a side dish.

Salad parts
1 package extra-firm tofu
A double handful of snow peas
A double handful of bean sprouts
2 scallions, sliced
Peanut or canola oil
A packgage (250g, about 8 or 9 oz) of soba noodles
1 T sesame oil
2 T crushed nori or toasted sesame seeds for garnish

Dressing
3 T sesame oil
2 T rice vinegar
2 T mirin
1 t sugar or agave syrup
3 T soy sauce
½ t minced fresh ginger or 1 t minced pickled ginger

Put the tofu on a plate, put another plate on top, and put a heavy can on top of that. You’ll leave this for 15-20 minutes to press out some extra water.

Meanwhile, clean the snow peas and cut them diagonally into 1” pieces. Slice the scallions and measure out your bean sprouts. Put these all in a big bowl. Mince the ginger and mix it with the other dressing ingredients in a little bowl and set aside.

Put a pot of water on to boil.

Slice the tofu brick into four sheets, then cut the sheets into sixteenths. You’ll end up with domino-shaped pieces about 1" x 1½" x ¼".

If your water is boiling yet, then break the soba noodles in half and pop them in the pot. They will only cook for about six minutes, so watch them!

Brush a baking sheet with peanut oil. Lay each tofu slice on the sheet, then flip it over to coat it. Broil the tofu pieces until golden, about 6-8 minutes. Flip them over with chopsticks and broil until the other side is golden. Allow to cool.

Meanwhile, your noodles will have finished cooking. When they’re ready, drain them in a colander and rinse them with cold water to cool them. Shake them off and toss them with 1T of sesame oil. Set aside to drain some more.

When the tofu is cool, it’s as good a time as any to mix the salad. Put the noodles and tofu in the big bowl with the vegetables and pour the dressing over them. Mix everything up well; your hands work very well. Transfer to a serving bowl and sprinkle with the garnish.