Tag Archives: Casserole

My First Homemade Lasagna & Our Favorite Garlic Bread

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For as long as I’ve known my husband, I’ve never made lasagna.

I’m the cook of our relationship. I’m guessing you’ve assumed as much by now. He’s easy to please when it comes to food and doesn’t often request certain meals. However, he has requested lasagna and, until now, I’ve never been able to bring myself to make it.

I think it’s because we ate so much lasagna in my household growing up. We ate all types of lasagna from the Stouffer’s variety with the sweet, orange sauce and cottage cheese curds to pans my mom made herself. It probably appeared in our dinner rotation once a week. While I don’t remember not liking it as a child, I haven’t wanted to make it as an adult. Heck, I worked at Broders’ Cucina Italiana, a lovely Italian deli in Minneapolis, MN during my first year out of college and didn’t even eat their lasagna.

The tides began to turn this past winter when I found myself enjoying a version my cousin recently made at family gathering. And finally, when my husband inquired about homemade lasagna at the start of an especially busy work week, I finally decided to honor his request. I adapted Lidia Bastianich’s recipe for Italian-American lasagna and made a few changes so that it was simpler to make.

Now that I’ve embraced lasagna again, it’s earned its rightful place in our dinner rotation. The leftovers were especially welcome at the end of a work day, and they tasted as satisfying as the first day.

A Cook’s Notes
For just the two of us, I divided the recipe in half and baked the lasagna in a 11 X 7 pan. It made six servings that we enjoyed over the busy week. Much of the lasagna-building process is up to your discretion. Build each layer as thick or thin as you’d like. For example, I went lighter on the cheese. Lidia recommends letting the finished lasagna sit on the counter for a few hours and reheating the squares when it’s ready to serve. I found one hour sufficient and served it from the pan with the extra sauce. There’s really no wrong way to build a lasagna. Just do whatever fits best for you.  

I served our lasagna with my favorite garlic bread and a tossed green salad. 

Lasagna With Meat Sauce
Adapted from Lidia Bastianich’s recipe for Italian-American Lasagna.

Ingredients:
11 X 7 baking dish
Lasagna noodles (About 3/4 of a pound)
Salt
Olive oil
1/2 pound ricotta cheese
1 egg
1/2 lb. mozzarella, thinly sliced (I used one small ball of fresh mozzarella)
Parmesan cheese, grated

Meat Sauce:
1/2 pound lean ground beef
1/2 pound Italian sausage
1 onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 Tablespoons tomato paste
2 bay leaves
3/4 teaspoon dried oregano
About 1/2 cup of dry red or white wine
35 oz. of crushed tomatoes
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
Pinch of sugar

Instructions:

To begin, start the sauce. It will taste better the longer it simmers.

  1. Saute the onion in olive oil with a pinch of salt until the edges start to brown.
  2. Add the ground beef and sausage and saute until browned. Remove any extra fat drippings.
  3. Add the garlic and briefly cook until fragrant but not browned.
  4. Add the tomato paste and cook for a few minutes.
  5. Add the bay leaves and oregano. Try to remember to remove the bay leaves before assembling the lasagna.
  6. Deglaze the pan with wine and scrape any browned bits from the bottom of the pan into the sauce.
  7. Add the crushed tomatoes, salt and black pepper to taste, and a pinch or two of sugar.
  8. Allow the sauce to simmer for as long as you are able, or until it turns rustier in color. This could take 2-3 hours. If you don’t have time to simmer the sauce for hours, it will still be fine. Longer cooking lessens the tinny taste from the canned tomatoes. You could also substitute your favorite jarred tomato sauce.
  9. Keep tasting the sauce while it simmers and adjust the seasonings accordingly. You may want to add more salt, pepper, sugar, and/or wine.
  10. If the sauce becomes too reduced, add water.

To prepare the other layers

  1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add a generous dash of salt and small drizzle of olive oil.
  2. Cook half of the noodles at a time until they are pliable but undercooked (about seven minutes).
  3. Shock the noodles in ice water.
  4. When the noodles are completely cool, place them on a sheet pan and rub with a light coat of olive oil so they don’t stick together. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside.
  5. Whisk together the ricotta and egg. Season with salt.

To assemble the lasagna:

  1. Heat oven to 350-375 degrees F.
  2. Ladle enough sauce into the bottom of a pan to generously cover the bottom of the dish.
  3. Layer three noodles into the dish, lengthwise. It’s OK if they slightly overlap. Trim a little off the edge for a better fit.
  4. Ladle a thick layer of sauce over the noodles. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.
  5. Add a noodle layer.
  6. Spread the noodles with the ricotta-egg mixture. Use your best judgement about how much cheese to spread. You may want to use less than the full amount.
  7. Add a noodle layer.
  8. Add the sliced mozzarella cheese. If it’s fresh mozzarella, sprinkle it with a little salt. Cover with sauce and sprinkle Parmesan cheese.
  9. Add a noodle layer.
  10. Cover with sauce and sprinkle more Parmesan cheese.
  11. Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes. Uncover. If the top looks a little dry, add more sauce and Parmesan cheese. Bake for 15 more minutes.
  12. Allow the lasagna to sit before cutting into squares. Serve with any extra sauce.

My Favorite Garlic Bread

Ingredients:
French bread, split
Butter
Olive oil
Garlic, minced
Herbs, whatever you have on hand. I used dried basil and marjoram.
Salt
Black pepper
Cayenne

Instructions:

  1. Combine butter and a little olive oil in a small dish. Add minced garlic, herbs, salt, pepper, and a pinch of cayenne.
  2. Heat until the mixture is spreadable.
  3. Spread on both cut sides of the bread. Put the bread back together and wrap in foil. Bake at 350 degrees F. until heated through.
  4. Cut and serve.

Mom’s Chicken Chalupas

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The best things don’t always come from mom’s kitchen, but they often begin there.

For most of my years living at home, my mom just didn’t enjoy cooking. She thought of it more as work than a fun activity and often relied on convenience products. As we moved through high school college, she experimented with a greater variety of recipes. I’m sure the fact that we were older and more independent resulted in days filled with more time and less stress.

In her later years, she spent a lot of time caring for her own mother who lived in an assisted living facility in Burnsville, MN. It was here that she made many friends with whom she exchanged recipes. One of our family’s favorites was a casserole she called Chicken Chalupas. I recently discovered she had submitted this recipe in a cookbook published by my grandma’s care center. As usual, I added my own twists.

This past weekend, we attended a memorial service for my grandma’s sister-in-law, Agnes. My cousin found this photo of my mom while he was looking through Agnes’s old photo albums.

For some reason this makes me inexplicably happy.

Alice’s Chicken Chalupas

For a milder version, omit the jalapeno and spicy enchilada sauce. My mom grilled the chicken breasts which added a lot of flavor. We are not permitted to have a grill on our patio, so I sauteed the chicken breasts in olive oil with a spicy, steak seasoning. The original recipe also did not contain sauteed vegetables. You could omit these, or choose your own combination of vegetables. I did not measure them but would estimate I added 1-1 1/2 cups of sauteed mushrooms, onions, and bell peppers

Ingredients:
Cooked and seasoned boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Cooled and cut into small pieces
1/4 lb. shredded sharp cheddar cheese
3/4 lb. shredded pepper jack
1 can cream of chicken soup
2 cups sour cream (I used light).
1 small can of diced green chilies
1 clove garlic, grated or minced
2 tsp. cumin
Black pepper
3-4 stalks of green onions, chopped
1 red jalapeno, finely diced
1 small can of drained, sliced black olives
Sauteed mushrooms, onions, and bell peppers
1 package of flour tortillas (original recipe suggests eight-inch)

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Lightly grease a 9 x 13 inch baking dish.

Mix the shredded cheddar and pepper jack cheeses and set aside.

Combine the cream of chicken soup, sour cream, green chilies, cumin, and season with black pepper.

Set aside 1 1/2 cups of the sauce and add the jalapeno, olives, half of the green onions, and sauteed vegetables.

Add half of the shredded cheese and all of the cut-up chicken.

Place a few spoonfuls of the chicken mixture in a tortilla. Roll and fold in the ends. Place in the baking dish and repeat until you use all of the chicken filling and the baking dish is full.

Top the filled tortillas with the rest of the sauce and spread until even. Sprinkle with the rest of the cheese and chopped scallions.

Bake for about 45 minutes. Let cool slightly before serving.

To serve, I cut the casserole into squares and served with spicy, red enchilada sauce.

From Our Beef Share: Stuffed & Baked Pasta Shells

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Last month, we received a share of a beef share.

Our Fargo friends invited us into a greater beef share in which their friend had coordinated the distribution of an entire, grassfed cow from Thousand Hills Cattle Company, located in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. The meat cost much less than it would have been to purchase the same cuts from a store. Especially considering that single-pound packages of Thousand Hills beef typically sell for eight dollars a pound in Fargo-Moorhead stores.

The half share included ground beef and a few other cuts including stew meat, blade roast, and roundsteak. Just the right amount to fit into our small freezer a leave enough room for ice cream and a frozen pizza or two.

I got home early from school one afternoon and whipped up an easy version of pasta shells stuffed with our Thousand Hills beef, and topped with tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese. I served the pasta with a side of mushrooms and cabbage sauteed in a little butter and olive oil until caramelized and de-glazed with sherry.

Stuffed Pasta Shells
One pound of ground beef created enough stuffing to fill a 9 X 13 baking dish of pasta shells. This equalled about half a box of pasta shells.

Add whatever vegetables are in your pantry to the meat stuffing. If I had ricotta or marscapone cheese, I would have mixed a couple spoonfuls into the meat stuffing. I often purchase cheap jars of tomato-basil sauce and boost them with fresh ingredients like sauteed onion, garlic, and red wine. The Bertolli brand is particularly decent. 

Ingredients:
Large pasta shells (I used about half a box)
1 lb of ground beef
A few large button mushrooms
1 small onion, finely diced
Salt
Black pepper
1 clove of garlic, minced
2 handfuls of frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed until dry (can substitute fresh spinach)
Soy sauce
Drizzle of honey
Grated Parmesan cheese
Mozzarella cheese
Herbs, fresh or dried

Sauce:
1 jar of tomato sauce (I use whatever is on sale)
1/2 onion diced
1 clove of garlic minced
Splash of red wine

Instructions:
To prepare the pasta, cook in salted, boiling water until pliable. They should be a slightly firmer than al dente. Rinse in cool water and set aside.

Brown the ground beef. Remove excess fat. When the beef is partially cooked, add the diced vegetables and cook until tender. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant. You could also cook the meat and vegetables separately. Place in a bowl.

Add spinach, and cheeses. Season the meat stuffing with soy sauce, more black pepper, and your choice of herbs. I sprinkled in dried basil, marjoram and thyme. Add a little honey to round out the flavor.

Add enough sauce to the baking dish to cover the bottom.

Using a spoon, stuff the pasta shells with meat filling. Place in the baking dish.

Top shells with the remaining tomato sauce.

Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Place a little mozzarella on each pasta shell.

Cover and bake until heated through and the cheese is melted. Covering will help steam the pasta shells. Uncover and bake or broil until the cheese is as bubbly as you wish.

Recipe: LVC-Inspired Cheesy Lentil Bake

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Some of my closest friends were a part of Lutheran Volunteer Corps.

In fact, I almost joined Lutheran Volunteer Corps (LVC) right after college. I withdrew from the process to be closer to family while my mom was in hospice, since I wouldn’t have necessarily been placed in the Twin Cities.

Volunteers may vary in age (though most are recent college graduates) and are placed all over the United States where they hold full-time positions in nonprofit organization. They are paid stipends and their essential needs are cared for including housing and basic health insurance. Most share houses with other volunteers

My two friends lived in house that used to be located along a busy stretch of Lowry Ave. in North Minneapolis. As part of their intentional communities, housemates took turns cooking dinner on designated evenings. My friends’ housemates preferred to pool part of their monthly stipend into a grocery budget. Therefore, they became very adept at preparing creative and affordable meals, many of which were vegetarian.

Several years after college, I shared a house with my LVC friends near Theodore Wirth Park. I relished the recipes and cost-saving strategies they shared with me. One housemate introduced me to her version of spicy Kushari which I make occasionally as comfort food. The other mentioned her favorite meal had been baked lentils with cheese. She recently gifted me with a copy of the LVC Cookbook from which both friends frequently cooked. I was thrilled to find the baked lentil dish she had mentioned years ago and promptly adapted it for a weeknight dinner.

This recipe is vegetarian and obviously not vegan, due to its substantial layer of gooey cheese. It’s savory enough to satisfy those like my husband who aren’t used to eating dinners without meat.

Cheesy Lentil Bake
Adapted from the recipe for Baked Lentils with Cheese, from the Emmaus House 1999-2000, Simply LVC.

Feel free to add your own combination of vegetables and herbs.

Ingredients:
1 2/3 cup of lentils, rinsed and examined for stones (I used organic, green, French lentils)
2 cups water (can substitute stock or incorporate stock/flavor base/bouillon)
1 bay leaf
Salt, starting with about a teaspoon. Be careful if your stock is salty.
Black pepper
1/8 teaspoon marjoram
1/8 teaspoon sage
1/8 teaspoon thyme
Cayenne to taste
A little honey or brown sugar
Canned tomatoes or tomato puree (I just had one 12 oz. can on hand. Use whatever you have and adjust water/stock accordingly)
1-2 onions, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 large carrots, thinly sliced
1/2 cup celery, thinly sliced
Shredded cheddar cheese

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
  2. In a baking dish, combine the lentils, water, salt, pepper, herbs, cayenne, honey, tomatoes, onions, and garlic. Taste for seasoning. If the liquid tastes bland, try boosting it with soy sauce or Worcestershire. Keep in mind that the bland lentils will soak up the liquid. I aim to strike a sweet and savory balance.
  3. Cover and bake for about 30 minutes.
  4. Add the sliced carrots and celery and stir. Cover and bake for another 30-40 minutes, or until the lentils are tender. If there is too much liquid, uncover and bake until it evaporates.
  5. Top with shredded cheese and bake until it melts. If you want a more crusty and golden brown top, broil.

The Casserole My Mom Liked

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This is the casserole my mom liked.

I found the recipe in a torn and tattered cookbook. It’s falling apart and the pages crumble between my fingers. I handle them as delicately as possible, turning them with two fingers. The typed words appear to be mimeographed, not photocopied. And each page contains a single recipe.

This book is a culinary tribute from the students in my mother’s second grade class to their own mothers.

Earlier this year, I took home a stack of old cookbooks from my parents’ old house. I was surprised to find my one with mom’s hand print traced on the front cover and her name, neatly written in cursive, in the entree section beneath a recipe for Green Bean Casserole. It’s funny how handwriting doesn’t change much over time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five days ago, the fourth anniversary of my mom’s death quietly passed. In fact, it passed so quietly that I mostly forgot.

My mom must have liked this recipe. So much so, that she chose this recipe over any others for this class cookbook. My grandma was a wonderful cook. She gave me my first sip of coffee (of which I spit onto her white table cloth), whipped cream by hand, and showed me how to make homemade mashed potatoes. So, when I studied this recipe of nothing more than canned green beans, mushroom soup, American cheese, and French fried onions, I had to smile.

When my mom was grew up, canned vegetables must have been all the rage. When I grew up, they were frozen. And now that I’m an adult, I seek out those that are fresh and local.

But this must have been one of my mom’s favorite dishes, so I had to try it. In honor of my mom, I made the casserole, almost exactly as it was written, adding a few additional seasonings. I tried to restrain myself so I would not ruin the integrity of the experience.

I made a face as I sniffed the uncooked casserole in all of its canned glory. Fortunately, it tasted better when baked. In fact, it was pretty darn good, though I am one who enjoys that traditional green bean casserole, preferably made with canned beans.

Cheesy, creamy, salty and crispy. No wonder she liked it.

Green Bean Casserole
Recipe from Dorothy Bossen. Cookbook published by Bittinger-Wolford, 1959. Recipes compiled from second grade students, rooms six and seven, Richardson School, Cuyahoga Falls, OH.

Ingredients:

2 cans green beans (cut or French style). I recommend using lower sodium varieties
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/2 cup of American cheese
Black pepper
1 pinch of white pepper
2 pinches smoked paprika
Dash of garlic salt
French fried onions

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
  2. Combine the green beans, mushroom soup, cheese, and seasonings.
  3. Place in small casserole dish.
  4. Top with French fried onions.
  5. Bake for about 30 minutes or until bubbly. Check part-way through baking to make sure fried onions aren’t burning. Cover casserole with foil if onions are becoming too brown.

Lisa Lillien Would Hate My Trashy Casserole

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I have a Saturday morning ritual.

I sleep in as little or as long as I wish, make a cup of tea, sit cross-legged on the floor, and giggle as I watch Hungry Girl.

There’s something about her show that I find endlessly entertaining.  I’m stunned by her perpetual combinations of cooking spray, Laughing Cow cheese wedges, shirataki noodles, garlic powder, egg substitute, the microwave, sugar-free cake mix, and sugar-free drink mixes.  All of these ingredients routinely make their rounds in any particular order and any particular combination.

I had a brief love affair with Laughing Cow spreadable cheese wedges.  Somewhere between my sixth package during month three, they were no longer appealing.

What happened to everything in moderation?  I am afraid of this diet for fear of budding like a hydra or growing a forehead eyeball.

On a Friday evening, I found myself hungry and alone with a can of 98% fat free cream of chicken soup I had mistakenly bought.

I felt like a 1960′s church cookbook-inspired casserole and gave it a go, in the name of reducing food wastage.  What’s worse, anyway?  Wasting food, donating a food product low on the nutrition spectrum, or making oneself a trashy casserole?

I chose the latter.  In my typical fashion, I did not measure ingredients.  I just heaped in whatever fresh vegetables I had on hand, scraps of meat from my freezer, and leftover pasta until the mixture wasn’t too saucy.

My trashy, gloppy casserole was surprisingly tasty.  My old church cookbooks are filled with recipes for casseroles containing condensed cream of (fill in the blank) soups.  While my version didn’t escape this unifying factor, it incorporated fresh vegetables and avoided Velveeta.  Not that there’s anything wrong with Velveeta. . .

Ingredients
1 can of cream of chicken soup (mine happened to be 97% fat free)
Shredded cabbage
Diced onion
Diced carrot
Fresh spinach, chopped
Garlic, grated or minced
Elbow macaroni
Salt
Black pepper
Cayenne (or other hot pepper)
Shredded cheese
Worcestershire sauce
A splash of milk
Juice from half a lemon
Meat of choice, cut into small pieces (I used one chicken breast and one chicken sausage)
Crushed potato chips (I used a salt & pepper variety)

Directions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Pop open that can of condensed cream of chicken soup.  Shimmy it from its can and dilute with a splash or two of milk and season with Worcestershire sauce, your choice of hot pepper, black pepper, and fresh lemon juice.

Lightly saute the vegetables until they are tender.  Turn off heat.  Fold in spinach until just wilted and stir in the garlic until fragrant.

Cook your meat of choice.

Cook any type of pasta in any quantity.

The amount of vegetables, meat, and pasta you decide to cook depends on the ratio of pasta/vegetables/meat you are aiming for.

Combine the sauce, vegetables, and meat.  Pour into a pan and sprinkle with shredded cheese.

Finish with a flourish of crushed potato chips.

Bake until bubbly and golden brown.