Christmas Eve Sausage, Basil and Cheese Lasagna

When I was a small child, I remember our Christmas Eve meals being quite the extravaganza. Lots of people, lots of food. My grandmother was from Italy, and one thing she always made on Christmas Eve was eels. Yes, eels. She was from Nola, outside of Naples, and eels are apparently a Neapolitan Christmas Eve tradition. Read this abstract from a 1935 issue of the New Yorker if you don't believe me. That image of the housewives keeping the eels in the bathtub until the moment of the feast -- well, I am going to remember that the next time I catch myself complaining about the laundry. As you could well imagine, you wouldn't catch me going near eels with a 10 foot pole when I was a kid (or now, for that matter. I just can't get behind their . . . eelyness). I love nearly everything about my Italian heritage except the eels, in fact. As the years went on and my grandmother got older, the feast became a little more streamlined, and eventually, eels dropped off the menu. Because when you decide that it's time to simplify, the eels are always the first thing to go. But thankfully, one thing that remained on our Christmas Eve menu, year in and year out, was lasagna. Oh, there was probably a roast as well, and some kind of fish, but for me, if lasagna was on the menu, lasagna was all that mattered.

Now that I have my own little family and we have started some of our own holiday traditions, I've started making lasagna for Christmas Eve. We keep it simple: lasagna, bread and salad. To me, it's the perfect Christmas Eve meal. It can be made entirely ahead of time (and even made well ahead and frozen -- this freezes well). It can feed a crowd; just make as many pans as you need. It leaves me time to do the things I really want to do on Christmas Eve -- go to church, drive around looking for the most over-the-top light displays, play with the kids, set the cookies out for Santa, run to Target at 11 p.m. because the main structural component of the the %$@&#!* wooden play kitchen that we bought months ago is completely broken in half, which we didn't realize until we opened the box on Christmas Eve. You know, the stuff that memories are made of.

I found this lasagna recipe years ago on Epicurious. I don't know what caused me to pick this one out from the hundreds of other lasagna recipes online -- I think it might have been a reader review that said something like "My father hates lasagna and he ate this cold the next day!!" For some reason, that has the same psychic effect on me as "he lifted the train with his bare hands!" -- I'm always persuaded to try something when I hear about someone who hates a particular food eating it cold the next day. Maybe because I am generally not a huge leftover person to begin with. Anyway, whatever the reason that I decided to try this recipe, I've never looked back. I have never made this lasagna and not gotten rave reviews and numerous requests for the recipe. I don't save it just for Christmas Eve; I probably make this 3 or 4 times a year. If you have a baby or break your leg, expect to get a pan of this lasagna from me. I'm a one trick pony that way. I always at least double the recipe. I figure if I am making lasagna, I'm going to MAKE LASAGNA, dammit. And I always try to keep a pan in the freezer for my birthin' and limb breaking friends.



The sauce is easy, and I always double it, even if I'm just making one pan. When I do that, I'll sometimes use one pound of sausage and one pound of lean ground beef instead of two pounds of sausage. I've used turkey sausage before, and I can tell the difference because I am the world's foremost expert on this particular lasagna recipe, but I don't think anybody else can. It's still good even with turkey sausage. When I double it, I won't always completely double the onion amount or even the meat amount. But I definitely double the tomato amount -- you don't want to run short on sauce. Sometimes I'll even throw in an extra can of diced tomatoes. You can't really mess this up as long as you stay in the sausage/beef/onion/tomato family.

I think the filling, particularly the fresh basil, is the key to this lasagna's fabulousness. The basil just adds such a nice freshness to the lasagna. The cheeses in the filling are pretty standard lasagna cheeses -- ricotta, mozzarella and parmesan, but they combine perfectly together, and with the basil, to create one fine lasagna fillng.

I can't seem to make this without trashing my kitchen, but it's totally worth it.

Before I post the long (but don't be intimidated -- even I can do it!) lasagna recipe, I wanted to thank my good bloggy friend Pamela over at Cookies With Boys for passing this award on to me:



Thanks, Pamela! I want to share this with a few of my favorite blogs:

MacDuff of Lonely Sidecar -- I only recently discovered MacDuff's blog, and I felt like I hit a gold mine when I did. She's wickedly funny and multi-talented -- a competitive sailor, among other things. Her scathing indictment of John Mayer was passionate, moving, and brilliant -- I laughed, I cried, I begged for an encore. [Jen A. -- are you reading out there? This man is not baby daddy material. Move on, sister!]

Kim of Scrumptious Photography -- Kim's blog name might just be the understatement of the year. Her photographs stand out even in a community filled with brilliant photographers. I go there to see what my TWD creations should look like.

The Blonde Duck -- where else can you find kitchen fairies, world class ballerinas, fuzzy duck Christmas ornaments with confidence issues, and beef burgundy all at the same place? There is one seriously creative mind at work here, folks.

Melissa of Love at First Bite -- I don't think that Melissa has ever posted a recipe that didn't make me want to stop what I'm doing and go cook immediately. Love this blog!

And my fellow UVA Wahoo and good bloggy friend Nancy from The Dogs Eat the Crumbs passed on this fun little number to me:



Thanks Nancy! I want to share this one with my new bloggy friend, A Singleton in the Kitchen, for her delicious chocolate crackle cookies. And for the fact that when struck with an intense chocolate craving, Singleton whipped up some of this fabulous dough to munch on -- even though she was insanely busy -- rather than just tearing through the pantry looking for chocolate chips like I would do in her shoes. Singleton shows me that you CAN be a true chocoholic without abandoning your standards.

Here is the lasagna recipe. I hope that everyone has a great weekend!

Sausage, Basil and Cheese Lasagna, from Bon Appetit, February 2000

Sauce:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound spicy Italian sausages, casings removed
1 cup chopped onion
3 large garlic cloves, chopped
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes with added puree
1 14 1/2-ounce can diced tomatoes with green pepper and onion (do not drain)

Filling:
1 1/2 cups (packed) fresh basil leaves
1 15-ounce container plus 1 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
1 1/2 cups (packed) grated mozzarella cheese (about 6 ounces)
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (about 2 ounces)
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Assembly:
12 no-boil lasagna noodles from one 8-ounce package
3 cups (packed) grated mozzarella cheese (about 12 ounces)
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese (about 3 ounces)
Nonstick olive oil spray

PreparationSauce:
Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add sausages, onion, garlic, oregano and crushed red pepper and sauté until sausage is cooked through, mashing sausage into small pieces with back of fork, about 10 minutes. Add crushed tomatoes and diced tomatoes with juices. Bring sauce to boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer 5 minutes to blend flavors. Season with salt and pepper. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Chill until cold, then cover and keep chilled.)

Filling:
Using on/off turns, chop fresh basil leaves finely in processor. Add ricotta, mozzarella, Parmesan, egg, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Using on/off turns, process filling until just blended and texture is still chunky.

Assembly:
Preheat oven to 375°F. Spread 1 1/4 cups sauce in 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Arrange 3 noodles on sauce. Drop 1 1/2 cups filling over noodles, then spread evenly to cover. Sprinkle with 3/4 cup mozzarella cheese and 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese. Repeat layering of sauce, noodles, filling and cheeses 2 more times. Top with remaining 3 noodles. Spoon remaining sauce atop noodles. Sprinkle with remaining cheeses. Spray large piece of foil with nonstick olive oil spray. Cover lasagna with foil, sprayed side down.

Bake lasagna 40 minutes. Carefully uncover. Increase oven temperature to 400°F. Bake until noodles are tender, sauce bubbles thickly and edges of lasagna are golden and puffed, about 20 minutes. Transfer to work surface; let stand 15 minutes before serving.

CEimB: Oven Fried Chicken

This is my first post for a new blogging group that I just joined


Craving Ellie in My Belly ("CEimB" -- just for fun, I'll go ahead and define some terms for my peeps back at the office!), which is a group that will be cooking its way through Ellie Krieger's "The Food You Crave."

After much deliberation, I decided to join CEimB because:

(1) I'm a joiner. It's what I do. I join, therefore I am.
(2) I've really been looking for a healthy cooking blogging group. I LOVE Tuesdays with Dorie and Barefoot Bloggers, but sometimes my arteries just get tired of being caught in the middle of the epic battle between Dorie and Ina over who can use the most butter. Light cooking feels more normal and familiar to me, and I've heard rave reviews about this cookbook. I've enjoyed doing the occasional Cooking Light Night post (thanks, Clara!) and reading Cooking Light Night posts by my blogger friends, so I thought it would be fun to try the light cooking concept in a more formal group.
(3) My work friends Amanda, Peggy, and Jen signed up for CEimB, and I didn't want to feel left out of the water cooler talk. I'm already the last to know all the office dirt since I only work part time. It's not that interesting, but still.
(4) I joined the group early enough that I might actually get to choose a recipe sometime before the next millennium!
(5) I respect any blogging group that goes the extra mile to come up with a rhyming group name.

So, here we go! The first recipe is for Oven Fried Chicken, which is theoretically the perfect choice for my family. While I almost always blog about how David and I like the food that I make, I rarely blog about what my children think of it. That's because my children don't eat what I cook. Really! It's not just a catchy profile slogan! My two older kids are maddeningly picky eaters, and chicken nuggets are among the foods they will eat, along with peanut butter waffles, fish sticks, grilled cheese sandwiches, Scooby cheese (it's like regular cheese but it comes in a Scooby Doo wrapper), french fries, grapes, and cereal. Their preferred eating style reminds me of the preferred decorating style of some of the hip interior designers of the mid-2000s: very monochromatic, very beige-on-beige. They will tolerate a punch of color in the form of ketchup, and in fairness to them, they'll eat a red apple or a piece of orange cantaloupe, and if all the planets align, the occasional green vegetable. But try to jazz up a naturally beige food like chicken or potatoes with green flecks, and it's freak-o-rama at the dinner table.

So I was excited about this one because it could potentially be marketed to them as chicken fingers and served with dipping sauce (aka ketchup). In fact, I decided to skip the thighs and cut the breasts into strips from the outset. Also, I knew that I could control the flavor and color content to maximize the chances that the 6 year old and 3 year old would eat it. And who knows? -- maybe it would even earn me rave reviews such as "I don't like it, but I can eat it without holding my nose." Oh yes, check your ego at the door before signing up for this parenting gig.

In terms of the ingredients, I knew that sesame seeds would not get me closer to my goal of getting my kids to eat these. So I skipped them. I also cut the cayenne down from 3/4 teaspoon to more like 1/4 teaspoon. See, blander already!

Other than those small changes, I stuck to the recipe, and these came together easily.

Crackers (I used Whole Grain Wheat Thins), corn flakes, garlic powder and a wee bit of cayenne:




And egg whites, yogurt, dijon & salt for the first dredging:


Aaaaaaaaand then dredge again in the crumb mixture.

I went downstairs to my Pam cellar and retrieved my finest 2008 Olive Oil Pam:



[I know you're going to ask, Amanda. Yes, I think I buy Pam even more obsessively than than I buy ice cream sundae toppings. No, I don't know what's wrong with me. But please continue to enable me and bring me any coupons you happen to see -- thanks!]

Lightly sprayed my chicken fingers, and baked:



Incidentally, I only used half the meat called for, and I still ran out of crumbs. That's why there are those three sorry little half naked chicken pieces at the bottom of my baking sheet. Next time, I think I'll increase the amount of the crumb mixture.

Plated the chicken with a careful eye towards the presentation:



And served to my toughest critics:




The verdict?

J, age 6: "Ummmmm. I don't really like it. Well, it's pretty good if you put a lot of ketchup on it. Actually, this is too spicy. And I put my cheese toast in the grape area so the bottom got soggy. May I please have dessert?"

E, age 3.5: "It's too cinnamon!"

C, age 14 months: Ate it with gusto, then chanted "muh, muh, muh, da! da! da! da!"(translation, "I want more. When is Daddy getting home?") and then as soon as I let her out of the high chair, headed straight to the pantry to eat a paper plate that was on the floor. She is so refreshingly easy to please.)

Mom, age 36 (the reasoned voice of objective reality): These really were a bit too spicy for most kids, I think, even with the smaller amount of cayenne. I'll leave the cayenne out next time so that my kids can come up with a different reason not to eat them. I thought this was excellent oven fried chicken. Nice and crispy on the outside, but the chicken stayed moist and tender, and had a great flavor. They definitely had a little kick to them. I assume they would have had a lot of kick if I used the full amount of cayenne called for in the recipe.

Dad, age 36.5 (really, almost a full year older than Mom): Really enjoyed these. Upon learning that they were too spicy for the kids, said "Great! More for me!"

Summary: I still think this is a family friendly recipe despite the fact that only one of my children ate them. I'll leave out the cayenne next time, but they'll definitely show up again in our rotation. They were really easy to throw together, and one of the better oven fried chicken recipes I've tried lately. All in all, this was a great way to kick off CEimB! Thanks for picking this, Macduff of Lonely Sidecar!!!

OVEN FRIED CHICKEN, from Ellie Krieger's "The Food You Crave"
Ingredients
1/2 sleeve (about 20) whole-grain salted crackers, pulsed in a food processor until fine (about 1/2 cup)
2 1/2 cups corn cereal flakes, pulsed in a food processor to fine crumbs (about 1/2 cup)
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
3/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
2 egg whites
1 cup lowfat, plain yogurt
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
Olive oil cooking spray
4 medium sized skinless chicken breasts and 4 skinless chicken thighs, rinsed and patted dry (about 3 1/2 pounds chicken)
Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly spray a baking sheet with olive oil.

Combine the crackers and corn cereal crumbs, sesame seeds, cayenne, and garlic powder in a shallow bowl. Reserve.

In a large bowl, combine egg whites, yogurt, Dijon mustard, and salt. Add the chicken pieces and coat thoroughly with the yogurt mixture.

One at a time, dip the chicken pieces in the cracker mixture, packing crumbs onto chicken. Arrange the chicken on a baking sheet and spray lightly with olive oil cooking spray.

Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, or until juices run clear when chicken is pierced with a knife.

Barefoot Bloggers: Vegetable Pot Pie

One thing that I love about food blogging is that it forces me to push out of my comfort zone in terms of the ingredients that I buy. Before I started food blogging, I would flip through a cookbook and see a recipe containing, say, swiss chard, and think "next!" Not because I don't like swiss chard, but because I don't like wandering around a grocery store in search of obscure produce, and I CERTAINLY don't like wandering around multiple grocery stores in search of obscure produce. But when you've committed to a blogging group, you don't just NOT make the recipe just because you don't know what bok choy is. No, you sweetly email your husband and ask him to locate bok choy for you.

In fact, ever since we've been married, or at least since we've had three children whom both I, and my fellow shoppers, prefer that I not drag to the grocery with me, I've emailed grocery lists to my hubs multiple times a week. No matter how hard I try to menu-plan, or how thorough I try to be during my main weekly shopping trip, it still seems like we end up needing one or two or twenty more things during the course of the week. So David is used to getting emails from me like this:

Subject: We Need

Milk
bananas
diapers (size 3)
trash bags
sliced sandwich cheese (2%)
waffles

Now that I am food blogging, he's still getting lots of grocery emails from me, but they look more like this:

Subject: Can you stop at Publix on way home?

And get

Milk
bananas
diapers (size 3)
trash bags
sliced sandwich cheese (2%)
waffles
saffron threads
fennel bulb
sharffen berger bittersweet chocolate

And bless him, he never complains about the suddenly bizarre contents of my list -- all he asks is that I put it all in a single email and not send him a separate email each time an ingredient pops into my head. I'm working on that.

This week's recipe Barefoot Bloggers challenge for Vegetable Pot Pie, chosen by my favorite blogger-in-paradise, Deb of Kahakai Kitchen, had a few of those exotic ingredients that would have caused me to skip this recipe altogether in my pre-blogging days. I did leave out the Pernod because I didn't have it, and now that I've been food blogging for a few months, I realize that nobody will send the police after you if you skip an ingredient. So I made a mental note to be sure to buy some Pernod to add to the Vegetable Pot Pie next time I make it when we are NOT in the middle of a global financial meltdown.

And I almost left out the fennel, because I am not big fan of the flavor, but in the end I went with it. I'm glad I did, because it added an instant "party!" element to my kitchen, in that 80s hair band kind of way.

The long-lost sixth member of Whitesnake:



And it actually tasted good in the pie too -- an added bonus!

First step in the recipe was cooking the onion and fennel in Ina's usual metric ton of butter. I'll be honest: Ina and I are having some "trust issues" where butter is concerned (she does not yet know that we are having issues). Here is my butter philosophy: if the quality of the recipe depends on copious butter use, by all means, butter away. But if the butter does not really add a whole lot in terms of flavor or texture, then why are we using it? I felt a little bit foolish after sauteeing my leeks in a stick of butter for the Cream of Wild Mushroom Soup. So many people omitted, or significantly decreased, the butter amount that Ina called for, and obtained equally good results. With the Butternut Squash Risotto, I left out all but a small amount of butter, and the dish could not have been more amazing. So forgive me when I got to the part in the recipe about sauteeing onions and thought: "really, a stick and a half of butter Ina? I don't believe you."



Problem was, this was the base of the sauce for the pot pie, and I probably really DID need more butter than I ended up using (2 tablespoons, rather than the stick and a half that she called for), because my pot pies were a bit on the dry side. A full stick and a half? Probably not.

Well, enough butter or not, I eventually assembled a little fleet of pot pie vegetables:


and started on the crust. I got a little "water happy" when making my crust, and I was pretty sure that I ruined it. I thought about adding more flour to it, but then I was afraid that I would just end up overmixing it, which might even be worse than overwatering it. I thought about wringing it out like a towel . . . anyway. Well, as it turned out, the crust tasted wonderful!

That's what I like, a recipe that can withstand my efforts to destroy it. None of this "leave the pan for five minutes and almost burn down your kitchen" business. The fact that this crust survived my little rainstorm earns it a permanent spot in my "keeper" column.

David and I enjoyed these pot pies. He said that he couldn't help but dig around in there looking for chicken, but you know how the old saying goes: "you can give a vegetarian dish to a carnivore, but you can't make him not dig around for the chicken." Or something like that. I actually enjoyed this more with every bite, which completely defies the Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns, and also explains why I have a hard time with portion control.

Thanks for picking this one, Deb! It's a hearty, comforting, soul-warming dish -- perfect for fall!

VEGETABLE POT PIE

12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks)
2 cups sliced yellow onions (2 onions)
1 fennel bulb, top and core removed, thinly sliced crosswise
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups good chicken stock
1 tablespoon Pernod
Pinch saffron threads
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons heavy cream
1 1/2 cups large-diced potatoes (1/2 pound)
1 1/2 cups asparagus tips
1 1/2 cups peeled, 3/4-inch-diced carrots (4 carrots)
1 1/2 cups peeled, 3/4-inch-diced butternut squash
1 1/2 cups frozen small whole onions (1/2 pound)
1/2 cup minced flat-leaf parsley
For the pastry:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1/4 pound cold unsalted butter, diced
1/2 to 2/3 cup ice water
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash
Flaked sea salt and cracked black pepper
Directions
Melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onions and fennel and saute until translucent, 10 to 15 minutes. Add the flour, reduce the heat to low, and cook for 3 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Slowly add the stock, Pernod, saffron, salt, and pepper, and bring to a boil. Simmer for 5 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the heavy cream and season to taste. The sauce should be highly seasoned.

Cook the potatoes in boiling salted water for 10 minutes. Lift out with a sieve. Add the asparagus, carrots, and squash to the pot and cook in the boiling water for 5 minutes. Drain well. Add the potatoes, mixed vegetables, onions, and parsley to the sauce and mix well.

For the pastry, mix the flour, salt, and baking powder in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade. Add the shortening and butter and mix quickly with your fingers until each piece is coated with flour. Pulse 10 times, or until the fat is the size of peas. With the motor running, add the ice water; process only enough to moisten the dough and have it just come together. Dump the dough out onto a floured board and knead quickly into a ball. Wrap the dough in plastic and allow it to rest in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Divide the filling equally among 4 ovenproof bowls. Divide the dough into quarters and roll each piece into an 8-inch circle. Brush the outside edges of each bowl with the egg wash, then place the dough on top. Trim the circle to 1/2-inch larger than the top of the bowl. Crimp the dough to fold over the sides, pressing it to make it stick. Brush the dough with egg wash and make 3 slits in the top. Sprinkle with sea salt and cracked pepper. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 1 hour, or until the top is golden brown and the filling is bubbling hot.