tomato_kumato

I’ve been on a simple food kick lately… I think it’s the weather. In summertime, I can’t really be bothered to do anything besides combine a few ingredients. These tomatoes are a perfect example: I had bought some tomatoes for a salad, but I waited just a bit too long to eat them. Instead, I combined them with salt, pepper, herbes de provence and olive oil, and roasted them on high heat until they were charred and blistered on the outside. The juice in the pan was delicious with some fresh baguette, but most of this got served over plain spaghetti: it doesn’t get much better than that.

In other news, I’m off to Mallorca in a few days for a month. I’m excited to let you all know a bit about Spanish food… and to take some lessons from the master we’re going to be staying with, the Canadian’s friend, the Englishman. I had his roast lamb a few months ago, and I still think about it.

When I was younger, my father and I used to go to dinner, just the two of us, every Tuesday night. At first, we went to this restaurant called il Pomodoro. I would get rigatoni marinara, and my dad would get linguini Bolognese. After il Pomodoro closed, we started going to a different restaurant called Vico. I was older by then, and ready for a new standard, something my mother didn’t make at home. This time, I went for the Bolognese… and I fell immediately in love.

It’s been a long time since I had this pasta sauce. My mother made a mean marinara, but Bolognese was not on her repertoire. We still go to Vico sometimes, but I’ve expanded my horizons, and I usually opt for a salad and one of the lighter pasta dishes instead of the bowl full of heavy, velvety Bolognese that I adored when I was younger.

But when I saw this recent post on Skillet Doux, I was reminded of my former favorite… and I was up to the challenge of trying to make it.

Sure enough, less than five minutes after mixing what looked like a watery base of ingredients together, the smells of Bolognese came wafting from the kitchen. It cooked, bubbling for a full hour, before the Canadian and I couldn’t stand it anymore, and we ate it over mushroom ravioli… delicious.

Bolognese (adapted from Gourmet, October 2002)

1/4 cup of olive oil
1 carrot, chopped
2 medium onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 lb. veal
3/4 lb. ground beef
1 cup water
1 1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 cup red wine
6 oz. tomato paste
dried basil
salt and pepper
2 tbsp. creme fraiche
parmesan for serving

Heat the oil over medium-low heat. Add the vegetables and a bit of salt, and cook until soft, about five minutes. In another skillet, cook the meat until all pink is gone. Drain excess fat and add to the vegetables. Add tomato paste, water, milk, wine and basil. Cook down until the sauce is thick, about an hour and a half. Turn off the heat. Add salt and pepper to taste, and stir in the creme fraiche. Serve immediately over pasta (I like mushroom ravioli, but rigatoni are good as well) with plenty of cheese on the side.

When I first learned how to cook (that is, cook things besides Kraft Dinner, omelettes and grilled cheese) more than three years ago, one of the first things I learned how to make was tomato sauce. The second was lasagna. What are you going to do with a vat of tomato sauce when you’re just one person?

My mother taught me, as she teaches everything, by speaking, not by showing or writing down, and so I would repeat the instructions to myself nervously as I made my lasagna.

It worked out well. It definitely wasn’t my mother’s, but I was able to feed my friends, and when I finally moved from Toronto to Paris, it was one of the two recipes (along with my guacamole) that my friend Mel asked me for. Well, I have yet to give her the recipe, because I teach by showing, but when I do, it’s not going to be the one I made three years ago.

I’m sorry, Mommy. But to be fair, it was never the same when I made it, and this one comes so much closer to the saucy, crispy around the edges, cheesy, flavorful lasagna that I remember you serving us when we were kids. And I did get it from an Italian… that has to count for something, right?

This lasagna comes from the one and only Little Big Head (Giada de Laurentiis), whom I have hardly ever trusted with anything culinary. I guess she couldn’t have been all wrong… it does take some talent to make your hair stand up that high and to say decadent at a rate of about once every hundred words, but Giada, I’ve made fun of you for too long, and I’m sorry. You’ve proven me wrong with this lasagna, so now I’m sharing it with the world in hopes of redeeming myself.

Classic Italian Lasagna (courtesy of foodnetwork.com)

Bechamel Sauce:
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus 2 tablespoons for the lasagna
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups whole milk at room temperature
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
1 1/2 cups tomato sauce
Salt and white pepper1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound ground chuck beef
Salt and pepper
1 1/2 pounds ricotta cheese
3 large eggs
1 pound lasagna sheets, cooked al dente
2 packages (10 ounces each) frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
3 cups shredded mozzarella
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.Bechamel sauce:
In a 2-quart pot, melt 5 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. When butter has completely melted, add the flour and whisk until smooth, about 2 minutes. Gradually add the milk, whisking constantly to prevent any lumps from forming. Continue to simmer and whisk over medium heat until the sauce is thick, smooth and creamy, about 10 minutes. The sauce should be thick enough to coat the back of wooden spoon. Remove from heat and add the nutmeg and tomato sauce. Stir until well combined and check for seasoning. Set aside and allow to cool completely.

In a saute pan, heat extra-virgin olive oil. When almost smoking, add the ground beef and season with salt and pepper. Brown meat, breaking any large lumps, until it is no longer pink. Remove from heat and drain any excess fat. Set aside and allow to cool completely.

In a medium sized bowl, thoroughly mix the ricotta and eggs. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

Into the bottom of a 13 by 9-inch baking dish, spread 1/3 of the bechamel sauce. Arrange the pasta sheets side by side, covering the bottom of the baking dish. Evenly spread a layer of all the ricotta mixture and then a layer of all the spinach. Arrange another layer of pasta sheets and spread all the ground beef on top. Sprinkle 1/2 the mozzarella cheese on top of the beef. Spread another 1/3 of the bechamel sauce. Arrange the final layer of pasta sheets and top with remaining bechamel, mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. Cut the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter into 1/4-inch cubes and top lasagna.

Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil. Place lasagna dish on top, cover and put on the middle rack of the oven and bake until top is bubbling, about 30 minutes. Remove cover and continue to bake for about 15 minutes.

This keeps well, just reheat it in the oven (or microwave for just one serving). It tastes even better the next day. Serve with extra tomato sauce and parmesan on the side.

I know that most people celebrate Halloween with candy… so how in the world did I end up spending my holiday with pasta, cupcakes and Britney Spears? I suppose I should begin at the beginning.

After a “tiring” shopping trip (tiring to the Canadian… I like wandering down the Champs Elysées), we headed back home. I went straight to the kitchen, where I had planned to bake some Belgian Brownies (love this recipe!) and some Chocolate Orange Muffins with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting, from slashfood. I had just started melting the chocolate over the double boiler when the Canadian called out, “You hungry?”

Of course, this doesn’t mean, “are you hungry,” but rather, “I’m hungry. Please feed me.” Because we were drinking that night (and also a little bit because I was already devoting all of my energy to melting chocolate), I suggested pasta. Directly after this, I remembered that a) we had finished all of the jarred pesto, b) I hadn’t replaced the parmesan cheese and c) the vat of tomato sauce I froze was frozen into the fridge and would need to be removed on a rainy day when I had a hammer and chisel. I did, however, have some tomato paste, tomatoes, and a recipe for Quick Tomato-Cream Sauce that was also on my list of things to try from Under the Tuscan Sun. Bingo.

This was one of the best tomato sauces I’ve ever tried, and it was really easy. My only qualm, as you can probably tell from the pictures, is that I made too much pasta and not enough sauce.

Once we ate the pasta, I still had cupcakes to bake. I made the Belgian Brownies no problem: this is one of the easiest recipes in the world and one of my favorites… and I don’t even like chocolate! But I had also wanted to make the Chocolate Orange Cupcakes… seeing as it was Halloween. One problem: no cream cheese. I decided to sub mascarpone, but in the end, the frosting was looking a little funny. I put it in the fridge, hoping that chilling it would help, and continued getting ready for our Halloween party. When my friends got there, I hadn’t had time to frost them, so I left them in the kitchen and just brought out the Belgian Brownies. However, they disappeared rather fast, and my friend Emese found and delivered the Orange-Chocolate Cupcake stash. And you know what? They were good even without the frosting. The mix of chocolate and orange is delicious, as always, and the crumb was dense. They were sweet without being cloying, and basically, just good. Sure, it looked very pretty on the slashfood site, but sometimes you just can’t make everything look pretty.

(The flatter ones are Belgian Brownies, the kind of bulbous ones are the cupcakes.)

Oh… and Britney? That was Emese:

Quick-Tomato Cream Sauce from Under the Tuscan Sun

Cook 4 or 5 slices of pancetta, drain on paper towels, then crumble and set aside. Chop 2 medium onions and 2 or 3 cloves of garlic and sauté in the pork fat for 5 minutes. Chop and add 1 large red pepper and 4 or 5 whole tomatoes from a can. Season with salt and pepper and cook 5 minutes more. Stir in 1/2 cup of creme fraîche and another 3/4 cup of canned tomatoes with juice. Add a spoonful or so of the pasta water to the sauce. Stir the pancetta into the sauce at the last minute to retain crispness. Cook and drain enough pasta for 4. Mix the pasta with half the sauce; serve the rest of the sauce over the pasta.

All this talk about comfort food from last month’s book of the month (stay tuned for this month’s, coming up shortly), has started me thinking about what comfort food means to me. It’s actually always kind of been an obsession of mine… finding out what other people’s comfort foods are. It has a lot to do with what we were raised with, and it’s usually served hot. Comfort food also usually not good for you, but whatever… it’s good for the soul.

I always thought my comfort food was spaghetti and meatballs… and on some days, it is. But I think that skirts the definition of comfort food, which, to me, is something that makes you feel better no matter where, no matter when. And for me, that’s lasagna.

To break in a new house, I always make a huge pot of tomato sauce. The thing is, when I live alone, I don’t end up eating as much pasta as I thought I would, so my vat of tomato sauce excursion is almost always immediately followed by a lasagna-making extravaganza. After years of doing this, lasagna has slowly become my comfort food… easily grabbed, reheated, and served with extra tomato sauce and parmesan cheese on top. Preferably eaten out of a bowl… I have a thing about bowls. I find them far superior to plates. Come to think of it, I like spoons better than forks… only the little ones though. But I digress… (and make very frequent use of the ellipses…)

For the past two years, all of my friends were vegetarians, so I made lasagna with a layer of spinach instead of meat. In Paris, however, meat is definitely fair game, and so I’ve started making traditional meat lasagna… the way my mom makes it. And it’s even better with fresh basil from my basil plant scattered over the top.