Lou's Most Excellent Wayne's Lasagna

Who doesn't like a steaming pile of lasagna when it's 19 degree's outside?

(Who thought I was gonna say steaming pile of shit?)

My buddy Wayne made the best lasagna [WMK - and that's all you get]. His trick is to think of it like layers of pizza rather than layers of noodles with sauce and cheese. The addition of spicy sausage also helps. He and his wife then abandoned me here in Washington and I now have to fend for myself.

Too runny lasagna results for many factors. First and foremost is the use of excessive amounts of tomato sauce in the lasagna itself. Another are the noodles being overcooked and unable to absorb additional liquid during the cooking process; worse are your noodles putting back their excess moisture into the lasagna because of that. You can have too much cheese - particularly ricotta - too. I never thought I'd say such a thing but there ya' have it.

Here's my take on it. Make the sauce the day before and let it mellow in the fridge overnight. It makes the sauce not as sharp in the dish itself. The use of hearty amounts of mozzarella in the lasagna, not too much sauce, and "chunks" of ricotta help keep it intact and provide nice little pockets of surprises in each bite.

For the sauce:

2 boxes Pomi crushed tomatoes (26 ounces)
1 box Pomi strained tomatoes (26 ounces)
3 medium yellow onions, chopped
8 cloves garlic, sliced thin or minced
10 sprigs fresh parsley, minced
2 TBS kosher salt
1 TBS ground black pepper
1 TBS sugar
8 - 10 store (local Italian deli preferred) bought meatballs
Extra virgin olive oil

In a 4 quart sauce pot, saute the onion + 1 TBS of salt over medium heat in about 3 TBS of olive oil until near translucent...about 12 minutes. Add the garlic and saute an additional minute, then dump in the tomatoes. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer over low heat for about 2 hours. Remove from heat, cool to room temp, and cool in the fridge overnight.

For the lasagna:

Sauce from above
Five 18 x 8 inch long pasta sheets*
6 spicy Italian sausages, cooked and sliced into ½ inch pieces
6 cups whole milk ricotta cheese
30 oz whole milk mozzarella cheese
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
¼ cup grated Pecorino-Romano cheese
1 egg
6 sprigs fresh parsley
1 TBS ground black pepper
2 TSP red pepper flakes

*If you can't find large sheets like this, smaller ones are OK - you just need enough sheets to make seven layers of lasagna.

Bring 7 quarts of salted cold water to a boil in an 8 quart pot. In another equal sized pot fill with cold water and set aside.

Boil the noodles, one at a time, for 2 minutes and immediately dunk into the cold water. Take care not to rip the noodles but if you do, no biggie. Dry the noodles on long pieces of wax paper.

in a large bowl add the ricotta, Parmesan and Pecorino cheeses, egg, parsley, black and red pepper and mix together to form a thick paste.

In a glass 13 x 9 pan, add about 1 cup of sauce to the bottom to lightly cover.

Add a noodle sheet and then about a half cup of sauce. Measure out about 1 cup of ricotta mix and dollop in heaping tablespoon amounts over the sheet. Take about 4oz of mozzarella and tear into chunks with your hands like string cheese and loosely dollop too. Sprinkle the equivalent of one sausage link over as well.

Repeat this six more times.

On the last layer just top with tomato sauce - about a cup. Remove the meatballs from the tomato sauce, halve, and then quarter each half. Spread the meatballs over the top of the lasagna, cover with foil, and bake at 350 for 50 minutes.

Reheat the sauce on the stove.

At T=50 check the lasagna - it should be bubbling along the sides. Sprinkle the remaining mozzarella over the top and cook for 10 more minutes.

Remove from the oven, let cool for 10 minutes, and serve with additional sauce on the table for those who want it.

Lou's Most Excellent Complexity Syrup

Simple syrup = 1 cup sugar + 1 cup water.

Complex syrup = see below.

It's complex but incredibly simple. This is a variation on the syrup used in the LME Poached Pear recipe but is likely more versatile.

Reason being is that you start with a sweet(er) wine.

I used this as a base for some whip cream tossed with strawberries. Quarter your berries and whip up the cream just before you get stiff peaks - you want to avoid stiff peaks here. Add about a TBS of Complex Syrup per ½ cup of cream whipped and gently mix in. Toss in the berries and you have a fantastic dessert. You can also use this:

- On other fruits
- As a sub for balsamic vinegar in salads
- On a cheese plate to complement heavy, stinky cheeses

3 cups red, sweet dessert wine (Port, etc.)
1 cup cold water
3 TBS honey
1 bay leaf
6 cloves
1 TBS whole black peppercorns
1 cinnamon stick
2 TSP fresh ground nutmeg

Add all the ingredients to a small pot and bring to a rapid boil over high heat. Once there, reduce heat to medium and gently boil until the contents have half evaporated.

Strain the mixture through a fine mesh strainer lined with cheesecloth into another pot. Bring back to a boil like before, then reduce to medium.

Once the liquid is nearly 80% reduced, keep an eye on it as it may erupt out of the pot. If this is happening, it means you're almost done so turn down the heat to medium-low. Reduce further until it's almost all foamy. When you remove it from the heat you should have a syrup left, and only about 3 TBS.

Cool prior to use. A little goes a long way too.

Lou's Most Excellent Greco Chicken Sandwich

Left over chicken. What to do with it?

My mother always turned it into chicken salad which, to this day, I'm not fond of. But my buddy Jim brought some precooked chicken over to us from Canales Brothers Deli (I was a bit under the weather) and I made some pita sandwiches out of them the next night.

The problem with the pita is that bites aren't universal. You get a bite of this, bite of that, and on a rare occasion a bite of the whole thing. This is not a complaint, but rather an observation. I'm a whole kind'a bite kind'a guy. Hence the beauty of the sandwich.

Here's what I did. It's quick, easy, and damned tasty. Also pretty healthy when you think about it. This makes enough for two sandwiches.

1 half a large, boneless chicken breast, precooked (salt, pepper, garlic)
2 Roma tomatoes, each sliced into about 5 slices.
½ a cucumber, peeled and thick sliced (same dimensions as tomatoes)
2 kosher dill pickles, sliced lengthwise into 4 strips
Feta (your choice)
4 TBS Greek style yogurt (I used non-fat Fage Total)
1 TSP Herbs de Provence
Hummus
2 demi baguettes (from Bonaparte Breads via Wagshal's) or hard, crusty sub rolls.
Extra virgin olive oil
Optional: pitted kalamata olives


In a small dipping bowl, add 1 TBS of boiling water into the Herbs de Provence. Let rest for five minutes. Mix the herbs into the yogurt.

Cut the chicken into long, thin strips. Drizzle with about 1 TBS of olive oil and let sit for about 5 minutes. Preheat a skillet to medium.

Cut your bread lenghtwise and toast to a nice, crisp brown. While toasting, quickly sear the chicken in the pan to just warm it up; you do not want to brown it. Add more oil to the pan if necessary.

On the bottom bread slice spread a generous amount (about 1½ TBS) of the yogurt-herb mix. Layer some chicken slices, feta to your liking, pickle slices, cucumbers, tomatoes, and drizzle with a little olive oil. On the top sandwich half spread about a TBS of humus or more. Add a few pitted olives, if desired. Place the top on and spike the sandwich with long picks to hold it together.

Cut n' serve.

Lou's Most Excellent Fall Apart Chicken Caccitore

Good and easy. And hearty. Slightly healthy too. This is a good Sunday dish as you can start it at 1, shove it in the oven, and it'll be done ~5ish. Frees up your afternoon to do shit you normally hate, such as raking leaves, honey-do projects, or watching Philly lose.

1 eight-part cut whole chicken*
1 large yellow onion, halved and sliced thin
6 garlic cloves, minced
3 garlic cloves, whole with paper on
8 fresh medium carrots, unpeeled, washed and halved
8 oz Kalamata olives (~1 heaping cup), quickly rinsed
8 oz jar of marinated artichokes, drained and quartered
1 box Pomi crushed tomatoes (26 ounces)
1 box Pomi strained tomatoes (26 ounces)
10 sprigs fresh parsley, minced
2 Parmesan rinds
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt & pepper

*You can usually buy a whole chicken already cut up. A butcher worth their salt will do it for you too...and give you back your paid for backbone without asking. Or just buy the pieces you like: two breasts and four thighs would work great, even just four breasts.

Preheat your oven to 225. Yes, two hundred twenty five. You're braising here and 225 is perfectly OK for chicken. The goal here really is to heavily warm the chicken and not further kill it. Braising keeps the intramuscular fat intact so meats stay moist. When you cook too hot it melts the fat and you're left with tough tissue.

In a 5 qt Dutch oven preheat to medium 2 TBS of olive oil along with the whole garlic cloves.

Rinse and pat dry the chicken and generously salt and pepper. Brown the chicken, 2 -3 pieces at a time, in the pan for 3 minutes on each side and then set aside on a plate. Discard the garlic cloves.

Add the drained chicken fat from where the chicken is resting back into the pan and an extra TBS of olive oil. Add the onions and a big pinch of salt and saute until softened, about 8 minutes. Add the carrots and saute for 3 minutes, then add the garlic and saute for an additional thirty seconds, then add olives and marinated artichokes. Saute for about 3 more minutes.

Add the tomatoes, parsley and Parmesan rinds. Stir to mix and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Add the chicken, covering with the sauce. Bring back to a simmer, cover, and place in the oven. Cook for at least 3.5 hours, undisturbed.

The chicken is going to be fall off the bone tender - even the breast will be very delicate - so if you want to serve the pieces intact be careful stirring the pot around. You're wound up with big chunks of chicken in a hodgepodge of tomato sauce. It's quite delish.

Serve with pasta of your choice and lots of Parmesan cheese.

Lou's Most Excellent Faux Fond

Fond is necessary for any hearty sauce development. Fond is that stuff that sticks to the bottom of a pan after you've seared meats; the brown and black bits that you then add liquid to so it dissolves and then incorporates into the sauce that comes after it.

With non-stick pans, making fond is nearly impossible. And if you do/can with a non-stick pan, you're eating Teflon along with it since you heated the pan too high.

I was making a Carbonade the other day and the only large Dutch oven I have is non-stick. Stuck with not being able to make fond, I figured that since all fond is is burnt meat, why not just burn some meat bits.

What I did was mince some fat and meat - about 2 TBS. I kept these bits in the pan as I browned all the other meats, thus making very crispy, burnt meat bits.I threw in a couple of larger pieces (dime sized) for good measure.

Seems to have worked.

Lou's Most Excellent (Adult) Chicken & Rice

The reasons why our mothers made chicken and rice - that classic cream o'mushroom + rice + chicken mix - are simple. It was quick, easy, and could cheaply feed an army of hungry kids.

It's a guilty pleasure to us all, still. No one wants to admit they love White Trash Cuisine but this dish is one of the hallmarks.

I was mouth-agape/appalled at Paula Deen's take on this. No where does she have fresh anything (except the onion) and to top it all off, you use precooked chicken in it. To her credit, though, to give her dish some pseudofresh crunch she adds in water chestnuts...canned, of course. It's probably the only thing with crunch that comes in a can but I thought it was a neat addition. Still, welcome to the sad state (or future) of American cooking.

This one here, folks, is good enough to feed to guests and doesn't take too much work. You'll need a very large pan for this, either a roasting pan or a 10 x 15. This will not fit in a 9 x 13.

And yes, it still uses canned soup.

1 eight-part cut whole chicken*
1 large yellow onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1 can Progresso Creamy Mushroom Soup
1 can Campbell's Condensed (of course) Cream of Celery Soup
2 cups Jasmine rice
1½ cups dry white wine
10 Shitake mushrooms, stems removed and sliced into ½" strips
8 carrots, peeled and cut into 1" chunks
4 rutabagas, peeled and cut into ½" cubes
6 parsley sprigs, leaves minced
2 thyme sprigs, leaves minced
3 ounces sliced water chestnuts, rinsed and drained
1 TBS butter
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Pepper

* You can buy whole chickens precut if you want to save time.

Preheat your oven to 325.

Rinse and pat dry the chicken parts. Generously salt and pepper the pieces. In a large skillet add the butter and heat to medium high. Brown the chicken parts, 2 - 3 at a time, for about 3 minutes each or until the skin has browned. For the legs brown each side. Set pieces aside.

[If you notice in my picture, the leg bone near the ankle is exposed. You can do this by cutting a ring around the ankle of the leg prior to cooking with a very sharp knife so you cut through the tough, white tendons. What results is a big, mega-tender, meltingly delicious ball of chicken meat on the end of the bone.]

In a large bowl add the two soups together, the parsley and thyme, and 10 ounces of water (one Campbell's can). Stir to mix and set aside.

Turn the heat down to medium and add about 1 TBS of olive oil and the onions. Saute for about 8 minutes, until the onions are nicely yellowed and near translucent. Add the garlic and saute for 30 seconds, then add the rice and stir to mix for two minutes.

Add the white wine and simmer an additional two minutes and then the carrots, rutabagas, water chestnuts. Saute one more minute and then add the soup mixture. Increase heat to high and bring to a boil.

Lightly butter the roasting pan. Pour in the rice/soup mixture into the pan and spread evenly. Set the chicken pieces, skin side up, on top of the rice with the larger pieces toward the ends of the pan. Cover with foil and bake for 50 minutes.

Voila.

[Or, in Deenish, "VOH-WAH LAH!"]

Lou's Most Excellent Easy Migas

"If that dog gets near my fuckin' breakfast I'm gonna kill him." - JKF, October 11, 2009.

My wife, JKF, has that in common with the dog b/c if you get near his breakfast he's likely to kill you too.

JKF also introduced me to migas, which is a Mexican style of scrambled eggs with tortilla's in them. It's a great way to use up staled corn tortillas...if you have them.

And most often, one doesn't. But tortilla chips work just fine.

I should not be eating eggs. If you haven't guessed it by the blog here, I pretty much eat anything with reckless abandon and I shouldn't. Eggs are LOADED with cholesterol. I mean, they're a cholesterol delivery vehicle. One egg gives you about 80% of your daily USDA recommended cholesterol intake. Now think about a three egg omelet with cheese, ham and fried in butter. Buttered toast on the side and you're done.

Egg whites, however, are virtually cholesterol and fat free. But they taste like egg whites and are watery and just ick scrambled up.

Compromise here: 2 parts egg white plus 1 whole egg. Sure, it's still running high with fat & cholesterol but tastes pretty damned good. In this recipe, which is for two, I use 5 whites plus 1 whole, which still works pretty well.

5 egg whites + 1 whole egg [extra large sized eggs], scrambled
3 TBS chopped onion
1 Jalapeno pepper, minced
1 big handfull of tortilla chips
¼ cup of cheese of your choice (fontina used here)
Canola oil
Salt & pepper

Heat a non-stick pan over medium heat. Add a TBS of canola oil to the pan and the onion. Saute for about 3 minutes. Add the Jalapeno and saute for an additional minute and then add the eggs all at once.

Let the eggs sit for about 30 seconds, just until it's solidifying on the bottom. Crush the chips with your hands and add to the eggs, continuing to cook the eggs the way you normally make scrambled eggs. With 30 seconds left on the clock, remove from the heat, add the cheese, toss to mix and voila.

You can eat these alone or put them in a tortilla to make a breakfast taco. Judy went for the taco but I went with a bagel on the side since they were fresh from the Old Georgetown Bagelry.