Lasagne with Turkey and Caramelized Onions

I found this recipe deep in my archives: it's one of the first recipes I typed on one of my first Macs. I didn't bother to write down where it's from, but my friend Google tells me it's from Sunset of April 1991. The recipe as written originally is designed to cut back on fat (low-fat being the trend of the day), despite the bacon. I added a bit of butter to make a béchamel rather than the cornstarch-thickened sauce they suggested. I also added some wine for additional flavor.

The resulting lasagne is delicious: it tastes nothing like a classic lasagne, of course, but more like Schwäbische Maultaschen, if you've ever had those. The onion and wine flavors dominate, while the meat and cheese add some richness. It's not a low-calorie dish by any means, but it's a bit more restrained than the kind of lasagne that involves two pounds of cheese and a creamy béchamel. And I imagine you could swap the meat out for some mushrooms to make it a vegetarian dish.

Here's my version of the recipe.

Lasagne with Roasted Onions, Turkey, and Thyme

1-1/2 lbs. red onions, peeled and sliced thin

4 oz. bacon, diced

2 large branches fresh thyme or 1 t. dried

1 lb. ground turkey or veal

3 T. balsamic vinegar

9 no-cook lasagne noodles

2 T. butter

2 T. flour

1/2 t. salt

1/4 t. pepper

1/4 t. nutmeg

1 c. milk

1 c. chicken broth

1/2 c. dry white wine, vermouth, or sherry plus some extra for the pan

1 bay leaf

4 oz. grated Parmesan (I used about 2 cups of grated cheese leftovers: Gouda, Cantal, and Parmesan)

Heat the oven to 400. Toss together the onions and bacon with some salt and pepper on a baking sheet or baking dish that's just big enough to hold them (if it's too big, the onions are likely to burn). Roast, stirring every 15 minutes or so, about 35-50 minutes, or until well browned. Add the thyme and turkey and return to the oven for another 10 minutes or so, just until the turkey turns white. Add the vinegar and stir well, crumbling up the meat. Set aside. Turn the oven temperature down to 375.

While the onion part is cooking, make your béchamel: in a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the flour, salt, pepper, and nutmeg; whisk for about a minute to cook the flour. Gradually pour in the milk, broth, wine, and bay leaf, whisking to avoid lumps. Heat and stir until the sauce is thickened. This is a fairly loose sauce: you need some extra liquid for the lasagne noodles. Remove the bay leaf when you're ready to assemble the lasagne.

To assemble the lasagne, generously butter a 9-inch square pan and sprinkle the bottom with 2-3 T. white wine. Put 3 lasagne noodles on the wine and top with half the meat/onion mixture, a third of the sauce, and a third of the cheese. Repeat the noodle/meat/sauce/cheese layers and finish with a layer of noodles, the rest of the sauce, and the rest of the cheese. Lay a square of parchment over the cheese, then cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil and bake for 25 minutes. Take off the foil and parchment and bake another 15-20 minutes, until the top is brown and the casserole is bubbling. If you can, wait 10 minutes before you serve the lasagne: it will be much easier to cut. Enjoy with a green salad or vegetable.

Buttery, Garlicky, Spicy Calamari

I'm very excited to write this first post for a new blog group I'm part of, Cook This Now Together, a group of friends and friends-of-friends cooking our way through Melissa Clark's Cook This Now! Please check the blogs on the sidebar to see the group's entertaining takes on the same recipe.

Let me briefly introduce myself: my name is Maria, and I'm a transplanted Californian who has been moved all over the US but now lives in the Paris suburbs, where I teach English and immerse myself as much as possible in the food culture. I cook mostly for my family: my husband Sami, who loves meat and dislikes vegetables and soup; my daughter Julia, who loves vegetables and soup but doesn't eat any meat or fish; and my younger daughter Claire, whose tastes seem to change on a daily basis but who generally dislikes fish. Still, I cook something different every day, and usually I can find a majority who will eat and even enjoy it.

So let's get to this first recipe, which Alicia chose: Buttery, Garlicky, Spicy Calamari with Israeli Couscous. As soon as I saw the title, my first thought was, "Do they have Israeli couscous in France?"

 Well, the answer is probably yes, but in the shops I went into, they didn't. So I decided to go ahead and use the whole wheat mini-macaroni I already had in my pantry. I toasted it a bit in the pot before adding water and salt--a trick I learned from Cook's Illustrated--and I think it was a good substitution.

My second thought was, "How do you say calamari in French? Can I buy it here?" I was pretty sure I could, but I'd never seen it because I'd never shopped for it. Before I cooked this dish, I had never bought, much less touched, raw calamari. Maybe the picture above can explain why...
Well, it was not available at the outdoor market when I went, but when I went by the fish counter of my local Monoprix, there it was, encornet. I didn't buy even close to the 1-1/2 pounds Melissa calls for--I just asked for two of the beasties, and the fish guy cleaned them for me.

Once I had all the ingredients, this recipe was a snap. I made just a few tweaks to the procedure: since I don't like burnt garlic, I sautéed just the calamari and chiles first, and added the butter and garlic when the calamari was just about cooked. I then turned off the heat before adding the herbs (which were frozen and pre-chopped, because it's winter) and lime juice (oops, no lemons in the fridge).

I planned this recipe for a busy night: We had a meeting at the girls' school that night and didn't get home until 8. But Melissa writes that she considers this dish to be fast food, and indeed, wow, that was an understatement. With all the prep and even washing lettuce for a very basic salad, we were sitting down to dinner at 8:30 (a very normal dinnertime here in France). But the main appeal of this recipe in my eyes is that it's delicious. Claire, the fish skeptic, polished off a decent-sized serving without batting an eye. Julia snuck several bites of the pasta and declared it delicious. Sami went back for seconds, and also had the tiny bit leftover for lunch the next day, to my great disappointment (I had been hoping for some for my own lunch!).

So this was a great start to what I hope will be a fun, delicious, and educational adventure.

Vegetable Lasagne

I actually started with the recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, but this ended up being more like the vegetarian lasagne Mom made from the Pleasures of Cooking. Except that recipe had at least 3 pounds of cheese in it. I went for more vegetables than cheese, and I think it worked out well. Feel free to play around with the vegetables.

Vegetable Lasagne

1 T. olive oil

1 large onion, diced

1/2 lb. mushrooms, sliced

1 lb. carrots, shredded

Salt, pepper, Italian seasoning or your favorite dried herbs

1/2 c. red wine

1 large can tomato purée

8 oz. frozen chopped spinach, thawed

9 lasagne noodles (I used the no-cook kind)

8 oz. mozzarella, grated

2 oz. Parmesan, grated

8 oz. ricotta

1/4 c. chopped basil

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Sauté the onion until translucent. Add the carrots and mushrooms and sauté until the mushrooms have started to give off liquid. Season with salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning. Pour in the wine, scrape up the bottom, and let cook down for a few minutes. Add the tomato puree (and about a cup of water if you're using the no-cook noodles) and let simmer for 15-20 minutes.

In the meantime, heat the oven to 400. Cook your lasagne noodles if you're using the regular kind. Mix together the mozzarella and Parmesan; mix the ricotta and basil and season with some salt and pepper. Grease a deep 9-inch square pan.

Layer up the lasagne: one-fourth of the tomato sauce, three noodles, one-third of the mozzarella mixture, one-half of the ricotta mixture, noodles, tomato sauce, cheese, remaining ricotta, noodles, tomato sauce, last of the mozzarella. Put in the oven (it's not a bad idea to put it on a foil-lined baking sheet first to catch drips) and bake for 30 minutes, until bubbling. Let rest a few minutes, then cut and serve. Feel virtuous about how healthy your lasagne is.

Pasta "Risotto"

I served this as a side dish with some fish, and it turned out to be the star of the meal. My crew doesn't especially care for real risotto, but this was popular. I happened to have some tiny pasta lying around, so I used that, which gave me a much shorter cooking time. But I bet this would be good with small elbow macaroni as written.

This recipe is from Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table; since she suggests playing with her recipes, I added the wine and the peas. Cooked bacon and/or mushrooms are other suggested additions that I bet would be great.

Dressy Pasta "Risotto"

2 T. butter

1 small onion, chopped

Salt and pepper

1-1/3 c. elbow macaroni

1/4 c. white wine

3-1/2 c. chicken (or vegetable) broth

1/2 c. cream

1 c. frozen baby peas

1/2 c. grated Parmesan

3-4 T. mascarpone (I think cream cheese or something similar would work here--about 2 oz.)

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the onion, salt and pepper it, and sauté it until translucent and just starting to turn color. Add the macaroni and white wine and stir; let the wine boil down to almost nothing. Then add the chicken broth, stir that, and let it cook uncovered at a steady simmer until the broth is almost absorbed (there will still be a bit of liquid at the bottom of the pan): this should take 20-25 minutes. Add the cream and the peas and cook for 3-5 minutes until some of the cream has been absorbed as well. Gently stir in the Parmesan and mascarpone and cook for another minute. Take off the heat, cover, and let sit for 3 minutes (I forgot to do this, and mine turned out fine...). Serve and enjoy.

Nutty Macaroni and Blue Cheese

I swear I'll get back to roasted vegetables--soon. I'm sure the walnuts in this add important antioxidants or what-have-you. But they were rather an unwelcome presence for the girls. Julia picked hers out--and she likes nuts normally. I kind of liked them. So use your judgement. Oh, and if you're a mac and cheese conservative (nothing wrong with that), leave out the blue cheese and walnuts and just put an extra cup of grated cheese (half Cheddar, half Parmesan?) in the sauce.

It occurred to me as I cleaned out the macaroni dish that if you put bread crumbs on the bottom as well as on the top of the macaroni, you could get a double crust. Either that, or a big clean-up headache. Next time I'm going to try that. We love that bread crumb crust.

This comes from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

Nutty Macaroni and Blue Cheese

2-1/2 c. milk

2 bay leaves

1 lb. macaroni or other tubular pasta

4 T. butter, divided

3 T. flour

Salt, pepper, nutmeg, red pepper...

1 c. (4 oz.) grated Cheddar

1 c. (3 oz.) crumbled blue cheese (I would use the cheaper, milder Danish kind)

3/4 c. walnuts, chopped

2 slices of whatever bread you have, to make about 1 cup crumbs

Heat the oven to 400. Grease a 9x13-inch baking pan or its baking dish equivalent. Measure the milk into a 4-cup Pyrex measure, add the bay leaves, and microwave for about 2 minutes on high, until it's steaming but not necessarily boiling. Let that sit and steep while you take care of the rest. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. While you're waiting for that, melt 3 T. of the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. When it's melted, add the flour and whisk a bit for it to brown just a tiny bit. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, and red pepper--or whatever seasonings you like. Fish the bay leaves out of the milk before gradually pouring it into the roux, whisking as you go. Cook this white sauce until it's thickened and bubbly. Take off the heat and add the Cheddar; stir until the cheese is melted. At this point, if not before, you'll cook the pasta a couple minutes less than the package directions call for. At some point you'll also want to put the bread and the remaining 1 T. butter in a food processor and process until you have crumbs. OK, now we're ready to assemble the mac 'n' cheese: Drain the cooked noodles and pour them into the baking dish. Top with the cheese sauce and stir that around. Mix in the blue cheese and walnuts. Top with the buttered bread crumbs and bake for about 15 minutes, until the crumbs have browned and the sauce is bubbly. Enjoy with a green vegetable and good intentions for moderation.

Linguine with Triple-Pepper Sauce

Sometimes you have little time and less money, so a simple, meatless pasta dish is in order. This was also appreciated by the whole family. I got the recipe from a little booklet put out by Bon Appetit (free with a subscription!) called "Fast and Easy." Yes and yes.

Linguine with Triple-Red Pepper Sauce

Serves 4, but not very generously

About 1/2 lb. linguine

2 T. olive oil

1 large red pepper, diced

1 small onion, sliced (optional)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 t. crushed red pepper flakes ("pizza pepper")

Salt and pepper

1 7-oz. jar roasted red peppers, drained and diced (if they're packed in olive oil, use it for sautéeing)

1/4 c. chopped parsley

Grated Parmesan

Before you do anything, put your (well salted) pasta water on to boil. Put a glass measuring cup next to the pasta pot to remind yourself that you'll want some pasta water later. In a medium sauté pan, heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Sauté the pepper and onion until they are both soft, then add the garlic, red pepper flakes, and salt and pepper to taste. Sauté that for about a minute, and then add the roasted peppers. Let that simmer for about 5 minutes or until the pasta is cooked. Add the parsley, and then scoop out about half a cup of pasta water and add that to the sauce. With a giant slotted spoon or tongs, pull the pasta out of the water and straight into the pan with the sauce. Stir that around, adding more pasta water if the mixture seems dry. Serve with grated Parmesan.

Fettucine with Salami and Mushrooms

After half a year of living in France and depending on the Internet for my recipes, I determined to put some of my older recipes that are not out there in Cyberland in the blog. So this is the first of what will hopefully be a series, mostly from 80s cookbooks and cooking magazines.

This recipe is adapted from one in a Sunset pasta cookbook that I picked up in Israel in the 80s--the same time and place I got my sideways haircut. Good times.

You can leave out the salami--I just sautéed it first and then set it aside for the meat eaters, creating a mushroom and leek pasta for my vegetarian daughter.

Fettuccine with Salami and Mushrooms

8 oz. dried (or fresh) fettuccine

1 T. olive oil

4 oz. dry salami, cut into 1/4-inch cubes

1/2 lb. mushrooms, sliced

2 leeks, cleaned and sliced thin (white and light green parts only)

Salt and pepper

1/4 c. white wine or vermouth

2/3 c. half and half

1 c. (3 oz.) freshly grated Parmesan (you may not need as much since the salami is so flavorful)

Put your (well-salted) pasta water on to boil before you start with the sauce. In a large skillet, sauté the salami with the mushrooms and leeks over medium-high heat until the vegetables are tender and the salami has rendered some fat. Season with salt and pepper, but go easy on the salt since salami is very salty. Add the wine and turn up the heat a bit; cook until the liquid has just about evaporated. Then add the cream and cook that down a bit as well. Hopefully by this point, you will have cooked and drained your fettuccine--add that to the pan along with half of the Parmesan and toss well. Serve with the remaining Parmesan and a pepper grinder. Serves 4.