I'm embracing my muffin top today. After going to see Eat Pray Love last night, and absolutely falling in love with the beauty of Italy (The "Eat" part of the movie), I'm now having a relationship with my lasagna. Luckily, I live with a descendant from Naples. Though he's never been to the region, the culture of food in this household has been passed down through generations to him and continues to be the source of my "no carb left behind" diet. I'm not interested in being obese either, but I've never understood women's obsession with sacrificing all the benefits of real, homemade meals for the sake of calorie counting.
I mean, I get it. But I wouldn't want to live so restricted from the joy the culture of food offers.
Luckily, I married a champion.
We are the best of friends and have a great time together, especially when we celebrate Slow Food Sunday. So when we got home from the movie last night, both of us were craving pasta. What better way to accomplish two objectives: Spend valuable time with my man and make lasagna together.
Put a large, wide pot of water on high heat to bring to a boil for the pasta.
Many recipes for lasagna we found call for plain ol' ground beef. BOR-ing! So we prepped some meatballs, a staple recipe in my household.
Meatballs
1 lb. Ground Beef
1 1/2 C Bread Crumbs
1 C Locatelli Parmesan
1 piece of good Italian bread, soaked in water
1 little box of raisins
3 T of pignoli nuts
1 egg
Sauce
1 can of whole tomatoes
1 can crushed tomatoes (my man prefers Red Pack brand)
Handful of Basil Leaves
3 or 4 cloves of garlic crushed and coarsely chopped
Pinch of sugar (Top Secret ingredient. Don't tell my Italian mother-n-law about this!)
1/4 tsp of crushed red pepper
Squeeze all the water out of the bread and tear it into little pieces. Add to the other ingredients of the meat mixture. Mix everything together thoroughly. Shape into balls about twice the size of a golf ball.
Heat a pan with some olive oil on medium high heat to start, then turn it down to medium to prevent the oil from burning or smoking. Place meatballs gently into the pan and allow them to brown, gently moving them around periodically so they don't fall apart or stick to the bottom.
Once the meatballs have mostly browned, turn the heat to medium-low for a few minutes before adding the garlic and basil. After you sweat the garlic and basil for a couple of minutes, add the crushed tomatoes, whole tomatoes, sugar and crushed red pepper. My man will take a knife and pierce the whole tomatoes in the can, then crush them with his hand as they drop into the pan of meatballs. Allow this to simmer on low heat, stirring periodically, for about an hour. All the flavors will meld together in the most spiritually uplifting way! (This corresponds to the "pray" part of the story).
Once the water starts to boil, add the lasagna noodles and a spoonful of the sauce so the noodles don't stick together. Cook for about 8 minutes. They should be al dente!
While the meatballs and sauce are simmering, pour the water out of the lasagna pot and replace it with cold water to prevent the noodles from continuing to cook or sticking together.
Lasagna
16 oz Ricotta cheese (do yourself a favor and get the whole milk kind)
1 egg
2 T Locatelli Parmesan
4 T parsley, chopped finely
2 T basil, chopped finely
Prep your ingredients for the lasagna. Grab some basil and parsley out of your garden. Chop about 4 tablespoons of the the parsley and about 2 tablespoons of the basil finely. Add it to the bowl of ricotta cheese, egg and Parmesan. Mix together thoroughly.
Grate some mozzarella cheese. We usually go for the real stuff you find at the fancy cheese station of the grocery store, the kind that is in containers of water. But Chef McCarthy thought that would add too much moisture to the dish. But rather than going for the Polly-O brand in the regular cheese section, he found this happy medium:
Now start piecing together your lasagna. Put a little sauce in the bottom first.
Add your ricotta mixture.
Add a layer of the mozzarella cheese, topped with a sprinkling of Parmesan.
Add some pre-cooked sausage. We cooked this before we started on the meatballs. We typically get the "sweet" sausage, but for this we used the "hot" style.
Add your meatballs. Break them up into bite-size pieces and sprinkle around the dish.
Top with some sauce, and start the process again.
Finish with a layer of mozzarella and Parmesan. (My man regretted not doing a layer of sauce on top and then the cheese, but I think it worked out fantastically anyway).
Cover it with foil (so the it doesn't stick to the cheese as it bakes) and bake it for 25 minutes at 375. Then take the foil off and bake for another 25 minutes. Let it cool for about 15 minutes before serving.
That's when the "love" part of the story happens.
...and it's a wonderfully fulfilling, loyal, enduring, lasting, fattening, gloriously satisfying kind of love.
Don't think about it. Don't count the calories. Just eat, enjoy it with family, and tomorrow?
Go buy a bigger pair of jeans.
1 comment:
You never told me you blog. So secretive. Anyway, I'll let you in on an Italian secret. There is a whole cultural DMZ on whether or not fry the meatballs. Sicilians, we fry :)
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