Goat Cheese Lasagna and Apple Pie

These crisp fall like days are calling for comfort food and autumnal dishes.  Now that Storkbite is staying up later and later, it’s hard to muster the energy to be creative and well fed.  I decided to “take the day off” yesterday and stay home to knit and make apple pie.  Storkbite’s Grandma came last month with a load of apples from the organic farm in Indiana and I still had apples in cold storage that needed to be processed.  Is it a Midwestern thing to melt cheddar cheese over a slice of warm apple pie?  If you haven’t tried it, you should do so.

Goat Cheese Lasagna

I was uncertain how this would turn out; however, I must say that I knocked it out of the park.  Not only was it easy and created in shifts, it was comforting on a chilly evening.

I used Barilla flat lasagna noodles.  Layered lasagna noodles with bechamel (1/4 cup butter melted with 1/4 cup flour, add 2 1/4 cups milk and bring to a boil, simmer until thickened), cooked ground turkey, sauteed yellow and red peppers and goat cheese.  There was no particular order to the layering, it was kind of a mess actually.  Once the dish was full, I added the remaining bechamel and some shredded parmesan cheese.  I baked it for about 20 minutes until golden brown at 375.  It was so warm, melted and delicious. I’m having left-overs for lunch now!

Apple Pie

Lattice top apple pie is a fall treat. This one got souped up with dried bing cherries, golden raisins and pecans.  Simply make a pie crust (look below if you actually want to do that!) and then add your mixture of cored quartered apples, raisins, cherries and nuts together with 2 tbs. of flour, 1 tsp of cinnamon and the juice of 1 lemon.  Turn it all together and fill your pie shell.  Weave a pretty lattice, paint it with butter, dust it with sugar and bake it for about an hour at 350 until golden brown.

Serve to husband / boyfriend / partner in the evening a la mode for unexpected results.

Pie Dough

This is the secret family recipe:

1. 2 cups flour
2. 2/3 c. frozen lard
3. Pinch of salt
4. 6 – 10 tbs of ice water

Combine flour and lard in a large bowl with forks or a pastry cutter until it forms pea size bits.  Add salt.  Add ice water a bit at a time and combine until it forms a ball.  This takes time and you must be careful not to over do it or it becomes tough.  Be gentle and go slow.  Lots of love makes a better pie crust.  Don’t even try to substitute butter or shortening.  It’s not the family recipe if you don’t use lard.

Duck and Italian Sausage

Storkbite’s Papa and I got into an argument one night when we were at the park entertaining Storkbite.  He just couldn’t wait for me to make lentils and churn out some quasi-Indian food.  He stomped his feet all the way home, past all the grocery stores and restaurants that we could have ducked into and gotten prepared food.  I was determined to EAT at home that night and not let all my vegetables go to waste.  I came up with a delicious sausage dish.  On a day that I was more prepared, Storkbite and I found our self hanging out at the butcher sample cured meats, so bought our self my favorite – duck breast!  That was a splurge and well worth the investment because I whacked it in half and saved the other breast in the freezer for another day.

Sausage over Zucchini and Pappardelle

In the case I had a container of my very own homemade basic sauce and nice pappardelle noodles which are big and fat.  I just started up my grill pan and layered on the zucchini and sausage.  Once the noodles were done I put it all together – the layer of defrosted sauce, grilled zucchini strips, and the grilled sausage.  Mozzarella chunks over the top that got nice and melted really topped it off with some delicious richness.  This was completed in as long as it took to boil water and make pasta which translates to as long as it took Papa to give Storkbite a bath.  Once she was all cleaned up she sat at the table and enjoyed heaping spoonfuls to Mama’s basic sauce.

Duck, Duck, Goose

Wow, duck is my favorite and it’s so easy!  You get the breast and slice the fat side so it lays flat when you are searing it and give it a sprinkle of salt and pepper.  Simply put it in a really hot cast iron pan on the stove top. I like my Le Creuset red fryer.  Put it on the pan and leave it alone.  After it’s good and ready, flip it over.  Don’t over cook it because it’s good when it’s still bleeding.

On the side were some green beans almandine and buttered noodles.  Very simple and delicious – just saute your green beans with almonds, olive oil, salt and pepper.  With a nice glass of wine it was a great dinner.  Unfortunately I sent Papa out for the wine last minute and he brought back a very unsatisfactory bottle.  I guess I will have to remember to get totally prepared the next time.

Fried Chicken and Polenta

Some nights are healthier than others at Storkbite’s house.  Papa has been working hard lately, so I decided to reward him with the best fried chicken I could make.  Because he loves it so much he even got involved in the production process so everybody won.  Polenta night means that our coffers are empty, I’m out of ideas and there isn’t any time for preparation.  Here is what we came up with.

Fried Chicken and Biscuits

Even though fried food is totally unhealthy, I did my best to select free-range anti-biotic free bird for the project.  It all got washed, dried, dredged in flour, then in buttermilk, then in panko bread crumbs souped up with Old Bay and salt.  Into the hot hot hot oil the little birds went.  We ended up with best fried chicken I’ve ever made.

The biscuit recipe came from the Joy of Cooking with two amendments: instead of shortening I use LARD (you know it, manteca, ummmm), and instead of milk I used buttermilk.   Lard is one of those guilty pleasures, it really does make a pie crust and a biscuit more crumbly, and if you don’t eat it every day you might live until your 65.  I’m willing to take the risk and I’m going to feed it to my baby too.   You will be pleased to know that the thought crossed our mind to fry the chicken in lard, but we did exercise some self-restraint.  I served roasted potato chips on the side.

Polenta, Chard and Yellow Tomatoes

Sometimes I run out of ideas and processing all the vegetables the CSA is bringing on becomes and arduous task.  In this case I baked up some polenta rounds and sauteed chard and yellow tomatoes in olive oil and garlic.  Once the vegetables were tender enough to consume, I layered it on top of the polenta rounds.  With a little cubed fresh mozzarella and a dusting of parmesan cheese it turned out to be an excellent and quick dinner and lunch the day after.  For not having a plan it turned out to be a very rewarding and visually appealing treat.