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.

Copious Amonts of Zucchini

It’s a bumper crop for zucchini this year - at least from our CSA.   I’m almost running out of ideas on how to process it.  Storkbite is consuming her fair share, it was her first “real” food after all.  I’m not sick of it yet, but it’s getting real hard to be creative.  There has been an overload of eggplant as well.  I’m doing better with it than last year, the last one is going into a baba ganouge today.  I don’t think we will see the end of it though now tomatos are abundant.  My new breakfast is toast, grilled tomato and a friend egg.  Here are a few highlights from the past few days:

Eggplant Rollatini

This was a really easy dish that was prepped over the course of a few days.  One thing I’m learning is take time to prep when you can get it. Storkbite doesn’t allow me time to actually enjoy what I’m doing in the kitchen now that she slithers.  On the day I got seven eggplants, I sliced them all the long way and grilled them with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper.  When they cooled, I neatly piled them into a plastic container and stashed them in the refrigerator.  A few days later (not sure how many) I pulled out my eggplant and made the rollatini.

Simply use a small container of ricotta cheese, mix in an egg, salt, pepper and chopped parsly. Combine it in a mixing bowl and set aside.  Add a ladle full of some sauce (in this case my very own Basic Sauce) to the bottom of your olive oiled baking dish and begin to roll your eggplant.  It doesn’t have to be pretty and sometimes it’s easier to put two eggplant peices together laid flat.  Add a dollop of cheese and roll.  Once you have all your rollatini in the dish, cover it them with sauce and shredded mozzarella cheese. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes until the cheese is golden brown.  This was a Papa pleaser - he loves cheesy baked goodness and it’s a great way to use up your eggplants.

Salmon Loaf

I have no idea what to call this except “Salmon Loaf” which sounds horrible because it was so delicious!  I realized that I had nice grilled salmon left over from the onigiri which was just sitting in the refrigerator calling my name.  Storkbite’s Papa was so taken with this that he wants it worked into our regular menu.  It was very easy so that is fine with me.  The filling consists of chopped grilled salmon, chopped scallions, chives, black sesame seeds and a dash of sesame oil to combine it.  Then I wrapped the filling in sheets of puffed pastry dough available in the freezer section of any super market.  Once it was nicely rolled up I put slits on the top to let the steam out, brushed them with a little oil and sprinkled with black sesame seeds.  I baked these at 425 (as indicated on the dough package) for 30 minutes until golden brown and puffy.  I served by slicing these through the pre-sliced slits which helps to keep the pretty puff pastry in tact.  With a simple salad these were a huge hit, and made great room-temp leftovers for lunch.

Mini Burgers

One of my favorite things is a mini burger. It satisfies my itch for a burger and doesn’t weigh me down after eating 1 lb. of beef.  I like to buy mini dinner rolls at the bakery and make them at home.  In this case I used ground turkey, doctered it up with an egg, salt, pepper, chopped scallions and diced green peppers which I combined in a mixing bowl.  I grilled zucchini chips for toppings and cut up tomatos.  Once I formed my mini burgers into balls, I grilled them on my trusty grill pan.

These got assembled on a toasted bun with olive oil mayo, grilled zuccs, cheddar cheese and fresh tomatos.  They knocked my socks off and were probably on the healthier side of things too.

Basic Sauce - Part II

In the previous post I mentioned that it took at least a month to use the delicious freezer sauce, but alas it took three days.  Some of the incarnations include: eggplant pizza, ravioli and the guest submission sauce over shells.  I would like to thank Mr. Short for his exceptional photograph and note that Mr. Short Jr. ate a walloping five shells with this magic sauce which was an unprecedented amount!  This sauce wins toddler seal of approval and Storkbite even liked it off a pizza bone (i.e. crust).

Eggplant Pizza

There was a serious abundance of eggplant in Thursday’s farm box so I roasted at least four eggplants and stored them in the refrigerator.  For this pizza I got crust a my local parlor, loaded on the sauce, added a layer of roasted eggplant, and smothered it with shredded mozzarella.   The pizza went into a 450 degree oven for at least 45 minutes and turned out to be Sicilian style.  As mentioned, Storkbite polished off a pizza bone and loved it.

Ravioli and Sauce

Nothing special about this meal because it was on a night that Papa worked late and Mama had to do all the bedtime routine soup to nuts. For those nights we have out secret stock of ravioli from the ravioli maker in the Bronx near Arthur Ave.  The shop only sells ravioli and there is a darling little old man that puts a lot of love into each little square. We buy it by the box and freeze it in smaller portions.  The special homemade sauce really kicks it up and notch and the whole thing is plated and served in the time it takes to boil water.

Shells and Sauce

Mrs. Short kindly looked after Storkbite the other day while I went to get a little work done on my face (not really, but I like the way that sounds), so she got some magic sauce to review.  Mr. Short and his fancy camera took this photo which blows all the other photos on Storkbite Stew out of the water.  The best part of this dinner was that it’s toddler approved!  The young Short and friend of Storkbite kept asking for more.  That means that he got several vegetables at once including: zucchini, eggplant, tomato, garlic, basil, and green pepper.  That’s reassuring.