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Sometimes you just have to disregard your family’s dietary idiosyncrasies, and cook whatever you’re able to. Tonight was one of those nights. We didn’t have much to make dinner with, despite having spent $380 at Costco over the weekend, and Rose was being a pill about going out to the store. Screw them, I thought to myself, I’m going to make a blatantly healthful vegetarian meal they’re going to have to suck it up for a change. Yeah!

Alas, I love my family too much to be that cruel to them. I gave them a huge pile of week-old prosciutto as a concession.

The meal was an odd mix, and I wouldn’t serve the two main dishes together again, but I liked all the pieces very much. 101 Cookbooks’ Lemony Chickpea Stir-fry was good, even without the kale and tofu. I was pleasantly surprised by how well the baked tofu with miso came out. So much so, that the recipe is below.

• Baked Tofu with Miso Dressing and Peas •
1 package extra firm tofu
vegetable or canola oil
1 cup thawed frozen peas
2 tablespoons white or yellow miso*
1-2 tablespoons sugar (to taste)
2 tablespoons seasoned rice vinegar
4 tablespoons vegetable or canola oil
1/4 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger

The tofu is from this recipe, and paraphrased here. Wrap the tofu in 4-5 paper towels and press between two plates weighted down with cans or books, for 30 minutes. Replace towels and repeat for another 30 minutes. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking tray with parchment paper and brush with vegetable or canola oil. Cut tofu into 1″ cubes and roll on oiled parchment to coat on all sides. Distribute tofu cubes evenly, on tray, with space between each cube, and bake for about 40 minutes, flipping halfway through. Remove from oven and set aside to cool.

For the sauce, combine miso, sugar and rice vinegar. Whisk in oil until emulsified and then stir in fresh ginger. 

Combine cooled tofu, miso sauce and peas and serve.

*I used red miso tonight but I think this dish would be prettier and have a more mellow flavor with white, or yellow miso.

Morroccan Carrot & Chickpea Salad from 101 Cookbooks is a winner. I happen to love carrots, cumin, almonds, chick peas, lemon, and pretty much everything else in this salad, except dates. The texture of dates just doesn’t work for me. Instead, I used unsulphered dried apricots, the kind that are brown instead of orange and taste a bit like figs. They worked perfectly.

The chicken was a riff on the Chicken with Wine, Lemon, and Butter Sauce that I’ve posted about so many times, except that I left out the white wine and lemon. Instead, I sauteed a handful of crushed, fresh, sage leaves in 2 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet, until they were crispy. I removed the sage leaves, added a bit more butter and a dash of olive oil and cooked the chicken as in the white wine & lemon sauce recipe. When the chicken was done, I topped it with the sage leaves.

A tip for this chicken recipe, or the original, is to buy those boneless, skinless cutlets that are already pretty thin. That way you can avoid the mess and save a step by not having to pound the breasts thin.

I’m a serious dairy-junkie. But for love, I am willing to leave it out, for a night or two. Perhaps.

Shane has a cold and doesn’t like to eat dairy when he is congested. Most of the soups I make contain butter, cheese or cream of some sort. Fennel & Carrot Soup is dairy-free, and delicious! I made mine vegetarian, vegan too, see notes below*.

Shane is not a big soup guy. Because of his size, it’s not one of the things he considers a ‘proper meal.’ He had two bowls and even said it was really good soup. This is huge.

We had our soup with grilled bread. Rose had a side of sausage because she was prepared not to like the soup. Grilled bread for dipping made her a convert.

*Notes: I had two hunches about the soup recipe when I first read it. One was that it would need more salt and the other was that with the carrots and onion quartered, the fennel would cook way too fast if sliced 1/4″ thin as the recipe instructs. If  I were to do this again, I’d either slice the fennel 3/4″ thick or slice the carrots and onion into eighths instead of quarters. To make the soup vegetarian, and a bit saltier, I used 3 1/2 teaspoons of Vegetable Better Than Bouillon, dissolved in 2 1/2 cups of water, instead of using broth. If you like things less-salty, use less bouillon, you can always add more later since it’s a paste.

This is our all-time favorite lasagna. It’s light, delicious, simple and delicate. By light, I don’t mean lite (God forbid). What I mean is that it’s not the heavy, spicy, meaty, cheesy kind of lasagna you get in a typical Italian-American restaurant, or at a deli.

My mom, Rita, first gave me the recipe, verbally, with no quantities or measurements and a lot of expressions like “just blob it around.” She will tell you that it’s the kind of lasagna they make in the North of Italy, where her people are from.

The result is thin, refreshing, tasty and simple, and also quite easy (though not quick) to prepare. Tonight was the first time I’ve recorded the recipe, and I’m really excited, because it came out perfectly!

I use a sauce adapted from Marcella Hazan (see below for recipes), for sentimental reasons, and also because it’s a wonderful sauce. You could probably use another sauce, you just want it to be on the lighter, simpler side, and not heavily spiced or too dark and thick.

For cheese, you need either bufala mozzarella or regular fresh mozzarella, the bright white kind that comes in a ball. I often use the bufala from Costco (see my Costco shopping list here).

The recipe uses bechamel sauce instead of ricotta cheese. The bechamel, plus the fresh mozzarella is what makes it creamy and light.

• Rita’s Lasagna •

For the Tomato Sauce
One recipe simple tomato sauce like this or this. I recommend using this brand of San Marzano tomatoes. 

For the Bechamel
(adapted from Trattoria Cooking by Biba Caggiano)
2 cups milk (whole or 2%)
4 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons and 2 teaspoons flour
salt to taste

For Assembly
12 sheets Barilla No-Boil lasagna pasta sheets (they come in a package of 16, you will only need 12)
1 ball fresh mozzarella, approx 3/4 to 1lb OR 4, approx 2″ diameter balls bufala mozzarella
1/4 cup finely grated pecorino cheese

Make the tomato sauce first, instructions are at the links above, it will take 45 minutes. Season with salt sauce to taste.

While the tomato sauce is cooking, make the Bechamel. In a saucepan, heat milk over low heat so that it is warm. Melt butter in another saucepan over medium heat. When the butter foams, add the flour and stir with a wooden spoon, constantly, for two minutes, do not brown. Remove from heat and add the milk stirring vigorously to avoid lumps. Return pan to medium-low heat and cook, stirring, for 3-5 minutes until the sauce is thickened. Add salt and taste for seasoning, keeping in mind whether your mozzarella is salted or not. Remove from heat and set aside.

When the tomato sauce is done. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Oil a 13×9″ glass baking dish with olive oil. Using a wooden spoon, scoop two spoonfuls of bechamel into the bottom of the baking dish and smear it around to distribute, you don’t have to be meticulous at all. Layer 4 sheets of pasta, they will overlap slightly, in the bottom of the dish. Spread about a third of the remaining bechamel sauce over the noodles.

Distribute half the mozzarella over the pasta and bechamel. If you are using regular fresh mozzarella, halve the ball and cut it into approximately 1/4″ to 1/2″ slices (see photo below). If you are using bufala mozzarella, you can just rip little chunks off of the balls and distribute evenly.

Spoon about 1/3 of the tomato sauce over the cheese. Repeat with 4 sheets of pasta, another third of the bechamel, remaining mozzarella and and another third of the tomato sauce. For the final layer use 4 sheets pasta, the remaining bechamel and the remaining tomato sauce. Sprinkle pecorino evenly over the top of the lasagne.

Cover baking dish with foil and bake for 35 minutes, until bubbly and soft. Remove from oven and let sit for 10 minutes before serving. The lasagna will be thin, wonderful and gooey (particularly gooey if you use bufala mozzarella). Serve with a simple green salad.

Note: This recipe doesn’t require you to be meticulous or precise. If you have a kid, this is a great dish to let them help assemble.

For our Superbowl dinner, Rose and Shane got wings and fries from UFC (that stands for Unidentified Flying Chicken, seriously). And they were happy.

For me it was a big salad. This afternoon, after a week sans raw veggies (tender stomach), I found myself dreaming of giant, 90’s-style salads. Remember those? The problem being, that I couldn’t quite recall what was in those giant 90’s style salads besides artichoke hearts and spinach.

Instead, I made a salad of romaine, crimini mushrooms, raw sweet potato and wheat berries. The yummy, melt-in-your-mouth creamy, dressing recipe is below. It would work on any hearty salad. ‘Hearty’ meaning, less tender, young leafy greens, and more heavy greens (romaine, spinach, kale, escarole) and crunchy extras.

• Creamy Dressing •
2 tablespoons creme fraiche
1 1/2 teaspoons grainy mustard
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil
salt to taste (about 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon)

Combine the mustard & creme fraiche, mix in the vinegar, and season with salt. Add the olive oil and mix with a fork until well emulsified.

Shane is at his studio, Rose and I took it easy tonight. She had sausage and pasta. I had a nice wheatberry salad with roasted zucchini and tomatoes and little cubes of fontina cheese. It would be great over salad greens.

Last night, after dinner, Shane went and got the prosciutto from the fridge and ate it all. I think he might have been feeling meat deprived.

I had him pick up a steak tonight. Shane likes his steak with oven fries, these are our current favorite.

We had a ball of fresh mozzarella in the fridge that needed to be used. I made a ‘casual’ Caprese salad with roasted eggplant to bulk it up a bit, and also because tomatoes are hardly worth eating at this time of year.

It turns out Rose has Strep, not a stomach virus. She’s feeling better but doesn’t have much of an appetite, and is still on pastina soup. Shane is away for a few more days. The moment he got a break in his stomach virus (which may, or may not be Strep), he took off for the biennial, 5 day collage-a-thon, 100 Hours in the Woodshed IV.

I figured I should take advantage of my family’s absence and poor health, and experiment with some recipes. As a mostly vegetarian, sometimes pescetarian, I feel like I should eat eggs a lot. But more often than not, eggs don’t taste good to me. This has been a lifelong thing and I don’t know what makes an egg work for me and what doesn’t, except that most of the time a lot of cheese helps.

Tonight I combined one egg, an ounce of grated cheddar, an ounce of chevre, a tablespoon of half & half, and salt & pepper. I poured them into a greased ramekin and baked them for about 15 minutes at 350. The result was okay, but needs improvement. I wanted them to be creamier and custardier, I think. Perhaps more cream or (gasp) egg?

If you have suggestions, please do leave them in the comments section. Thanks!