Post One: The Lasagna
I've been threatening for a few weeks now to make meat sauce, followed by lasagna from scratch. The meat sauce I've done many times and, as usual, I planned on making a large batch and then freezing most of it. The lasagna I haven't made from scratch before, but I've made each of the components and figured it couldn't be too much of a culinary stretch.
Unfortunately, I decided to do my meat-sauce-shopping at Costco. This meant I walked out with 6 large (LARGE) cans of tomatoes and a case of tomato paste, 10lbs of ground beef and 6lbs of pork chops. I bought my 10 large Italian sausages at Mr. Prime Beef and went home to dig out the 20qt sauce pot from the garage. Thankfully I found tons of beautiful fresh basil at New Sagaya (a downright holiday miracle during an Alaskan winter), and I still had a wedge of romano left in my fridge, since Costco was, yet again, out of romano.
My recipe only called for 8lbs of ground meat, so I portioned off two pounds and used the rest to make my meatballs. I rolled all 8lbs of the meatballs, with the parsley, garlic, bread, romano, salt, pepper, etc... only to realize at the last minute that I'd left out the eggs. With 30 minutes left until I was being picked up for a snowboarding weekend, I managed to squish them all together again, incorporate the eggs, roll them into meatballs again, and then, miraculously, get them all browned and into the sauce before I ran out the door.
Needless to say, I ended up with plenty of sauce for a tray or two of lasagna.
On Sunday night, following the snowboarding trip, I had a few friends over to help eat the lasagna. Little did they know that they'd be making it for me as well. Alisa and Michael were absolute champs about rolling the pasta dough through the machine. Matt did a fantastic job with spreading out the cheese mixture. Joe was in charge of tending to and prepping the meatsauce. Maggie offered quite a bit of moral support. I hovered. A lot. In a very Type-A-ish kind of way...
While the lasagna was cooking, folks stood around the counter, tore off pieces of bread and dipped them in a big bowl of sauce that had been set out. It felt like being back home.
The lasagna seemed to be a hit, and I had twice as much as I needed, so we froze one tray of it. I put the rest of the sauce in containers and now I have a relatively full freezer...
You'll have to excuse the iPhone photo. I was too lazy to break out a real camera.
Part Two: The Sandra Lee Aftermath
As for the extra beef, one pound of it was used to create some make-shift tacos on Friday night, and the other pound was still in my fridge on Monday, along with a random assortment of other leftovers which Joe kindly placed in my fridge prior to boarding his flight back east. These included a small container of some sort of macaroni and cheese.
Understanding that I didn't want to waste food but unsure of how to make use of what was in the fridge, I decided to take some inspiration from the awe-inspiring Sandra Lee and just throw everything in a pot and call it, "beautiful" and "amazing." It was honestly very liberating, especially since I knew that no one would have to eat it except for me.
I browned the beef and seasoned it with a random cross-ethnic assortment of spices in true "fusion" fashion. I think there was some Ancho chili and cayenne, some curry powder, some turmeric, maybe some celery seed, a couple bay leaves and a touch of garam masala? I don't really know. I just had one of those, "I never use any of my 16,000 different spices!" panic moments, so I started tearing the plastic seals off a bunch and dumping them in.
After the meat was browned, I went searching through my cabinets and found two small cans of diced tomatoes and a can of kidney beans. Those went in. I found a can of chickpeas. Also went in. I looked in the freezer and found half a bag of frozen diced onions, sauteed and in. Few leftover cloves of garlic: met the same fate. Chopped up some of the leftover parsley from the meatballs, that went in, and then I added a quart of organic chicken stock. To my ground beef. Yeah...
Lastly, I looked at the two tupperware containers in my fridge, one of which had some extra meatballs that didn't make it into the sauce, and the other had the mac and cheese from Joe. After a moment of hesitation and guilt, I dumped them both into the pot.
What I ended up with with actually quite tasty. In a "Thank goodness I'm the only one that will be eating this" type of way. It's almost like an Indian-inspired pasta e fagioli.
Here's an iPhone photo from the scene of the crime:
And that is what I will be eating over the holidays! Quite a change from last year's menu but certainly more efficient...
I will leave you with an article that makes me both horrified and grateful (that I've never been subjected to such an abomination), since we're on a Sandra Lee kick: Sandra vs. Mrs. Cuomo
And this follow-up: Why, Sandra? Why?!?
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