Kenny Cooks

Pasta Carbonara

2009-10-05T22:33:00.009-04:00

This past Sunday, I had a couple friends over to watch football. I wanted to make a dinner that didn't take much effort on my part, but would deliver an insane amount of flavor. My friend Sean is a huge bacon and onion fan and I had a ton of both from a recent Sam's Club excursion. So I decided on a pasta, but not just any pasta. The king of pastas, Pasta Carbonara.

Ingredients:

3/4 lb of bacon
4 cloves of garlic
1 medium red onion
4 large eggs
3/4 lb of Parmigiano Reggiano
2 Tablespoons of butter
1 cup of white wine
1 cup of beef stock
1 pound of fresh linguini
large handful of fresh parsley
Crushed Red Pepper
Kosher Salt
Fresh Ground Pepper

First up, take your bacon and chop it up. If you throw a couple extra slices in here, it won't hurt the dish at all.

Throw it in a pan with a little pepper. Cook the bacon until it's barely crispy. We still want it a little chewy.

In the meantime, dice up your red onion.

And dice up your garlic.

Remove your cooked bacon from the pan and set aside on a plate. DO NOT throw out the bacon grease, that would be a terrible tragedy. You can remove some of the renderings, but save at LEAST two to three tablespoons to cook the onion and garlic.

Throw your onions in the pan with the bacon grease along with salt and pepper. About this point you should be getting a pan ready with water to cook your pasta.

When the onions are soft, add the garlic.

Cook for a few minutes until the garlic softens and smells wonderful, then remove. Do NOT take this pan to the sink though (or even remove it from the heat). Do you see all that brown stuff on the bottom of the pan? We are going to turn that into deliciousness.

Start by hitting your hot pan with the cup of white wine. Get a wooden spoon or some sort of spatula to get those brown bits off the pan. Did you drop your pasta yet? My water is boiling and the pasta is down.

Then follow it with the cup of beef stock and the two tablespoons of butter and let it cook down. We will reduce this mixture by about half.

While your sauce is reducing, grate your wedge of parmigiano reggiano into a large bowl. The bowl must be large enough to hold all of your ingredients including the pasta.

To the cheese, add 4 eggs and about a 1/2 of a teaspoon of crushed red pepper. You can add more if you like it spicier.

Now add your parsley, freshly chopped. Don't be shy here. It won't hurt.

Mix it all up with some.....fresh ground pepper. It just goes so well with this entire dish.

This is what your delicious mixture should look like now.

Drain your pasta. I have linguini here, but you can use any type you want. I prefer the wider noodles for a royal dish such as this.

Drop the pasta in to your mixture while it's still hot. This is of the utmost importance. The heat will melt the cheese and cook the eggs. Add you're 3/4 cup of reduce mixture at this point now too. Just pour it onto the pasta. Mix this up really well.

Serve with bread and a nice glass of wine. Just writing this recipe makes me hungry again. This is a dish I will definitely revisit very soon.

Crab and Shrimp Raviolis

2009-09-29T17:09:00.011-04:00

Last year, I went to a cooking expo in Washington, DC. Giada De Laurentiis was there and made a delicious looking butternut squash pasta with shrimp. After the event, I made a similar dish, but added a few tweeks of my own (like white wine to the sauce and swapping pasta for ravioli to name a few). It was a huge success. Raviolis are easier to make than most people think and I encourage everyone to try it.

Ingredients:

1 lb of blue crab meat
1 lb of shrimp
5 Tbsp of butter
4 cloves of garlic
1 yellow onion
2 packages of wonton wrappers
1 butternut squash
1 cup of chicken stock
1 cup of wine
Fresh basil
Old Bay seasoning
Kosher salt
Fresh ground pepper

First, seperate about 3/4 of your crab meat and put it in a bowl. Save the other 1/4lb for garnish at the end.

Next, de-head, de-shell, de-vein and remove the tail from your shrimp. You can buy them this way already, but where's the fun in that? Reserve 2 shrimp for every guest you will be serving (for garnish again).

Chop up the shrimp and add them to the crab meat.

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a pan.

We are trying to clarify the butter, so let cook until the water boils away and the milk fat browns and sinks to the bottom.

Filter this into a glass and you have clarified butter. Add the butter to the crab/shrimp mixture

Add a tablespoon of Old Bay Seasoning. Once again, a must for seafood in Maryland.

Add a healthy dose of Kosher salt and a little freshly ground black pepper.

Chop up 2 cloves of garlic and add to the mix.

Dice a medium yellow onion and add to the mix.

Chop up a small handful of basil leaves and add to the mix.

Stir it all up and this wonderful mixture will become the filling for our raviolis.

These are wonton wrappers. You can find them in your produce section of the grocery store. They make making ravioli so simple. You don't have to mess with creating your own dough when you can sandwich these together.

Here is my setup for making ravioli. On the left, I have the wonton wrappers covered with a moist paper towel to prevent them from drying out. Next to them, I have the crab and shrimp filling. I also have a little dish filled with water to help me seal the edges. I have a large cutting board for my workspace. And finally, a tiny spoon to scoop the filling and a regular fork to crimp the edges. This is a double setup b/c I had a wonderful sous-chef for this meal.

Place a tiny amount of mixture in the center of one of the raviolis. Wet your finger and run it around the outside edge of the half-ravioli and then place another wrapper on top. It is very important to try and remove as much air as possible as that can make them fall apart.

When you are sure all your edges are sealed and the only thing inside is filling (no air), you can crimp the edge with a fork like this:

I have a piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet here. This is where I put my finished raviolis. Any extra raviolis will go in the freezer just like this for an hour. That is enough to individually freeze them and you can then put them in a ziploc bag. If you won't have extras, just store these in the refrigerator until we are ready to cook.

Take a butternut squash and chop off the top. Then peel the skin off the whole thing. Scoop the seeds out of the base and perform a rough dice on them.

Toss the squash in a pan with two more cloves of garlic and two tablespoons of butter. Don't forget the salt and pepper.

Cook, stirring occasionally until squash is soft. Add one cup of wine to the mix. It doesn't matter if it comes out of a box or bottle.

Add one cup of chicken stock and let it cook down and reduce. We want this to be a little thinner than a regular red pasta sauce, but not much.

When it's reduce enough, throw it in a blender to smooth it out.

In another pan, cook your reserved shrimp and set aside.

In the meantime, melt a tablespoon of butter in a pan and add the left over 1/4 lb of crab meat seasoned with a little Old Bay. We are just trying to warm this up, it's already cooked.

Add a large handful of chopped basil to the butternut squash sauce and leave on low.

I assume you have a large pot of water boiling by now. If not, you should have done that 5 steps ago. If so, go ahead and drop your ravioli. They should only take a couple minutes. Drain them when complete.

To serve, put a few raviolis on the plate and spoon sauce on top. Add the crab mixture and place the shrimp on top. Garlic bread is a great side dish.
Now you have no excuse not to make your own ravioli. It's simple to do and you can customize them however you want. Here's one more picture of the finished product:

Garlic Chicken

2009-09-22T21:30:00.007-04:00

Wow, long time no post. I apologize for my disappearance from the Internet, however I am back with the EASIEST dish you will ever make (and it's quite delicious too). Garlic Chicken is a wonderful way to serve roasted chicken and you can do it in under 10 steps! The basic premise of this dish is to slowly roast the chicken with garlic until the garlic caramelizes. This will turn the bitter garlic into a sweet treat!

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken
1/2 cup of olive oil
1 lemon
30-40 cloves of garlic
Fresh thyme
Your favorite chicken rub
Kosher salt
Fresh ground pepper

First, take your chicken and break it down to 8 pieces. You can buy a chicken that is already chopped up, but it's a little more expensive and everyone should know how to butcher their own chicken anyway.

You should end up with eight pieces. 2 wings, 2 legs, and 4 breasts (cut the two full breasts in half horizontally). Make sure you save the backbone and all those other pieces for chicken stock and clean your counters with an antibacterial soap if your chicken touches it like I know mine did.

Sprinkle your chicken with your favorite chicken rub and a little salt and pepper (both on top of and underneath the skin). I am using McCormick's Grill Mates Chicken Rub but feel free to substitute with your favorite seasoning.

Now here is the toughest step, peeling clove after clove after clover of garlic. It's a painstaking chore and luckily my wonderful girlfriend volunteered (or was forced, it's a grey area) to do this step for me. Bless her little heart :)

Next get a roasting pan and liberally place garlic and thyme across the bottom.

Place the chicken on top of that.

Next, add some lemons (sliced up in eighths).

Then comes more garlic and thyme.

Drizzle the whole thing with the half cup of olive oil and then throw into an oven that's been preheated to 350°.

Leave it in there for a solid 90 minutes. The last couple minutes I like to turn on the broiler to get a nice char on the skin. The final result is wonderfully flavorful, falls off the bone and should look surprisingly like this:

Salsa Verde

2009-08-07T22:02:00.004-04:00

My sister was having a BBQ over at her house and invited me. Naturally, I had to bring some sort of appetizer dish, so I went with 3 dips. My regular Fresh & Simple Salsa, guacamole, and this Salsa Verde. This has to be the easiest recipe I have posted on here, so you have no excuse not to make it.

Ingredients:

10 tomatillos
3 Jalapenos
3 cloves of Garlic
1 Large Onion
1 Lime
1 handful of fresh Cilantro
Olive Oil
Kosher Salt
Ground Black Pepper

Tomatillos are very similar to tomatoes (hence the name), however they have a papery husk wrapped around them and they are green. Start by peeling the husk off of all the tomatillos. Rinse them under water to get the sticky off and then cut them in half.

Take your jalapenos and cut them in half. If you like your salsa hot, leave all the seeds and veins in, if not, cut them out.

Peel three garlic cloves but don't dice them. Set them aside with the rest of the vegetables.

Take your onion and quarter it.

Place all of your vegetables in an oiled roasting pan. Drizzle oil over the top of them.

Generously sprinkle salt and pepper over the whole lot, then throw into a 400° preheated oven for 25 minutes.

After 25 minutes, your vegetables should look like this:

Throw them all in a blender with a handful of fresh cilantro and the juice of a lime (Thanks, Nikki!). I like to leave behind the tomatillo juice and then add it if the sauce is looking to thick.

I usually add a little bit more black pepper and serve with some tortilla chips. Didn't I tell you this recipe was easy? And quite delicious, if I may add.

Unfortunately, I will be out of town this coming week so I will miss next weeks update. I will be back with a fury after that though, so do not despair.

Cinnamon Rolls

2009-07-30T21:50:00.011-04:00

So, the other day, I am flipping through the channels trying to find something to watch. When I flip by Food Network and see Paula Dean. Hmm...I wonder what she is cooking. It was cinnamon rolls and they look delicious. I started thinking to myself "Flour, sugar, butter, yeast....I think I could make cinnamon rolls for work tomorrow." This is where the twist comes in, I can not take credit for the recipe it is not mine, nor is it Paula Dean's. I stole this recipe from the great Alton Brown. Let me introduce you to his "Overnight Cinnamon Rolls".

Ingredients

4 large egg yolks
1 large whole egg
1/4 cup of sugar
7.5 Tbsp of butter
6 oz of buttermilk
4 cups of all purpose flour
1 package of instant dry yeast
1 1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt
8 oz of light brown sugar
1 Tbsp of cinnamon
1/4 cup of cream cheese
3 Tbsp of milk
1.5 cups of confectioner sugar

Let's start by cracking some eggs. We are going to need 1 whole egg and 4 egg yolks. Save the white's for another day's healthy omelette.

Go ahead and follow that by dumping the buttermilk into the bowl with the eggs.

In goes the 1/4 cup of sugar.

Add 6 Tablespoons of melted butter.

Add 2 cups of flour.

On top of that goes the package of instant yeast.

Stir that up and add the salt.

Start working in another 1 1/4 cups of flour. If you have a stand mixer, put the dough hook attachment on and kneed for 10 minutes on low. If you are like me, and don't you are going to need to get your hands dirty. Take the dough out, place on a cutting board and go to town on it. Once the dough is soft and moist, but not sticky, dump it back in the bowl. Put a little oil over the top (so it doesn't dry out) and cover with plastic wrap.

In about 2-3 hours, your dough should have doubled in volume and should now look like this:

And, from the side:

Turn the dough out on a extra large cutting board or on your counter top. Whichever you choose, make sure you sprinkle with flour to prevent sticking.

Gentle shape the dough into a rectangle. Get yourself a rolling pin (or a floured wine bottle if you are short of a rolling pin) and roll into an 18" x 12" rectangle. Try to get the thickness of the dough even.

In a small bowl, or mixing cup, combine the brown sugar, cinnamon and a pinch of salt.

Melt a tablespoon and a half of butter and brush it along the dough.

While you are at it, go ahead and butter up your 9" x 13" baking dish.

Sprinkle your cinnamon mixture over the entire surface, save a 1/2" on the top-most horizontal edge.

Start rolling up the dough from the bottom to the top. I worked slowly here trying to get a tight roll and keeping things even. Then I tried to squeeze it down to get an even roll. It helped, but it was far from perfect.

Once it is all rolled up, get a serrated knife and start dividing it up into 1 1/2" segments. I used a serrated knife and applied very little pressure as I sawed through it so I wouldn't squish the rolls.

Throw all your rolls into your pan and cover tightly. Throw them in the refrigerator and let sit overnight. They will rise again and take up all the space in the pan. Try and pinch those loose ends together so the insides won't fall out.

I am a terrible morning person, so I made the icing the night before as well. It starts with 1/4 cup of cream cheese.

Add the 3oz of milk.

Then dump in all the confectioners sugar.

It doesn't look like it will mix in, but believe me it will. So, get that whisk out and get to work.

Now, previously I had mentioned that I am a terrible morning person, so I forgot to take pictures of the proofing process. Basically, all you have to do is boil some water, throw it in a shallow pan and place it in the cold oven with the cinnamon rolls for 30 minutes. This will help them puff up some more and let's face it, nobody wants little cinnamon rolls. Take the water and the rolls out, then preheat the oven to 350°. Once ready, throw in the rolls for about 30 minutes. Keep an eye on them the last 5-10 minutes though.

Then as they are cooling, dump all that beautiful icing all over them. They are far too hot to eat now, and they will actually absorb the icing while they cool down to an edible temperature.

I took these to work and my co-workers LOVED them. Needless to say, they did not last long. Thank you Alton Brown for making me look good, yet again. PS. Alton Brown's original recipe: Overnight Cinnamon Rolls.

BBQ Ribs

2009-07-23T16:18:00.002-04:00

Everyone knows that real barbecue is cooked over hardwoods at low temperatures for long periods of time. I love this process and miss the days that I would constantly monitor my smoker to maintain temperature while it slowly churned out the most heavenly meats I've ever tasted. Currently, I live in a condo, and unfortunately, I am not allowed to have an open fire within 50 feet of my building. It sort of ruins my balcony smoking/grilling and really takes a toll on my ability to make authentic 'cue. If you have a little time, this is a great recipe that, while it may not recreate the smokiness of BBQ, it will provide you with a delicious substitute with very little work.

Ingredients

3 lbs of Pork Spare Ribs
1/2 cup of BBQ sauce
Apple Cider Vinegar
1/2 cup of Smoked Paprika
1/4 cup of Chili Powder
1/4 cup of Dark Brown Sugar
2 tablespoons Onion Powder
2 tablespoons Garlic Powder
1/4 cup of Kosher Salt
1/4 cup of Ground Pepper

Preheat your oven to 300°. We want to slowly cook the ribs to help break down some of that connective tissue that makes it a tough cut of meat. Let's start it off by making our dry rub. This is a thing that after you make it once, you don't really have to measure ingredients anymore. I know when I make it, it's a little different everytime but always delicious. This will make more dry rub then you need, but it's great on chicken or pork as well. I've even done it on salmon before (to great success). Here's the breakdown of the ingredients.

Start with the 1/2 cup of smoked paprika in a large bowl.

Add the 1/4 cup of chili powder to that.

Then add the garlic powder.

Follow that with the onion powder.

And the ground pepper.

Toss in the salt.

And finally, the brown sugar.

Stir it all up and you have a wonderful BBQ dry rub.

Take your spare ribs and give them a once over. A lot of potential here.

If they have any membrane on the back, go ahead and score them or remove the membrane completely. This will help our dry rub sink in. As you can see, I was feeling lazy and just scored them instead of full removal.

Completely cover the ribs in rub and.....RUB it in!!! That's why they call it a rub, you have to get your hands dirty. There is no way around this. Make sure you get both the front and back and don't forget the sides and any nooks and crannys.

Place ribs on aluminum foil covered (for clean up) sheet pan and bake for 150 minutes. That's two and a half hours for those that are mathematically challenged.

Let's make our BBQ sauce. If you're a regular here at this blog (Hi Mom!), then you have seen me do this before. I will make the BBQ sauce tangier by adding vinegar to it. This will also thin it out a bit, but that is more than OK because it will thicken back up while in the oven. Start by combining the 1/2 cup of BBQ sauce and with 2 tablespoons of your apple cider vinegar.

Toss in a good size pinch of your leftover dry rub and then mix everything together.

Are your 150 minutes up yet? Due to the magic of Internet time, mine are and my ribs are looking like this.

Bump the oven up to 375° because it's time to give the ribs a good BBQ baste. Spoon (or brush) the BBQ sauce all over the rib. Throw back in the oven for 15 minutes. Baste again and then follow with another 15-20 minutes in the oven.

Serve with your favorite french fries and a whole heap of paper towels. Guaranteed to not last long.

White Lasagna

2009-07-11T12:02:00.010-04:00

To tell you the truth, I just sort of made up this recipe on the go. I had family in and one of them was a vegetarian (poor girl, I don't know where she went wrong). I was told I had to fix dinner for about a dozen people and I wanted something that I could actually talk to my family while they were visiting. I was thinking of a spinach lasagna with a cream sauce. Then I thought mushrooms would be better. Then I had an epiphany. I could make a little lasagna that was vegetarian and a big lasagna that was meat-a-licious. Or Seafood-a-licious. What about shrimp? Genius, I say. And a delicious recipe was born.

Ingredients
10 oz of ricotta cheese
1 handful of fresh parsley plus extra for garnish
1 egg
2 packages of frozen spinach (thawed and drained)
1 medium onion
5 cloves of garlic
12 oz of mushrooms
1.5 lbs of shrimp (I used 36-40 count, it's cheaper and we don't need huge shrimp in the lasagna)
1 lb of lasagna noodles
3 cups of mozarella cheese
3/4 lb of Pecorino Romano cheese
6 tablespoons All purpose flour
6 cups of milk
2 tablespoons of italian seasoning
2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper
an utterly unhealthy amount of butter
old bay seasoning
kosher salt
fresh ground pepper

First up, the ricotta cheese mixture. Dump the ricotta in a bowl with the egg and a couple grinds of black bepper. Remember I was making two lasagnas here, so you don't need two eggs. Hopefully, it won't confuse you too much.

Chop up your handful of parsley.

Now add it to the ricotta and egg and stir it all up. Set aside in the refrigerator for later.

Chop up 3 cloves of garlic.

Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a pan.

Once melted, add the mushrooms, a generous amount of kosher salt and ground pepper. Stir and cook on medium heat for 5 minutes.

After the five minutes are up, add the garlic and keep on cooking.

Once most of the moisture is out of the mushrooms, remove from heat and set in refrigerator while we get everything else ready.

Take your shrimp and remove the shells, tails and 'vein' if they are there. Lay them out on a large cutting board and sprinkle with kosher salt, ground pepper and Old Bay seasoning. In Maryland, this is a must on our seafood (and fries, and corn, and everything else). If you don't know what Old Bay is, slap yourself and then slap your momma for not raising you right.

Once again, get your pan searing hot. Add a little olive oil and toss the shrimp in batches. Once again, we are just trying to carmelize the outside a little. Shrimp cook very fast (especially smaller ones), so keep your eye on them. Once done, set aside in refrigerator.

Take an onion and give it a rough dice.

Throw the chopped onion in a pan with two tablespoons of butter and cook for 4-5 minutes. Of course, we add some salt and pepper as well.

While it's cooking, chop up two cloves of garlic.

Add that to the pan with the onion and cook for 3 minutes.

Add your spinach and the crushed red pepper flake and cook for a few minutes. Stir to combine. Set this mixture aside in the refrigerator as well.

Get a giant sauce pan so we can build our sauce. I used my wok here because it's big. Melt seven (yes, 7!!) tablespoons of butter in the pan. I never promised this was a healthy dish.

Once melted, add the flour.

Stir to combine. Coook this for 6 or 7 minutes, until the flour has darkened to a sandy beach sort of color. During this 6-7 minutes, get out your 6 cups of milk and start to heat it in another pan. We want to add the milk warm here so it doesn't solidify all the butter.

I added 2 tablespoons of Italian Seasoning to give the sauce a little extra flavor.

Now add your warm milk and bring to a slow boil. Then cook for 10 minutes. This is the perfect time to start cooking your noodles.

Get out your shredder and go to town on the pecorino romano cheese. It might crumble more than shred, but that's OK as long as it get's smaller.

Now we get to add our cheeses. First we will go with half a pound of pecorino romano.

Then follow it with a cup of mozzarella.

And a bunch of ground pepper.

Our noodles are now cooked to a perfect al dente.

Now, we have all our ingredients prepped, we can start making the lasagna. Start with a layer of our cheesy and creamy sauce.

Follow with a layer of noodles and the spinach mixture.

Then comes some more sauce.

Another layer of noodles comes on top of the sauce. Followed by the ricotta mixture. I was about 30 minutes late for my dinner party at this point and forgot to take a picture of the ricotta but you can imagine what it looks like. On top of the ricotta comes the noodles followed by the shrimp.

Add some sauce on top of the shrimp, another set of noodles, and then our mushroom mixture. Another layer of sauce goes on the mushrooms.

Follow with some more noodles, more sauce and then 2 cups of mozarella cheese and the last 1/4 lb of pecorino romano. Sprinkle with a little of that left over parsley to make it look pretty and congratulate yourself for making my longest post ever. Seriously, this was a little in depth. I have 32 pictures here. Is that too many for one post? Just for clarification lasagna order is as follows; sauce, noodles, spinach mix, sauce, noodles, ricotta mix, noodles, shrimp, sauce, noodles, mushrooms, sauce, noodles, sauce, cheese, parsley. 16 remarkable layers combine for deliciousness.

Cover with foil and bake this at 375° for 30 minutes. Take off the foil and bake for another 15 minutes until all the cheese is melted and it's a little bubbly. My entire family thoroughly enjoyed this dish and raved about how delicious the shrimp were (Thank you, Old Bay!). It is a time consuming dish, however I wouldn't hesitate to make it again. I'd just plan on giving myself a little more time.

Beef Wellington

2009-07-08T22:23:00.008-04:00

I decided to invite my girlfriend's parents over to my place for a dinner and to check out my condo since they haven't seen it since I bought it. I had previously made Beef Wellington for my girl and she absolutely loved it. So, naturally, she requested that I make it again for her parents. I went out and bought myself a whole tenderloin (something I have only done once before) and broke it down. I set aside four steaks, and with no Gordon Ramsay to yell at me, I proceeded with this recipe.

Ingredients

1 lb of mushrooms
3 cloves of garlic
1 4.25 oz can of liver pâte
1 box of puff pastry sheets
4 filet mignon steaks
1 egg
3 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons of flour
Kosher Salt
Freshly Crushed Pepper

To begin this recipe, lets start off with the mushrooms. I have a little over a pound here of white and baby 'bella mushrooms. I bought both pre-sliced.

Take your chef's knife and go to town on them. Turn your mushrooms into this:

Take a large pan and set it on medium heat. Add the 3 tablespoons of butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil.

Add the chopped up mushrooms, a generous dose of kosher salt and many, many grinds of pepper. Stir it all up to mix the butter and oil with the mushrooms and let cook.

In the meantime, take 3 cloves of garlic and finely dice them.

After the mushrooms have cooked for about 6-7 minutes, add the garlic. You can see that the mushrooms still have some moisture left in them and that's exactly when we want to add the garlic.

Cook the mushrooms until there is no more moisture left and remove from the heat. It is very important to get all the moisture out of the mushrooms otherwise you will end up with a soggy pastry. That's tip #1 for you.

Get out your liver pâte and add that to the mushrooms.

Mix thoroughly and seat aside in the refrigerator.

Take your filets out and lightly sprinkle with olive oil. Then generously season with salt and pepper on both sides. Depending on the size of the steaks and the temperature of doneness needed, you may want to throw the steaks into the freezer for 10-15 minutes before cooking. This way they will not overcook in the oven. That's tip #2.

In the meantime, heat a cast iron pan as hot as your stove will allow it. Take your steaks out of the freezer and drop right on the pan. This will create smoke and will more than likely set off your smoke detector (I know it did at my place), but that's OK. We are looking to brown the outsides with out cooking the insides. If one of your guests want a more well done steak, you can leave it on for an extra 45 seconds to minute per side.

After a couple minutes, flip to a new spot on the pan. I almost forget to mention, do not crowd your pan. It will not allow it to get as hot as possible. That is why I am only doing two steaks at a time. Once done, place the steaks back in the refrigerator, we want to cool them back down so they are cold when they go back in the oven.

30 minutes later, get your puff pastry sheet out and place it on a large cutting board that is dusted with flour. Dust the top of the pastry as well.

I don't have a roller, but I do have a bottle of wine, so I sprinkled that with flour and rolled the dough out a little. Not too much, but just a little to make sure I can completely cover the steaks.

Make an egg-wash with the egg and set aside. I forgot to take a picture of this, but you know what an uncooked scrambled egg looks like right? Place a 1/4 of your mushroom mixture down on the pastry, allowing room on the edges to seal the steaks. Place one of your steaks on top of the mushrooms at one end.

Roll the steak up in the pasta and seal the edges with the egg wash. Tip #3 is to use leftover dough to identify your steaks if your guests are getting theirs cooked at different temperature. I used initials today. I am a medium rare kind of guy, while my girlfriend is more of a medium well kind of gal. Before you say anything, I know, I know and I am desperately trying to convert her. It's a slow process, but we are making progress.

Also, in the above picture you can see that I have egg washed the 'N' steak, but not the 'K' steak. We will egg wash all of them and then sprinkle with kosher salt and ground pepper.

Throw them back in the refrigerator for 30 minutes to cool the dough back down. This will give us the best final texture. Meanwhile, you can preheat your oven to 425°. Once you're ready, throw the steaks in and let them go for about 20 minutes. Keep an eye on them, because we want the outside to get golden brown, not black. If you are lucky, you get a beautiful dinner that looks like this.

Remember to let sit for 5 minutes to cool down. I wish I had taken pictures of this after I had sliced it open, but I was entertaining the guests and when I realized I didn't get my picture, all the wellington was gone! Oh well, looks like I will just have to make it again!

Asian Style Short Ribs

2009-06-30T20:19:00.013-04:00

My first slow cooker recipe!! If you don't have a crock pot, don't worry, you can braise this using your stove on low heat. I don't know why I've been having a craving for short ribs recently, but it's been killing me. I was at the grocery store the other day and browsed by the butcher section and they had boneless short ribs, but no bone-in. It was terribly upsetting because I thought I was finally going to get a fix for my craving. Alas, I ended up with pork and made the previous posting (Pork Tacos). Next time I went to the store, I found my bone-in short ribs and this post was created.

Ingredients

3 lbs of Beef Short Ribs
8 Baby Carrots (or about 1-1.5 full size)
1 and a half Stalks of Celery
1 cup (for lack of a better measurement) diced Green Onions
1 medium sized root of Ginger
1 can of Beef Broth
1/2 cup of Soy Sauce
1/4 cup of Rice Vinegar
1/2 cup of Honey
1 tablespoon and a half of Hoisin Sauce
1 tablespoon of Sriracha Chile Sauce
1 tablespoon of Chinese Five Spice Powder
1-2 tablespoons of "Shake & Blend" flour or cornstarch
Freshly Ground Pepper
Kosher Salt
Olive Oil

I am making this the night before, I will refrigerate it and then let it cook tomorrow when I am at work. There is nothing like coming home to the delicious smell of dinner with such little work involved. So let's get it started with (Most of) the ingredients for the sauce. For some reason, I had forgotten to put the honey in this picture. It might be due to the fact that I was still debating between honey and brown sugar at this point.

Start by dumping the can of beef broth into your crock pot pan.

Next add the 1/2 cup of soy sauce. It's so dark, you can barely see that I have anything in the pot now but, believe me, I do.

Follow with the rice vinegar.

Then add the hoisin sauce.

Follow with your Sriracha. I know what you're thinking, "How weird! Kenny is using Sriracha sauce. I don't think I've ever seen that before." But believe it. What would a blog post be without this stuff? I'm not a big fan of measuring this stuff because I really don't mind if a little too much slips in ;).

Next in is the five spice powder. It makes any and everything taste a little more Asian.

Now we need something to sweeten up the pot (literally). We are going with the 1/2 cup of honey so in she goes.

Get your celery, carrots, and ginger and cut them all up. They are going to help flavor our sauce. Especially the ginger. I adore the ginger in this recipe. Dice them up so they look like this, then toss them into the pot.

Take your green onions and chop them up. We are going to be working from the bottom up here as we want mostly the white part for this. Add the green onions to the pot. We will use the tops for a garnish at the end, so save those!

Next, get your short ribs out and flip them over bone-side up. I like to score the backs because I believe it helps them to break down during the cooking process. So, score the backs and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Flip your short ribs over and inspect them. If you have any silver skin (a thin, pearlescent membrane) on, you will want to remove that. It will never break down. To do so, slide your knife between the membrane and the meat. Try to get as close to the membrane as possible, as we don't want to waste meat. Then bring your knife forward cutting through until the end. You can then peel back on your loose piece and using your knife with the other hand, remove it completely. Also, if there is any excess fat, remove it now. A little bit is ok, but the large chunks have got to go.

Your ribs should look like this now. Drip a little oil on them and then lightly salt and pepper them.

Get your stove top pan as hot as humanly possible now. We want to brown the outside of the short ribs, but have no desire to cook them thoroughly right now. The best way to brown is intense heat. Do your ribs in batches, because crowding the pan cools down the pan and prevents browning. I had eight ribs, so I did it in two batches. Here's the first.

Flip over when you get a beautiful brown on the meat side. The bone side won't brown, but the membrane on the back will begin to break down, so I cook it for two minutes on the bone side as well.

Remove from heat and toss in the crock pot.

Set the crock pot on low. This will be delicious in anywhere from 6-8 hours. You really can't mess this up. I did this in the morning before work and came home to it looking like this.

I turned my crock pot on rice cooker mode, which basically starts boiling it like crazy. Then, I left the top open to help reduce the liquid. At this point, you can add your favorite thickener. I used some "Shake & Blend" flour, but cornstarch is quite acceptable. About a tablespoon, maybe two. I keep my eye on the crock pot during the reduction phase to make sure that everything is going as planned. While it's reducing, get out those green onion tops you have leftover and give them a nice chop.

Here, you can see that my sauce has reduced and thickened up a bit. This smells absolutely delicious at this point and I am ecstatic that I can finally get to eat it.

This is a dish that is best served over rice (jasmine in the picture below), you don't need anything else. This is such an easy meal, because it takes such little management and the payoff is amazing.

Pork Tacos

2009-06-23T20:44:00.009-04:00

This is a really quick and easy recipe. If you make the marinade the day before, it should take you less than 20 minutes of prep/cook time. This goes great with pork, chicken, steak or even fish. I chose pork because it was on sale at the grocery store. I got a pound and a half of boneless sirloin cut pork chops for less than $2.

Ingredients

1 lb of Boneless Pork Chops
1 package of Taco Seasoning
1 Jalapeno Pepper
1/4 cup of Apple Cider Vinegar
5-6 Flour Tortilla Shells
1/2 of a Lime
1 cup of Salsa
Small Handful of Cilantro
Shredded Lettuce
Shredded Cheddar (or Taco) Cheese
Sour Cream (optional)
Olive Oil
Freshly Ground Black Pepper

If your pork has any excessive fat on it, go ahead and trim that now. If not, proceed to dice it up into bite size pieces. Remember this is going inside the tortila, so you don't want it to be too big.

Toss the pork chunks in a tupperware container or ziploc bag and dump the package of Taco Seasoning on top. Pour about a tablespoon of Olive Oil over the whole mess.

Add the 1/4 cup of Apple Cider vinegar. This adds a nice little tang to the taco seasoning and helps to tenderize the meat.

Add a couple (like 10) grinds of Black Pepper to the mix. Go ahead and stir this up, then throw the whole thing in the refrigerator for a minimum of an hour. The pork will greatly benefit from spending the night in your chill box, so I like to do this a full day ahead.

The day of your meal, go ahead and get your cilantro out. Take a handful and give it a rough chop.

Do the same to the jalapeno and then slice the lime in half.

Take a pan and heat it on medium-high heat with a little bit of olive oil.

Once hot, dump your pork in there, marinade and all. This will take about 5 or so minutes to cook, so our next step will be to get our tortillas nice and worm.

At this point, set your oven to 350°. Toss in your tortillas directly on the rack. This is just to get them warm, you don't want to toast them. So, keep an eye on the oven while your pork finishes.

This is what your pork should be looking like at this point. Absolutely heavenly!

When the pork is done, kill the heat. Then toss in the cilantro and stir it up.

Take half of your lime and squeeze it into the pork. Stir again.

Take the warm tortillas out of the oven and onto a plate. Throw your lettuce on top. If you think my lettuce looks funny, that's because it's my mom's mystery cabbage from the Leftover Lo Mein post.

Add the pork on top of that.

If you are adding cheese, now is the time. The warmth of the pork will melt it and make it extra delicious. If you are mildly retarded like me, you will forget that you bought cheese for this occasion until you are midway through your last taco. Add your salsa next. I highly recommend the Simple and Fresh Salsa from my previous post. Naturally, I already had some in the refrigerator.

Finally, top it with the chopped jalapeno. This gives it that special kick that all tacos deserve.

If you are adding sour cream, go ahead and do so now. I am not because I am trying to get in shape for beach season (and also because I realized I didn't have any in the refrigerator). Now go and sit down to eat yet another delicious dinner provided to you by the wonderful Internet.

BBQ Chicken Pizza

2009-06-15T22:28:00.015-04:00

So, I just got back from a weekend getaway in North Carolina. While I was down there, I had some excellent food, however I did not have any Carolina style BBQ. The vinegar-style sauce on this pizza met my cravings for Carolina style 'Q and then some. The best thing is, I get to eat this again tomorrow. I made an extra pizza for my family so maybe this time they won't heckle me about not eating my blog's food! By the way, I kind of messed up this post a little. My camera's battery was dying during the process and while I thought I got pictures of me cooking the chicken and the bacon, apparently I had failed to do so. But I can assume that you guys know what chicken and bacon look like when the cook.

Ingredients (makes 2 pizzas):

8 strips of bacon
2 chicken breasts
2 pizza crusts
1 bottle (18oz) bbq sauce
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
3/4 of a pound of Smoked Gouda Cheese
1/3 of a red onion
1 jalapeno
Crushed black pepper

Dice up your bacon and throw into a pan over medium heat. Add a dash of salt and pepper if so inclined.

When done cooking, take the bacon off the stove and drain on a paper towel.

Sprinkle BBQ seasoning on your chicken breasts. I used home made, but store bought is OK as well. Mine is a mix of smoked paprika, chili powder, salt, brown sugar, crushed pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, cayenne pepper and a teeny tiny bit of oregano.

Place a little oil (or that leftover bacon fat if you are as awesome as me) on a pan on medium-high and toss in the chicken breasts. Cook completely. Slice the chicken up into bite size pieces. It's OK if you eat a couple, I know I did.

Slice up the red onion.

Slice up a Jalapeno. This step is optional, but highly recommended. I love the heat. Alternatively, you can use a green/red/yellow pepper (or nothing at all if you hate peppers). I am omitting this from my family's pizza, which is why their is only one in this recipe.

Take your smoked gouda cheese and shred it.

Now for the barbecue sauce. I am using Sweet Baby Ray's, which is a thick and dark Kansas City style sauce.

For this dish, I need something a little thinner and tangy-er, so I will cut it with the apple cider vinegar.

Then I am adding a little freshly crushed black pepper for a little bite.

I bought a store-made pizza crust. I know some people will think that is cheating and I should have made my own dough, but I just got back from North Carolina today and didn't have the time. Anyways, once you are done judging me, add the BBQ sauce.

Follow with your freshly shredded gouda.

And then the chicken.

And the bacon.

And then the onions. This is really starting to look good now.

Finish with the jalapenos and take a minute to admire your work.

You did preheat your oven to 425, right? If so, go ahead and throw the pizza in and find something to do for the next 12-14 minutes while this cooks. Cooking time may vary according to your pizza crust, but when it is just about turning golden brown and the cheese has melted, it's time. It might come out looking something like this:

Leftover Lo Mein

2009-06-10T20:43:00.018-04:00

Wow, this is a long post. I didn't realize that I took this many pictures during the process or that there were this many steps. Let me start by saying my mother showed up at my house with a random head of cabbage telling me it was a secret ingredient and I had to make a dish with it for the blog. I initially had planned to make corned beef and cabbage, but that was too expected and it's too far away from St. Patty's day. I've made this recipe before and used chinese cabbage, so it's an easy substitution. I call it left over lo mein because you can use pretty much anything you have in your refrigerator. You can put green peppers or squash or broccoli or green beans, any vegetable you have available will work. There is a fair amount of early prep work in this dish, but once you start cooking it's over fast. We want to make sure we have all our ingredients ready to go before the oil hits the pan. Oh yea, if you want it vegetarian, it's just as delicious without the chicken.

Ingredients:
For the Lo Mein:

1 chicken breast
1/2 of a medium onion
4 oz of sliced mushrooms
12 baby carrots
1 clove of garlic
1/2 cup of cabbage
handful of fresh cilantro
1/2 package of Lo Mein Noodles
canola oil
kosher salt and fresh ground pepper

For the Sauce:

1/4 cup of soy sauce
1.5 tsp of hoisin sauce
2 tsp of black bean sauce
1 tsp of fish sauce
1 tsp of honey
1.5 tsp of sriracha sauce
1 dash of chinese five spice powder

Step One, take a chicken breast, clean and trim it, then season liberally with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper on both sides.

Next, heat a pan on medium-high heat and pour a little oil in it. Add the chicken.

Flip the chicken over. Isn't that starting to look good?

Once the chicken is done cooking, remove it from the heat and let it sit for five minutes. You can skip ahead and start doing the vegetable prep work now, or you can wait those five minutes and then slice the chicken up into pieces.

Take about a dozen baby carrots, cut them in half horizontally and then dice them vertically. You should make 3-5 slices per carrot.

Take a quarter pound of mushrooms and slice them vertically. I cheated and bought my mushrooms pre-sliced but by putting them on the cutting board it looks like I did the work myself.

Chop up half of a medium sized onion in a very large dice. The pieces should be nickel to quarter size.

Take one clove of garlic and finely dice it.

Ahh, the beautiful head of cabbage that started this meal. Shred up about 1/3 of the head of cabbage.

This is how your vegetables should look now. The garlic is on top of the carrots because they will be going in at the same time. So will the onions and mushrooms, so it is ok if they mix too.

Take a handful of cilantro and chop that up as well. We will be needing that at the end of the dish.

Boil a pot of water and then toss in your Lo Mein noodles. This is what mine look like:

Follow the instructions on the package for cooking. Mine says it takes 5 minutes. This will give us time to get our sauce together.

Start with a quarter of a cup of dark soy sauce.

Add to that a teaspoon of honey.

Follow with a teaspoon of fish sauce.

Next add a teaspoon and a half of hoisin sauce. This is like a chinese BBQ sauce and is quite delicious.

Add two teaspoons of black bean sauce. Another delicious Asian condiment.

Add a dash of Chinese five spice powder.

This stuff is pretty strong, so I don't like to add to much as it can take over a dish. I put in about this much:

Oh, I bet you thought I was going to forget about the Sriracha sauce, didn't you? I told you I put this on everything when I introduced it to you in the bourbon chicken post and now it's back. If you haven't bought a bottle yet, kick yourself (It's amazing I get nothing from promoting this stuff, but Sriracha, if you are listening, send me a case!). Add a teaspoon and a half of the good stuff.

Are your five minutes up? If so, drain the noodles and set them to the side. Now we have everything prepped. The french call this mise en place, which literally means putting in place. Our spread pre-cooking:

This is where it gets interesting. We want to cook the food on the highest possible heat. We also need to keep it moving during the process, else we end up with burnt food. This is not that difficult of a process, unless you are trying to take pictures at the same time. Then it becomes overwhelming, but I survived. Place a wok on the highest setting your stove top goes. Once your pan is hot, add two tablespoons of oil. Immediately add the onions and mushrooms and saute for a few minutes.

Next add the cabbage. Continue to keep the food moving. Cook for another minute.

Add the carrots and garlic. The cabbage should be releasing their water which is instantly turning to steam on the hot wok making picture taking more difficult. This should not pose a problem for you.

After another minute, add the chicken and the noodles. Stir everything (just like you have been the whole time, right?).

Once all that is combined, go ahead and add the sauce. This should cook one to two minutes.

You can take it off the heat at that point and add the chopped cilantro.

Stir to combine everything. Grab your bottle of Sriracha (everyone deserves a little extra), a plate, a fork and get to eating. The table is optional.

Bourbon Chicken

2009-06-03T16:13:00.013-04:00

I was at the mall the other day and I walked through the food court. They always have people giving out the free samples and I can't turn down free food. Anywho, that particular day they were giving away bourbon chicken and it was delicious. It got me thinking, how hard can it be to make something like that? The answer, of course, is not very hard. And here is proof.

Ingredients:

¼ cup of soy sauce
1 tbsp. of freshly ground ginger
2 tbsp. of diced onion
1 clove of garlic
¾ cup of dark brown sugar
½ cup of bourbon
2 tsp of Sriracha Chile sauce
Freshly ground pepper
1lb of Chicken

In a medium sized bowl, combine ¼ cup of soy sauce with a tablespoon of freshly ground ginger.

Finely dice up a couple of tablespoons of onion. As you can see I didn’t use much of the onion here. We are looking for small pieces here, so no rustic chops.

To this add ¾ cup of dark brown sugar.

Now, on to the good stuff. Pour yourself ½ cup of bourbon and add it to the mix.

Then grab a pint glass and make yourself a bourbon and ginger ale. Delicious. That should get us through the rest of our recipe!
Chop up one clove of garlic. Again, we are going with a fine dice here.

Finally add a couple grinds of black pepper and two teaspoons of Sriracha sauce (or more to taste, if you like it a little spicier). If you don’t know what Sriracha is, you need to get yourself a bottle ASAP. It will change your life. I put it on EVERYTHING. Mix up this sauce thoroughly. I used Tupperware, so I could just pop the lid on and shake it.

Take your boneless skinless chicken breasts and clean them, trim them, and cut them into medium size chunks. You can substitute any type of chicken you want; even whole quarters (just don’t cut them up).

Take the chicken and place in sauce and let marinate overnight.

Preheat your oven to 375°. Take a sheet pan and line it with foil. Then take your chicken out of the marinade and arrange it on the sheet pan, and throw it in the oven. If you accidentally leave your chicken in the marinade for 48 hours (like I did) instead of the standard 24, have no worries. It will just be that much more delicious.

Take the reserve marinade and pour into a small sauce pan to reduce by half. Use this sauce as a glaze during cooking. I applied it twice during the 40 minutes the chicken took to cook.

After forty minutes of being in the oven, the chicken should come out looking magnificent. The little brown bits are the onions, garlic, and ginger and are AMAZING with the chicken.

Serve with rice and some broccoli (not pictured). If you still have some sauce left over, you can pour a little of that over everything. As a fair warning, this recipe has been know to lead to addiction, so do not serve to weak willed individuals.

A Simple & Fresh Salsa

2009-05-30T12:16:00.008-04:00

Do you ever wonder how sometimes the simplest dishes are the tastiest. This salsa involves no cooking, the only tools you need are a knife and a cutting board. It has a grand total of 5 ingredients, yet it's always a hit whenever I make it. Great for snacking on, or pair it with some eggs, chicken breast or fish. Did I mention it's super healthy too?

Ingredients

5 Large Tomatoes
1 Onion
4 Jalapeno Peppers
1 Handful of Cilantro
1 Lime
Kosher Salt and Pepper

Start by rinsing off your tomatoes then cut each one in half horizontally.

Remove the seeds and goop inside the tomato by sticking your finger in the cavities and pulling everything out. I highly recommend doing this over the sink. Once you have your tomato "shells", season them generously with salt and pepper. Make sure you get it in all the crevices. If you look closely at the picture you can almost make out the salt on the tomatoes.

Line a cutting board with paper towels and invert the tomatoes on the towels. This will pull some of the moisture out of the tomatoes and help to concentrate their flavor.

Now is the perfect time to take a break. Pour yourself a cerveza and relax while the salt does it's work. I was cleaning house, and you can proceed dicing up the other ingredients, but then my pictures will be out of order and that's not cool.

Ok, it's been about 40 or 45 minutes, let's take a look at our tomatoes. Look how much water they have released!

It's time to get to dicing them up. I go with a fine dice on everything in my salsa, but it really depends on how you like it.

Next, take your onion and finely dice it. Throw that into the salsa and mix it up with the tomatoes.
Then take some Jalapeno Peppers. In my opinion, this makes the salsa. Cut the peppers in half length wise and ask yourself "How hot do I want my salsa?" By removing the seeds and veins from within the peppers, you can remove a lot of the heat. Below is a picture of Jalapenos ranging from mild (left) to medium (middle) to hot (right).

I recommend 2 mild and 2 medium Jalapenos for the average person (that's what I make for my guests), but if it's me, I'll step it up to 3.5 mediums and 1 hot. I'm crazy like that.

To dice the Jalapenos, slice them vertically first. They should look like match sticks. This picture is a little crappy, and I apologize. Like I said in my previous post, I am new to the digital camera game. All we can do is hope I get better with time.

Then slice horizontally and throw into the salsa.

Next, grab a handful of rinsed cilantro. Make sure you clean it well as it can really hold a lot of dirt sometimes. I'm a little OCD and have to pull all the leaves off of the stems before I chop it up, but you don't have to be as anal as me. The smaller stems are really unnoticeable. Chop the leaves and throw them into the salsa. We are almost done!

By this point, your salsa should be looking (and smelling) pretty good. Depending on how long this process has taken, your tomatoes may have given up some more of the water. At this point, I'll take a spoon and remove a couple spoonfuls of "water" out of the salsa before the final step. Finally, we will slice a lime in half and put all of the juice into the salsa. This, along with the cilantro, gives it that super fresh taste.

Now get yourself a bag of your favorite tortilla chips and go to town on this salsa. I made it over the memorial day weekend while at my sister's house with the family and they were eating it before I was done making it. Needless to say, it didn't last long.

Lasagna

2009-05-27T19:55:00.026-04:00

First off, let me say that this is my first blog post ever. I have never taken pictures of food before today, so please forgive me if they come out a little blurry and less professional than you expect to see. In the future I will try to do better.

Ingredients:

3 Cans of Whole Tomatoes (14.5 oz each)
½ can of tomato paste (6 oz)
1 can of tomato sauce (8 oz)
1 medium onion
3 cloves of garlic
2 tsp of Italian Seasoning
1 tsp of Oregano
Pinch of sugar
Pinch or two of Crushed Red Pepper
1 splash of Red Wine
1 32 oz tub of Ricotta Cheese
1 handful of fresh Parsely
2 eggs
2 lbs of Italian Sausage (I mixed 1 lb of Hot and 1 lb of Sweet)
1 lb of Lasagna noodles
2 lbs of Mozarella cheese (and a little parmesan if you have it!)

Everybody loves lasagna, and I have had many requests from friends to make my recipe for them. I make this as gifts for people and they are forever in my debt. This recipe that I used tonight, will create one 9x14 inch pan filled with lasagna and one 8x8 pan filled with lasagna. You may ask, “Kenny, why would you create such an odd combination?”. Like I said earlier, I gift this and I had a friend do an incredible favor for me this past weekend. Big enough to deserve the ultimate gift. The 9x14 is for my friend and his family, however I couldn’t justify making lasagna without keeping some for myself, and that is where the 8x8 comes into play. This could make one LARGE 9x14, just make sure you have a real deep pan b/c it will be 4-5 layers high. Oh God, that would be a delicious lasagna. Anywho, enough with the introduction, on to the recipe.

First things first, remove the casings off of the sausages. Toss them into a pan with some kosher salt, a little pepper, and a little Italian seasoning.

Then proceed to brown them in a large pan. The key here is to use a high heat and caramelize bits of the sausage. You can see the little bits of brown in the image below. We call that deliciousness.

Once brown, remove the sausage from the pan and all but 2 tbsp of the left over grease (mmmm…..pork fat). Place the sausage in your refrigerator as we will come back to that a little later. Dice up the medium onion and place it into the saucepan with the left over sausage grease. Season with a little salt and pepper. Cook over medium-low heat until slightly translucent, about 5 minutes.

Dice up the cloves of garlic and add to the onions in the pan (with a little salt and pepper, of course!). Cook until fragrant, about 2-3 minutes.

Take 3 ozs (half of the can) of tomato paste and add to the onion/garlic mixture. Stir well and turn the heat to medium high. Keep an eye on this for the next 3-4 minutes, as you want to caramelize the sugars in the tomatoes, but do not want it to burn.

Once the paste has darkened, add the can of tomato sauce, and the 3 cans of whole tomatoes diced and with seeds removed (add the juice too, since we will reduce it anyway). Throw in the 2 tsp of Italian seasoning, the teaspoon of oregano, a pinch of sugar and the crushed red pepper.

Put a splash of red wine in (I used a Pinot Noir I had open, but you can get away with nearly any red wine here. Nothing fancy) and let simmer for 15 minutes.

Then throw the sausage back in the sauce and simmer for another 15 minutes.

If you are anything like me, you will realize that you have made a complete mess of the kitchen and right now is the perfect time to play catch up on clean up. After you clean up and while the sauce is still simmering (it didn’t take you 30 min to clean up, did it?), prepare your ricotta filling. Mix the full 32 oz of ricotta cheese with 2 eggs and a handful of parsley.

It should look like this:

Get a large pot, fill it with water and set on high (don’t forget to season the water with salt). Once boiling, drop your pasta in (lasagna noodles, of course) and cook to al dente (it should be about 8-9 minutes, follow the instructions on the box of pasta). I don't have pictures for this part b/c my lense would steam up when trying to take the picture. Besides, everyone knows how to cook pasta, right? Of course, so onwards to the easiest part, assembly. If you are using disposable pans like I am, make sure that you wash them before use to clean off any of the manufacturer’s glue (not to mention anybody’s germs who handled the pans before you). First, add a layer of sauce to prevent the noodles from sticking to the bottom.

Next add a layer of noodles followed by a layer of ricotta.

Follow that with a layer of sauce again and a layer of mozzarella cheese. I had a little left over parmesan cheese, so I am mixing that in with the mozzarella. Can you tell the difference between the two cheeses?

Follow with noodles, ricotta, meat sauce, mozzarella/parmesan mix until you run out of room or ingredients. Finally, sprinkle a little parsley on top to make it look pretty and you are good to go. You should end up with a masterpiece of cuisine that looks almost as good as it tastes.

You can cover this with plastic wrap and then foil and freeze for up to 6 months. Or, or if you are anything like me, you will cover with foil and bake in a 375° oven for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake an additional 15 minutes or until gooey and bubbly. If you are wondering why all my previous posts have an aluminum foil pan and this last one is glass, allow me to explain. No, I am not trying to pull the bait and switch on you. I had original thought I was going to have enough ingredients to make two lasagna pans worth. That failed to happen and so I had to use a smaller pan for my dish. My friend still gets the large pan.

Dinner fit for a king. I poured myself a glass of the red wine that I used for the sauce, a 2006 Robert Mondavi Pinot Noir for you winos out there. Then I went to town. I will close my first blog post with the final image I saw before dinner tonight. Yes, that is a piece of garlic Texas Toast on the plate next to the lasagna.

Please leave comments, and feel free to try this recipe at home. More to come soon!!