Penne for Your Thoughts!

Yesterday was my grandmother's birthday, so in her memory I cooked one of her favorites--breaded pork chops. My memories of Gram preparing this dish include her using bone-in chops, but I prefer them to be boneless and thinly sliced. Skipping the egg wash, I simply washed the porks under the faucet and then dredged them in my breadcrumbs-and-Green-Can-Cheese mixture. Into a pan with a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil gave the chops a nice crunch on one side, and I hoped to get the same results on the other side, but I became concerned about burning when I couldn't allow them enough cooking time to unstick from the pan. So I lost some coating on one side, but not all of it. No problem.

I also bought a few small yellow squash and zucchini to add to the penne pasta accompanying my pork chops. Dicey dice with the knifey knife and I sauted them in a little bit of olive oil. I also added Salt and Pepper and more Sandwich Sprinkle, which is a nice seasoning mix of which I have a good quantity. Meanwhile, as I allowed the squash to soften in the heat of the pan, I shredded about a cup of Parmigiano Reggiano. When the vegetables had cooked enough, I hit them with the juice of one lemon and a few grinds of pepper, and we ate. It was good. I love this combination of squash, pasta, and cheese. Feta is great, too, for this dish.

I stopped at a little market downtown yesterday afternoon to buy a dozen local eggs and a bit of chicken, and I allowed myself to be weaseled into buying two delicious desserts from an older guy named George—Jammin' George, more precisely—who was selling a variety of homemade items, such as hummus, assorted jams, cherry scones and date-and-walnut bars. I bought scones and bars, and they were quite good. George was, let me see, what is the best word for him—boisterous? But his pastries were as subtle as he was brash, so it all worked out, I think.

My lemon ricotta cheesecake experiment resulted in a most edible dessert, at least from my point of view. The wife was as vehement about not trying it as I was vehement about getting her to try it. I won, but she barely tasted it, stating the eggs were unappetizing and the texture was off. The whole point of cheesecakes, she said, is for the filling to be very smooth. I froze most of it, so now on occasion I will have a little taste of frozen-ricotta-lemon-pie-cake dessert if I want it. I don't think Granny Boots would have liked it, either.

Lasagna and Pie

The wife and I went to spend Valentine's Day with Ma and Pa White, and we wanted to make dinner, but we could not decide what to have(we considered pizza, meatloaf, and spaghetti with meatballs). We finally decided on lasagna, which I have not made for a long time.

Now, I once considered lasagna to be a luxury dish, and after today, I realize I was correct. To the grocery I went this morning armed with a sticky-note list: ground beef, sausage, mushrooms, lasagna noodles, mascarpone, ricotta, basil, and a couple other items not related to making lasagna.

I knew I wanted to use Bolognese sauce, so I began by small chopping my onion, carrots, and celery and sauteing them in a bit of olive oil. I added the ground beef and sausage, as well as approximately a half cup of Chardonnay and a turn or two of light cream. A few cloves of garlic, Salt and Pepper, and two cans of crushed tomatoes later, my sauce was coming together nicely with a pleasant light red color and aroma. This sauce develops a lot of flavors the longer it cooks, but since it was also going into the lasagna to continue baking in the oven, I thought two hours in the dutch oven on the stovetop would suffice.

As the sauce cooked, I prepared the cheese mixture, and it was as vulgar as anything I've made in a while: eight ounces mascarpone, a container of ricotta cheese, two eggs, chopped basil, Salt and Pepper, and Green-Can Cheese mixed together. But the piece de resistance was heavy cream that I whipped earlier for a peanut-butter pie. Oh, Lord. I folded more than a cup of whipped cream into the cheese mixture, and the cream accomplished what you might think it would. The added body and smoothness of the cream made an already-creamy mix much creamier.

I began building the lasagna with a scoop of sauce in the bottom of a round ceramic dish, about 12 inches in diameter and five inches deep. The deep dish allows for more strata, and I like a thick lasagna. Upon the sauce went a layer of lasagna noodles. Next came the profane cheese mixture, liberally applied. More sauce. Noodles. Shredded mozzarella. More sauce. More cheese mixture. Noodles. Until the top of the dish is reached. I topped the whole thing with more shredded mozz, put the lid on it, and baked it for about 45 minutes. After that, I removed the lid so that the cheese would brown, and it did so nicely. The lasagna rested for about 20 minutes, and then we were ready to eat the dish, which tasted deliciously and weighed at least 25 pounds. The wife made garlic toast, also. She cooked a lot today.

In addition to the lasagnas, I made a bit of dessert in the form of the aforementioned peanut-butter pie from a recipe in a Lagasse book. This pie begins with the crust, composed of crushed graham crackers, melted butter, and peanut butter, mixed and baked until the crust hardened some resulting in a thick and crunchy bite to accompany the peanut-butter-filling mixture, which was nearly as vulgar as the cheese mixture for the lasagna, but not quite. Cream cheese (I did buy the low-fat varieties of anything I could) mixed with confectioners' sugar, then mixed with peanut butter, chopped peanuts, with that freshly whipped cream folded in. It was quite tasty, also, as it was sweet without being overpoweringly sweet, and that is how I like my desserts to be. I topped the pie with more chopped peanuts and a few pieces of dark chocolate that I also chopped up with my knife. Oh, yes. It was a good day for eating.