Spinach and Basil Lasagna

I can’t help but love lasagna with all its gooey richness. The flavor of the sauce melds with the pasta and mingles with the cheeses and fillings, the cheese stretches from the pan to the plate as you serve it, and the sides start to collapse slightly from the weight of the hot fillings. It’s a feast for the eyes and a comfort food, through and through.

If I were asked to come up with a top ten list of healthy meals, lasagna wouldn’t make the list, but there are some simple ways to make it healthier. Omit fatty meat, use part-skim cheeses, plenty of vegetables and fresh herbs, and whole wheat lasagna, and you can turn this into a relatively healthy meal to enjoy as an occasional treat. Using spinach and basil is our favorite way to make lasagna, and for this one I snipped a cup of basil leaves off the plants growing in the AeroGarden I’ve been testing and reviewing. This time we put Marseille, Genovese, and Napolitano basils into the layers, scattering it around with the spinach. The sauce recipe is from Michael’s mom, and it’s our favorite all-purpose pasta sauce because it tastes great and is easy to make. You can even make it a couple days ahead for faster prep on lasagna day. Read more

No-Cook Tomato Sauce (Grow Your Own)

In my view, fresh, ripe tomatoes are meant to be enjoyed in their natural state, and nothing beats the taste of a tomato straight off the vine. When I start gathering the tomatoes from my garden, I’ll often stand near the plants and just enjoy inhaling the wonderful smell. I follow my family’s tradition and eat lightly salted slices or I just bite into one and add a pinch of salt with each bite. Little grape or sungold tomatoes adorn our salads and the boys eat them by the handful. Read more

Macaroni and Cheese with Gruyere and Tomatoes

I’m experimenting with mac and cheese again. This was our Good Friday dinner, a meatless meal that we enjoyed with a simple salad. I wasn’t too sure about the tomatoes at first, afraid that the juice would render the cheese sauce watery, but I was pleasantly surprised. I really shouldn’t have been, because I’ve yet to taste a recipe from Ina Garten’s cookbooks that I didn’t like.

The recipe calls for 12 ounces of gruyere, which is a bit more costly than the average cheddar or whatever else you can find in grocery stores. Still, I was not prepared for the $14.99 a pound price tag at my local grocery store. When I looked at the label I said, “Whoa!” out loud and got a few stares in return.

Now let me explain. Read more

Bay Scallops with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Pesto

Moving day is looming. We have an offer on our house and we’re heading up to the DC area this weekend to hopefully put in an offer on our new home, so it’s imperative that the freezer reach empty status soon. Today I wanted to use up some bay scallops we had, and I kept thinking that they would go well with sun-dried tomatoes, so I sautéed them with garlic and sun-dried tomatoes, then added some white wine and reduced the sauce a bit before turning off the heat and tossing it all with some prepared pesto. It tasted great with capellini.

Using frozen bay scallops is so easy because you just thaw them out, rinse and pat dry, then cook. Bay scallops are smaller than sea scallops and they cook in no time; in fact, you should keep a close eye on them so that they don’t overcook. Read more

Creamy Macaroni and Cheese

Growing up Catholic, Michael had baked macaroni and cheese and other no-meat dishes on Fridays. My family had no such tradition and frankly for years I never had anything more than stove top macaroni and cheese out of the familiar blue box. I don’t remember exactly how old I was, but I do clearly remember that I was of elementary school age when I had my first experience with baked macaroni and cheese…in the school cafeteria. A yellowish-brown gelatinous blob was dropped onto my tray and I just stared, convinced that no one could possibly eat it. I took a taste but never finished the serving. And that experience is proof in my book that it is possible to screw up something as simple and wonderful as baked macaroni and cheese. In fact I didn’t even try it again until I was in college and had some in the university’s cafeteria, but this time it didn’t seem so bad as my prior experience. Read more

Classic Spaghetti Carbonara

I’m certainly not the first food blogger to reference Marcella Hazan, and I think I can safely predict that I will not be the last. She is considered one of the foremost authorities on Italian cuisine, and her book Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking is one that I constantly turn to when cooking Italian dishes. The book was originally published over thirty years ago as two separate volumes, The Classic Italian Cook Book and More Classic Italian Cooking, and the combined volume has been revised, updated, and expanded. Of her first book, British food writer Roy Andries de Groot wrote, “Marcella’s book is the most authentic guide to Italian food ever written in the U.S.” No small compliment, to be sure.

According to Essentials, carbonara sauce has it’s roots in Rome during the last days of World War II when American soldiers brought eggs and bacon to local families to make into a pasta sauce. Pancetta is the preferred meat in this dish, Read more

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