Veggie lasagna

This is a somewhat complicated dish, because you precook every ingredient, and then you layer them together and bake. The ingredients I used:

• pasta dough, rolled and cut into lasagna
• sautéed eggplant
• sautéed carrots
• sautéed onion or shallot
• marinara sauce
• fresh tomato
• fresh green pepper
  

Any other vegetable will work too. The tender ones like spinach, raw, blanched or steamed, the more "robust" like zucchini or mushrooms, sautéed in a bit of olive oil. You can use boiled, steamed or sautéed broccoli or cauliflower too, just chop the flowers to smaller pieces. Anyway, these were all I had. And now for the details.

Make a standard pasta dough with two cups of flour, salt, two to three eggs and, if necessary, water or extra flour. Knead for around ten minutes, and refrigerate in plastic wrap or ziplock bag, for at least half an hour. It holds very nicely in the freezer for unspecified amounts of time (I've tried up to a month with no problem), so you can make more for future batches. While you're waiting, peel a few carrots and slice them finely, lengthwise (like for stir-fry). Also slice a big eggplant (or two smaller ones) in half-inch slices or thinner, sprinkle with salt, and let them sit in a strainer. Be careful, the eggplant will ooze a black, bitter liquid.

After the dough is in the fridge for at least half an hour it'll be more elastic and smooth. Separate it into two or three pieces depending on how big a rolling surface you have. Roll each thin, like for other pasta, until you can see light through it. It takes a few minutes, because it's elastic and will partly shrink back after you roll it. But, it's a nice exercise. If you have a pasta rolling machine, either electric or hand-driven, it will be easier. Cut each leaf of dough into large rectangle pieces, and sprinkle them with flour to avoid them sticking together. Bring a pot of water to boil, salt and drop them in a few at a time, for 4-5 minutes, or 3-4 minutes if you want them more al dente. Take them out and put them in cold water to avoid them sticking while the rest are cooked. Once you're done, and they're in cold water and have all cooled down, you can drain the cold water, they won't stick much from now on. Alternatively, if you have a lot of table real-estate, you can layer them on the table to cool off without touching each other, so there's no need for cold water.

The next step is a simple marinara sauce, for layering. Chop a shallot and sauté for a few minutes with a spoon of olive oil, over low heat, until it softens. Add tomato sauce or purée (diluted with water if necessary), salt, pepper, a couple of bay leaves, a pinch of sugar and if you want a pinch of oregano or thyme. If you have any leftover, you can save it in a jar in the fridge for a couple of days for spaghetti. Let it simmer for five to ten minutes and set aside.

By now the eggplants will be "de-bittered", so wash the salt off and let them dry for a couple of minutes. They'll still be salty, so if you want to add parmesan to the lasagna you might want to soak them for a few minutes to get rid of even more salt. Set a non-stick pan over medium-high flame, and place a bit of olive oil in a plate, next to it. Briefly dip each eggplant slice in the olive oil, both sides, and then put in the hot pan. One layer at a time. Don't fry them in olive oil, because they absorb too much, and then spit it out in the oven, you want the lasagna to be light, not too oily. Then fry the carrots in batches, in a spoon of olive oil like you would for stir-fry. If you are soaking the extra salt out of the eggplants, start with the carrots. I just washed them briefly, and didn't use salt on anything else, except the tomato sauce. It evened out.

OK, now all the ingredients are there, you just need to layer them. Get an oven pan (I used a pyrex glass one), start with a couple of spoons of tomato sauce at the bottom to prevent sticking, and layer lasagna and vegetables alternatively. Don't forget to spoon a bit of sauce in between every layer.

Finish with a layer of thin fresh tomato and pepper slices, sprinkle with bread crumbs and drops of olive oil. You can use parmesan on top, but a couple of my guests didn't like cheese. The bread crumbs soak the olive oil and taste good too.

Cook for 20 to 30 minutes in a medium hot oven, and serve. They taste very good the next day too. The total time for preparation took a bit over an hour, with some overlapping time between making sauce and sautéing the vegetables. It's a light, elegant, summer dish, nice for dinner because it's fulfilling and still light. The meat version would have been too heavy for a summer dinner I think, especially among other meat dishes.

Crispy, herby, breaded chicken drumsticks

I liked this one, it's easy, tasty, and looks good. I served one small-size drumstick per person, as a first course. Wash the drumsticks and cut around the bone with a knife, to remove the skin from the bottom third (where there's no meat). Chop the end of the bone away, a punch on the knife ought to do it, the bone is not that hard there. Slightly score the skin that remains with the knife a few times. Don't cut deep into the meat, just the skin, so it gets more crunchy. Salt and pepper them generously.

Put a couple of spoons of olive oil in a hot pan, over high heat, and "seal" the drumsticks all around, for a few seconds. You only need to slightly brown the outside, to keep the juices in, they don't need to cook all the way. Transfer them in an oven pan and cook in a medium hot oven for half an hour.

While they're in the oven, put in a food processor a few leaves of basil, parsley, mint, a couple of spoons of olive oil, and a cup of breadcrumbs. I save any stale bread and break it in the food processor when it dries up, so I always have a plastic container of breadcrumbs in the fridge. Process everything until the leaves are gone, and the whole thing looks like green sand. Set aside.

After the drumsticks are cooked for half an hour, take them out of the oven, and while they're still hot, rub a spoon of mustard on each. The mustard will melt from the heat, and its flavor will be absorbed nicely by the dried skin.

Immediately, as they're still sticky from the mustard, roll them in the green breadcrumbs, and rub some on until they are coated. Return them to the oven for another five to ten minutes, for the coating to dry up and make a nice, aromatic, green crust. Take them out of the oven and serve, before the crust softens at all.

This is how it looked finally, on my plate. You can tell from the picture that I had just finished the appetizers. They taste very good, if you seal them properly at the beginning in the hot oil, they're moist and yet well-cooked, and the herby breadcrumbs and mustard make a very nice crust with a great smell. My guests liked them too.

(Citation: I got the green breadcrumb crust idea from a youtube video with G.Ramsey)

Salad appetizer

Some friends came over for dinner yesterday, and we had a lot to eat and drink. I decided a full menu post would be too long, so I'll break it apart and write about each dish separately, as I have time.

This one is a simple appetizer, following a "Greek salad" idea. As with all salads, and raw foods in general, the quality of the ingredients is what makes it taste good, so this post is only about the presentation. After all, the recipe for the best Greek salad you've ever had is trivially simple: just get the best tomatoes you've ever had, the best cucumber you've ever had, the best olive oil you've ever had, the best onion you've ever had, etc, and combine them!

This presentation gives three servings per tomato. You need a tomato, a piece of mozzarella, cucumber, and parsley or basil (or both) for garnish.

Use a peeler to cut the cucumber in thin slices, and cut the tomato in three equal pieces, each spanning a 120-degree angle. Then slice each tomato piece another three times, careful not to go all the way through.

Cut slices of mozzarella and stuff each slice in the tomato, so that at the end, each tomato third, expands to look like a half. Stick a bit of parsley or basil in the middle slice. You can also use slices of hard-boiled egg or avocado (or even of feta cheese, if that's your thing) instead of mozzarella.

Then, using two long cucumber stripes make a cross on a plate, put a piece of tomato on the cross, and turn the edges to wrap it. Keep in place with a toothpick. Salt, and dress with a spoon of olive oil, or maybe a simple vinaigrette of olive-oil and red-wine vinegar.

Here is how it looks like with a bit of crab dip on the side, my two appetizers. To make the crab sauce, blend crab meat with some crème fraîche until smooth.

Main course: Oven ragoût

Ingredients

• around half a kilogram (a pound) of lamb, no fat, no bones, chopped into bite-sized cubes. (I started with 700g of leg, and took the bone and fat out.)
• 4 potatoes, in 1-inch cubes
  
• 5 medium-sized carrots, quartered widthwise
• 3 shallots
• 1 onion
  
• pinch of salt and pepper
• 2-3 cups of chicken stock
• 1 cup of red wine
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil

Cooking

First, clean the lamb from any bones and fat, and chop it into cubes. Then put it in a ziploc bag with the wine and a crashed clove of garlic, and refrigerate for at least a couple of hours. Put the shallots and carrots in a tall oven pot. Chop the onion and put in a frying pan with the olive oil, on low heat. After it softens a bit take the meat out of the marinade and add it to the pan. Brown the meat for 1 minute on each side. Deglaze the pan with the chicken stock, and pour everything from the pan to the oven pot, over the vegetables. Salt and pepper, add water to barely cover everything and put the pot in a medium-heat oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Then add the potatoes on top (don't stir) and add water if necessary to barely cover them. Return to the oven for another hour.

Came out nice and juicy, and almost with no fat at all.

Serve it with a spoon to get a lot of liquid, it's quite tasty, specially for dipping a slice of this loaf.

First course: mushroom tortellini in broth

Remeber the carrot pasta dough from a while back? I had some left in the freezer. I used it to make a few tortellini, to serve as a first course. I didn't have much dough left, nor many mushrooms, so I served the tortellini (4 per person) in broth. It was light, but tasty. And the good thing about home-made tortellini is you can make them as large as you like.

For the filling

• 4 big mushrooms. I used simple white mushrooms, but if you can mix various kinds, even better.
• 1 shallot
• half a teaspoon nutmeg
• half a clove of garlic
  
• a spoon of flour
  
• pinch of salt & pepper
  

Process everything in a food processor until it's a paste. Add a spoon of water if necessary for processing. Then transfer in a non-stick pot, and stir over low heat for 10-15 minutes, until the water from the mushrooms evaporates and the paste thickens a bit. Set aside to cool. You can add parmesan cheese if you want; I didn't.

For the tortellini

Roll the dough thin, and cut circles, about 3-inch in diameter.

Spoon some stuffing in the center of each circle.

Water your fingers and touch the circle around, and then fold it in half and press to stick the dough together.

Fold again, parallel to the first fold, and bring the corners together.

Water your finger and press the corners together to form the tortellini.

If you use 3-inch diameter circles, you'll end up with pretty large tortellini, with a lot of stuffing.

Then I cut up another mushroom, and I put it in a big pot with salt, two cups of beef broth and two-to-three cups of water. After it boiled for five minutes, I dropped the tortellini in to cook for another 3-4 minutes. Then I ladled four tortellini and some broth per person.

Sprinkle some chopped chives or green onion on top, for a bit of color.

It was quite good. Depending on how reduced and strong your broth is, you might want to use more or less water. The broth wasn't as clear as it could have been, but I was too bored to strain it through a cheesecloth. Ideally, your broth should be crystal-clear.

Hors d'œuvre: Canapés au saumon fumé

A small, quick and tasty snack, nice to use as an appetizer. Pulse some smoked salmon in a food processor for a few seconds, and then add créme fraîche and process until smooth and creamy. Spoon some on a base of multi-grain wheat and rye bread (I made some with a sourdough starter), and top with a couple of capers. I served each canapé in an endive leaf, which added a slightly bitter, refreshing taste.

I set the table with two on every plate before the guests arrived, so we'd have something to escort the first glass of wine, before we started with the first course.

Detail of France

A picture Despoina took in Lyon.