How To Make Taco Salad

Unless you're really good friends with them, you probably wouldn't serve franks and beans to dinner guests.[1] And unless you're hosting a party for kids, your wife may not let you make tuna puffs or BP&J. But some things, no matter how much you love it, you have to admit to yourself that it just doesn't look good enough to serve to anyone else.

I'd like to believe this salad doesn't fall into that last category, but looking at the pictures I've got to say I'd be a little suspicious of it if someone else offered it to me. I could probably "fix" that by assembling it like a "normal" salad: lettuce on the bottom, then toppings, then dressing on top. But this is how I've eaten it ever since my aunt first served it to me out of a zip-top bag at a picnic when I was eight years old. So I'm not changing it.

Ingredients

Taco meat

1 pound ground beef
1 can (12 ounces) plain tomato sauce
1/4 cup chili powder (or taco seasoning)
3 cloves garlic (optional)

Salad

1 head iceberg lettuce
1/2 pound sharp cheddar cheese
1/4 large onion (about 1/2 cup diced)
4 Roma tomatoes (about 1/2 cup diced)
1-1/2 cups thousand island dressing
5 ounces (about half a medium bag) corn chips

Directions

Brown the ground beef in a frying pan with some salt, breaking the beef up as much as possible. (The same was as in the chili dog chili sauce recipe.) Add the garlic and chili powder (or taco seasoning) and the tomato sauce.





Cook until everything is heated through, then remove from heat and allow to cool while you prepare the salad.

Dice the onion.



Cut the tomatoes into quarters and remove the seeds. Slice the meaty part lengthwise into thin strips.



Then finish dicing the tomatoes.



(Hmm, I think I need to do a post on dicing tomatoes ... )

Core and chop the lettuce.




If I really wanted to be strict with my mise en place, I'd shred the cheese into a bowl, but I had left it out too long by this time. When you shred warm cheese, it tends to start sticking right back together if you put it all in one big pile. So I shredded it right onto the lettuce.



I didn't use that entire block of cheese. That's about three-quarters of a pound, and I used a bit more than half of it.

Add the tomato and onion.



Toss everything together a little, then add the thousand island dressing.



Look at your bowl and realize that yes, you should have used the biggest bowl for this. (Damn, I hate when I do this.) The bowl can't just be big enough to hold everything, it has to be big enough to mix it around easily. When you're mixing, you generally want a bowl at least twice as big as you'd need just to hold all the ingredients.

Once you've got it in a big enough bowl, toss the salad until it is well coated with the dressing. Then add the corn chips.



(This is not product placement. You can't see what brand that is. These are not the corn chips you are looking for ... )

Add the taco meat and stir to combine.



You want to do the corn chips and taco meat last. Otherwise the chips will get soggy, and the warm meat will melt the cheese. If you're not going to be serving this right away, let the meat cool all the way before adding it, and don't include the chips. Bring the salad in a zip-top bag or a bowl with a tight lid, and add the chips when you're ready to serve.



And that's it.

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1 Why is that, anyway? Why do we try to impress strangers, we'll at least straigten up for friends, but if we're just serving family they're lucky if we're not still in pajamas? I can't remeber where I got this line, but we'll spend money we don't have buying stuff we don't need to impress people we don't like.

If you have any recipes that you love to eat, but won't serve to guests, tell me about it in the comments below. I want to do a whole roundup of "too good for guests" meals.

How To Make Thousand Island Dressing

Every now and then when I stop to think about it I wonder why ketchup is so much more popular than thousand island dressing. As far as I'm concerned thousand island is much more flavorful, and works on just about everything ketchup works on. Any fast food place that brags about their "secret sauce" is really talking about thousand island. (Oops, now it's not a secret any more.) One of my favorite uses -- and the one that gets the strangest looks -- is to use it instead of duck sauce with egg rolls. Mmmmmmm.

If you look carefully and shop around you may be able to find a brand that isn't mostly canola oil and corn syrup. But if you can't find a good one, this recipe is just what you need. It's way better than any bottled brand I've had, and only takes a couple of minutes to make a batch.

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Ingredients

2 cups mayonnaise

Mayonnaise

2 extra large eggs
1-1/2 cups olive pomace oil
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon mustard powder

2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup diced onion
1/4 cup diced pickle (sweet, dill, or combination)
1 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1 extra large egg, hard boiled (optional)

Directions

Dice the onion.



Dice the pickle. If you have small ones, cut them in quarters ...



... and chop several at once.



For larger pickles, you may want to cut out the seeds before dicing the rest.

Set the onion and pickle aside. This is for your mise en place.




Mince the garlic.



If you're making the mayonnaise from scratch, put the eggs, white vinegar, mustard powder and oil in your mixing cup in that order. Put the stick blender all the way to the bottom, turn it on and slowly pull it up to the top. Don't worry if it's not thick enough for a sandwich, this is going to be in dressing.



Rather than get the food processor dirty, add the onion, pickle, garlic, tomato paste and balsamic vinegar to the cup the mayo was in.







Process it with the stick blender -- it doesn't have to be very smooth -- then add it to the mayo and stir.



Check the taste and add black pepper if needed.



And that's it. You could eat this by itself, it's so good.



One extra touch is to add a diced hard-boiled egg.

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Regular readers might notice I did lettuce yesterday and salad dressing today. You might think that means I'll be doing some kind of salad in the next day or two. That's very observant of you. But I'll be you don't expect taco salad.

Okay, now you expect taco salad. This is another one of those "delicious but not pretty enough for company" recipes. Why do we do that? Have favorite recipes that we won't serve to guests? I've never understood that. If you have any recipes that you like, but you won't serve to guests -- or your wife won't let you serve it to them -- post it in the comments. I'm thinking about doing a collection of "Too Good for Company" recipes.

How To Make Grandma's Apple Cider Sweet Onion Sauce

Last week my wife was making hamburgers for dinner, and grilled some onions for them. She added a little sugar, something she learned from her father. As I was eating, I thought, "This would be really good on ribs." I went looking and found a bunch of recipes for onion-based babecue sauces, but all of them had at least as much tomato paste, ketchup or chile peppers as they had onion. What you see below is the experiment that came from that.

Was the experiment a success? Let's just say it's a good thing I made so much of it. My wife is already planning on using it on chicken and pork chops in the next couple of days. It's just as good for dipping as it is for a glaze.

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Ingredients

4 large sweet onions, a little more than 4 pounds (Vidalia are good, I used Texas Sweet this time)
2 whole heads garlic
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
1 teaspoon cumin
4 tablespoons rendered bacon fat (see first paragraph below)
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

One great timesaving tip when you cook from scratch is plan meals for the same week where you can prepare part of one meal at the same time you're doing another. What I did here was to make the sauce for my weekend cookout after I finished cooking the bacon for BLTs. I was going to need some of the bacon fat anyway, and doing it in this order meant I only had to clean that pan once instead of twice.

I could also prep the onions while waiting for the bacon to cook. Since I wasn't dicing the onions, I did a quicker technique. Slice off the stem and root, set the onion on one of the flat spots you just cut, and slice it in half.



This makes it really easy to peel the outer, papery layer off. Then slice from one side across until the un-cut piece is tall and skinny and wants to tip over when you try to cut it.



Lay this piece down and slice the rest of the way across.



I was able to do all four onions in about two minutes, without even doing that crazy-fast chopping all the TV chefs do to show off. (Although if anyone had been watching, you better believe I would have gone as fast as possible.)



I put the sliced onions in the large pot instead of in a bowl because I was going to be reducing the sauce in that pot after cooking the onion. No reason to dirty an extra bowl if you don't have to.

Now comes the time saver I mentioned above: the pan I just cooked the bacon in.



I just finished a pound-and-a-half, done in four batches, in the largest stainless steel pan I had. Normally I'd go with either cast iron or non-stick for bacon. But since I was going to be doing the onions, I wanted to get a bit more of the bacon flavor. Besides that, as the onions give up their moisture, it deglazes the pan making it easier to clean. Bonus.

So I set up a little workstation with the frying pan, the onions, and the rendered fat I had just poured out of the pan and filtered. Make sure there is a generous coating of melted fat still in the pan.



You want to use the largest pan you have. The onion caramelizes better when it's in contact with the surface, so work in batches and don't crowd it.



While the first batch is sautéing over medium-low heat, peel all the garlic.



Don't chop, mince or crush the garlic.

Cook the onions, stirring occasionally, until they are dark brown and very soft. Remove the onions, and put the whole garlic cloves in the pan along with another tablespoon of bacon fat. Cook the garlic, shaking the pan frequently, until it is well browned and soft to the touch.



Add the next batch of onion in with the garlic and cook as before, stirring occasionally until the onion is dark brown and very soft.



At this point the onion should already be very sweet. I had my wife taste it and she stood there eating it until I made her stop so I'd have some left for the weekend. She said it was like candy.

Transfer all the onions and garlic to a heavy-bottomed pot.



Since this will be simmering for a while you don't want the hot spots you get with thin pans, or the onion will burn.

Deglaze the pan with the cider vinegar and add that to the onions.

Using a stick blender, process the onion directly in the pot. If you don't have a stick blender, you'll need to do this step in a food processor before returning it to the pot.



You're done when it's a smooth, even consistency.



It will look almost like applesauce and, thanks to the cider vinegar, it will even taste surprisingly like applesauce.

Add the cardamom and cumin ...



... and the brown sugar ...



... and process again until the seasonings are mixed in well. Check the flavor and add salt and pepper as needed. Making this for myself, I'd go very heavy on the black pepper. Since this was going to be for the whole family I left it more mild, maybe only one or two teaspoons. Since I had used a pan that still had the bacon drippings, I only needed about a teaspoon of salt.

Now cover the pot with either a vented lid, or with the lid partially open, over very low heat. The bubbles from this will make a huge mess if you don't keep something over the pot, but you want the steam to escape. Simmer until the sauce has reduced and thickened. How thick, exactly? Enough to stick to ribs when you put them on the grill. Shoot for the same consistency as whatever store-bough barbecue sauce you usually like.



Compare this to the photo up top where I had just sliced the onions, and you can see how much it cooked down. Transfer the sauce to a sealed container and store in the refrigerator until you use it.

And that's it.

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NOTE: This sauce was made to go on grilled ribs. Subscribe to my feed with the link in the column to the right to see the recipe for that as soon as it comes out. You'll see it in time to do the cider sweet onion glazed ribs -- with the old-fashioned macaroni salad -- this weekend.

How To Make Mango Salsa

Unless you live in the southwestern U.S. -- or even farther south, but for an English-language blog "southwestern U.S." is a pretty safe bet -- then it's unlikely your grandmother ever made mango salsa.

For one thing, salsa didn't really take off in the U.S. until the 1970s. For another, annual mango consumption in the U.S. was 0.05 pounds per person in 1970 vs. 2.01 pounds per person in 2004. So it's statistically unlikely that your grandmother ever made mango salsa.

But to me "cooking like your grandmother" has never been about the specific recipes. Oh sure, there are a few classics that I include on general principle. (Pot roast for example.) It's really about cooking from scratch, with fresh ingredients that you got at the market that day. And it's not about fussy presentation, where you're more worried about how it's going to look than how it's going to taste.

And, in the interest of full disclosure, the reason I did this specific recipe was for the Leftover Queen's Royal Foodie Joust for May 2008. The full entry includes the chicken nachos, which will be coming up shortly. (Subscribe using the link to the right to get an update with the finished product.)

(Update:The chicken nachos are done.)

Now on with the show.

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Ingredients

2 cups diced mango (about two whole mangoes)
2 Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
1/2 cup diced red onion (1 small or half a large one)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon grated lime peel
1/4 cup lime juice
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
[Adapted from Epicurean]

Directions

If you don't have a lemon zester, you can use the small holes on a cheese grater to grate the lime peel.



Don't go too deep into the white part of the peel. Just get the green part from the outside.



Roll the lime around on the counter, or between your hands, to break up the pulp before cutting into it. Once you don't feel any solid pulp inside, make a small cut near one end and squeeze all the juice out.



Mince the garlic.



Add the garlic, salt, cumin and cardamom to the lime ...



... and whisk them together.

Remove the cilantro leaves from the stems ...



... and chop the leaves roughly.



Add the cilantro to the lime mixture and mix briefly.

Dice the mango.



Plan on getting a lot of juice on your hands, so use a knife with a non-slip handle if you have it. Otherwise your hands will be too slippery to take pictures of what you're doing. (Which should only cause problems if you're trying to write it up for a blog post like this one. :-/ )



Since I wasn't able to get the pictures, I'll refer you to this great page on three ways to cut mangoes (and one way to serve it without cutting it up).

Dice the onion.



Quarter the tomatoes and cut out the seeds and stem.



For a tomato sauce, you'd keep the seeds and process it all together. In a salsa, you just want the meaty part.



Discard the seeds, and dice the flesh.



Combine the mango, tomato and onion. This is about one part mango, one part tomato, and slightly less than one part red onion.



Add the lime dressing and cilantro and mix well.

Remember the brown sugar you were supposed to add to the dressing and add it. (Oops. Should have done this ten pictures back.)



Toss lightly together and allow flavors to blend in the refrigerator for an hour or two before serving.



And that's it.

[Note: I have no idea how long this will keep in the refrigerator. I've never had a batch last longer than two days before I ate it all.]

How To Make Onion Ring Dipping Sauce

I won't say this is exactly like the sauce at either Outback Steakhouse or Burger King. Why would I, they're both chain restaurants? That's not setting the bar very high. This is better than either of those, and made with better ingredients. (Funny how those two things always seem to show up together.)

This is based on a Russian dressing recipe. In fact it's exactly the Russian dressing recipe, except with added horseradish. You can also check out the recipe for onion rings. The recipes for the chili sauce and Dijon mustard will be coming soon.

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Ingredients

3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon chili sauce
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 ounce onion, diced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper

Directions

This one's going to be really easy. Separate the egg and add the yolk and vinegar to a tall, narrow container. The skinniest one your immersion blender will fit into. (Hopefully yours came with a cup, like mine did.) Blend it until it's smooth. Add the oil and blend again.



Depending on the oil you used, and the speed of your blender, this might turn into mayonnaise. I've seen plenty of videos of people doing mayo exactly this way, but mine always stays a bit too thin to be a proper mayo. I suspect it's because I'm using extra virgin olive oil, but I don't know for sure. If you've got any tips on this one, please share in the comments.

Anyway, whether you've got mayo or still just a thin sauce, add all the rest of the ingredients and process again until smooth.



And that's it.

How To Make Pizza Sauce From Scratch

Part of cooking from scratch is knowing just how "from scratch" it needs to be to feel good about what you're making. The other part is knowing where to buy the parts you're not going to make for yourself. This time it was getting a pizza crust from Alesci's and doing the sauce from scratch.

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Ingredients

28 ounces (one large can) crushed tomatoes
1 cup diced onion
2 tablespoons basil pesto
2 tablespoons dried oregano (3 tablespoons fresh)
1 clove garlic (two if they're small)
2 teaspoons kosher salt

Directions

Start out by dicing the onion ...



... and mincing the garlic.



Heat some fat in a pan over medium heat -- butter, olive oil, or like I did, rendered bacon fat.



Sauté the onion until it just starts to turn clear ...



... then add the garlic and keep stirring until the garlic starts to get darker, but not brown.



Add the tomatoes ...



... and the pesto and oregano.



Simmer over medium heat for about 15 minutes, stirring frequently, until the sauce is warmed through.



Remove the pan from heat and blend with an immersion blender (AKA stick blender) until the sauce is smooth.



If you used a large pot, like I did, you'll need to tip it up to keep the end of the blender submerged. Otherwise you'll spray tomato sauce all over the stove ... the wall next to the stove ... the front of your shirt ... If you've read any of my other posts there's a good chance you've seen the phrase, "Don't ask how I know this."

Once it's smooth, put one large ladle full on the crust ...



... and have your daughters spread it around.



Wait, hold on, back up. Doesn't that title up top say "How To Make Pizza Sauce From Scratch"? And I don't see any "pizza crust" in the ingredients list. What's up with that?

Yeah, well, a picture of a bowl of tomato sauce would be pretty boring. So I helped the girls make the pizza and included the rest of the steps here.

So ... have the girls spread about a half-pound of shredded mozzarella and provolone cheese (Alesci's sells a 50/50 mix).



Make sure the cheese goes right up to the edge, but not over. You don't want it melting and dripping over into the inside of the oven.



Have the girls add whatever toppings they want. In this case, pepperoni on half, the other half plain cheese.



Think about how you're going to cut it -- six cut, eight cut, etc. -- and make sure the toppings are evenly distributed.



Bake at 450° for 15-20 minutes, until the cheese is bubbling and starting to get just a little brown around the edges.



And that's it.

Buttermilk Ranch Dressing with Home-made Mayonnaise

As much as I prefer cooking from scratch, there are a few things that require so many ingredients that I'll give in and just buy it. Worcestercire sauce is one of those. (But I'll be fixing that soon. Stay tuned.)

Ranch dressing used to be another thing that I'd just buy. Not any more. Now that I've got my technique for fresh mayonnaise down, I don't expect to ever have to buy ranch dressing again.

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Mayonnaise

Ingredients

1/2 cup olive pomace oil
1 egg plus one yolk
two teaspoons white vinegar or lemon juice or a mixture of both

Directions

You'll see that I included the immersion blender (AKA stick mixer) in the ingredients photo. You can do this by hand, but I don't recommend it unless you're looking for a good workout.

Start with the yolk and a couple of tablespoons of the oil in a the narrowest cup your mixer will fit in. (Mine came with a matching cup. Handy.) Blend for a couple of seconds. With the blender runing, drizzle the rest of the oil in very slowly. If the oil separates from the egg yolk you won't get a nice creamy mayo, you'll get a greasy lumpy mess.

As you get more practice you'll know just how fast you can add the oil. Unfortunately, you'll find out exactly where that point is by going over it and ruining the batch. If you do that, start with a fresh yolk and a couple teaspoons of oil, then start adding the "broken" batch in a spoonful at a time.

Once you've got all the oil added, add the second egg and the vinegar and/or lemon and hit it with the blender again. Poof, instant mayonnaise.



If you think that looks a little thin for mayonnaise, you're right. By leaving out the second egg white, you get a creamier texture and a richer egg flavor. I think it works better when using the mayo as a sauce or, like I'm doing here, as an ingredient in something more complex.

Dressing

Ingredients

1/2 cup mayonnaise (see above)
1/4 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoons sour cream
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 scallions
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons parsley
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon mustard powder
(Note: I left the white vinegar from the mayonnaise ingredients in the shot. Oops.)

Prep the scallions by cutting off the root end, including most of the white section ...



... then cutting off the papery part of the green end.



Then chop it thin all the way down its length ...



... and scoop everything back together for a second run through with the knife.



You want to end up with a pile of very finely chopped scallion.



Mince the garlic and add everything into the bowl.



And mix well.

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I'd love to show a picture of this dressing on the broiled carrots I did that night. Unfortunately, I knocked my camera off the counter while working on the pork roast. It's in for repairs right now. If I can't find a loaner by this weekend, I may not have anything new to put up next week. I've got my fingers crossed that it's a quick fix ... and inexpensive would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath.

Home-made Croutons

When I was growing up, the croutons you got in a box or bag at the grocery store were tiny little cubes, about the size of dice. Only restaurants had those big "fancy" croutons. Seeing a marketing opportunity, the manufacturers switched to a large size, which is all you can find in the grocery store now.

The problem is that store-bought croutons have always been pretty crunchy. This wasn't a problem when they were small, but the big ones are getting so they aren't even good on salad any more. The solution, of course, is to make your own.

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Ingredients

1/2 loaf stale un-sliced bread
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Directions

Slice the bread about 3/4-inch thick and trim off the crust.



Cut the slices into cubes, as big across as they are thick.



Note that I've saved the crust and crumbs. This goes into a zip-top bag in the freezer. When I'm making hamburgers or meatballs, the bag gets dumped in the food processor for a couple of seconds to make bread crumbs.

Now melt half the butter over medium heat in a large pot or frying pan.



Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, and whatever seasonings you want. Here I'm using minced garlic.



Add the cubed bread and toss to coat. It will quickly soak up all the butter and olive oil. Add more butter and oil a little at a time, making sure all the cubes get a good coating.



Spread the cubes out on a baking pan.



Bake at 400° for about 10 minutes, turning the cubes once with tongs at about 8 minutes. Remove when they are golden all the way around.

How To Mince Garlic

In case you didn't already know, the smaller you chop garlic the stronger the taste will be. When you cut or smash the cell walls, you're releasing the oils that carry the flavor. If you want to go a little milder than you get with smashed or pressed garlic, or if you just hate cleaning the garlic press, you'll need to learn how to mince.

As a bonus, this is also a good technique for using cloves that are actually a little past their prime. It's better, of course, to get something perfectly fresh, but if you've already started on dinner when you discover your garlic has started to sprout, this can be a real time saver.

Note in the two cloves below that they're starting to put out green shoots.



These shoots can be very bitter if you include them. They also don't smash the same way the rest of the clove does, and they'll get stuck in a press. Luckily, if you remember that garlic is a plant bulb, you'll see how to fix it. Start by cutting off the base of the clove.



You have to do this even if they haven't sprouted. Next cut the cloves in half lengthwise.



This is what you couldn't see before slicing, and it's what would jam up a garlic press. Pry out the center part with the back of your thumbnail or the tip of a paring knife.



Now that you've got the green out, put the flat side down and hold two or three pieces together on the cutting board.1



Don't worry at first about trying to go fast like you see the chefs do on TV. Just do nice thin slices along the long side.



Once they're sliced, turn them sideways and go across the other direction.



Presto, minced garlic.

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1. A note on cutting boards. Plastic and glass cutting boards look nice and clean up easy, but they're really hard on the edge of your knife. Use wood if you have a choice. You don't want to mince garlic with a dull knife.

White lasagna -- an experiment

This week was going to be ravioli, but I had a lot of mozzarella left after last week's chili-cheese fries. I mentioned to my wife that I'd have to figure out something to put it in, and she suggested I do a lasagna.

Now I had already done that once before. But I wasn't thrilled with how the top came out, because I neglected to cover it for the first half-hour. So this would be my chance to fix that.

But as we were talking about it, my wife mentioned a white lasagna that she used to make in college that everyone thought was great. Figuring that [WARNING: impending understatement!] college students aren't always the most reliable food critics, I decided to look for some recipes.

Wow, there's a lot of them.

There were quite a few that had a white wine sauce, with or without mushrooms. Bunches that had chicken stock. Lots with spinach or peas or other greens in them. But I wanted to go simpler than that. So what follows is an experiment that mostly came out just how I wanted. There are only a couple changes I will make the next time.

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Ingredients

cheese filling

1 lb ricotta
1/2 lb mozzarella, shredded
1/2 lb provolone, shredded
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 stick (4 tbsp) butter [see note below]
4 large eggs

meat filling

1-1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 lb Italian sausage
1 medium onion
4 cloves garlic
2 tbsp basil pesto
salt and pepper

pasta

1 cup flour
2 large eggs
2 tsp kosher salt

topping

1 cup Parmesan, grated

Directions

The noodles

Start by making the pasta as shown in the previous entry. Roll out the noodles using a pasta roller.



I ended up with eight sheets of pasta, roughly 6 inches wide by about 9-12 inches long, using setting 7 of 8 on my roller. Since I would need three layers about 9 x 13, this is plenty to cover everything with a little overlap, and still have a bit left over. Set all the noodles aside and start on the meat.

The meat

Brown the ground beef and sausage together in a large frying pan with salt and pepper.



While that is going, dice the onion fine and mince the garlic. Once the meat is well browned, drain it very well. The meat needs to be very nearly dried out before baking, or the end result can be soggy. Don't wipe out the pan, though. You'll need just a little fat to sauté the onion and garlic.

Return the meat to the pan, make a space in the center, and add the onion and garlic.



Cover the onion and garlic with meat and cook over low heat for a couple of minutes. Then mix everything and sauté until the onion turns clear. When the onion is finished, add about a quarter cup of water to the pan to deglaze. Don't measure it, just put in enough to barely cover the bottom of the pan. Scrape everything up with your spoon or spatula, and toss everything well. This step adds an amazing amount of flavor back into the meat.

Add the pesto and mix well. Keep it over low heat and stir occasionally until the water has steamed off and the bottom of the pan is dry again, then remove from heat.

The cheese

Melt the butter and pour it into a mixing bowl. You can do this by hand, but I prefer the stand mixer. Add the ricotta and break it up well with a spoon or the mixer.



Add the cream and eggs and blend well on low to medium speed. You don't want to whip the eggs into a meringue.

The assembly

Make a work space where you can put the meat, cheese filling, two bowls of shredded cheese, and lasagna pan all together.



Using a ladle, put enough of the cheese mixture in to cover the bottom of your pan.



Pay attention to how much you need for this step. Scoop the same amount, plus half, into a separate bowl and reserve for the top layer. (With practice, you'll be able to gauge this without reserving any.)

Cover the bottom of the pan with a single layer of noodles. You want the edges to overlap a little bit so they'll stick together when they bake.



Notice that I had to cut several pieces to fill the whole pan. It won't make a difference in the final product as long as you have a good overlap.

Now scoop half the meat into the pan.



Spread it around evenly, then add half the remaining cheese sauce -- assuming you've reserved some for the top layer -- over the meat.



Top with either the mozzarella or the provolone cheese. (I did the mozzarella first, not that you can tell in the pictures.)



Add a second layer of noodles.

For the second layer, I used a different method for loading the fillings. Simply add the cheese sauce into the meat and mix well. Don't scrape the mixing bowl to get every last bit. You'll see why shortly.



Spread this mixture evenly over the noodles.



I tried both ways to compare, and can say that without a doubt this second method is much easier to work with.

Top this with the remaining cheese -- mozzarella or provolone.



Then one last layer of noodles. Try to make this layer as flat as possible so the cheese sauce covers evenly.



Scrape the bottom of the mixing bowl to get the last chunks of ricotta. (I told you I'd come back to it.) Use these to plug gaps between the edges of the noodles and the pan so the sauce doesn't all run down. Cover the top layer of noodles with the reserved cheese sauce.



Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake at 350° for 30 minutes.

I had some pasta left over. While the lasagna was in the oven, I sliced the extras into thin noodles and boiled them up. Add a little butter and give the girls a quick snack while they waited.

After 30 minutes, remove the foil ...



... and top with the Parmesan.



Place under the broiler until the Parmesan is bubbling and starting to turn brown in spots.



This could take several minutes or could be less than 30 seconds, depending on how hot your broiler gets and how close you put the pan.

Remove the pan and allow to cool for 15-20 minutes before slicing. If the cheese inside is still too liquid, the slices will slide apart as you serve them. Still great taste, but not so great presentation.

Next time

I made this with a whole stick of butter. Next time I'll cut that in half. When I removed the foil to add the Parmesan, there was quite a bit of butter bubbling up around the edges of the top layer of noodles.

Also, after deglazing the pan with the meat filling, I didn't cook off enough of the water. For my next lasagna I'm going to try piercing a few holes in the foil to allow more steam to escape.

Pasta carbonara

Depending on who you talk to, carbonara may have eggs, cream, mushrooms, peas, garlic, pepper, and any of a half-dozen different kinds of cheese as the "proper" ingredients. I'm not a purist about it. I just care how it tastes. Oh, and "easy to make with what I already have" is pretty good, too.

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Ingredients

1/2 lb pancetta
-- or --
1 lb bacon
1 medium onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced (that's "diced really small" if you were wondering)
1/4 lb butter (one stick)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
2 tablespoons dry parsley, or 3 tablespoons fresh (optional)
For fresh pasta
2 eggs
1 cup flour (plus a little more, depending on the size of the eggs)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Otherwise
1 lb pre-made fettuccine or farafelle (bow-tie) pasta

Directions

To make the timing work well for this dish, it's better to prep all the ingredients for the sauce,1 then make the pasta and get it into the pot, and finally make the sauce.

First chop the pancetta ...



... into bite-sized pieces, about one inch square.



Then dice the onion.



Next mince the garlic and add it to the onion .

Finally, set out a stick of butter so it will start to warm to room temperature. If you don't like the idea of leaving it out while you make the pasta, feel free to leave the butter in the fridge, it's not that critical. Set everything aside and start on the pasta.

After putting the water on to boil, make the pasta from scratch and cut into fettuccine noodles. Don't cut the noodles until the water is boiling. You can cut them and set them aside, but it's much easier to put them straight into the water. Put a large pan for the sauce over high heat before putting the noodles in the water.

If you're going with pre-made pasta you'll have much more time to work on the sauce. If you're fast with all the chopping steps above, you can do all the prep while the pasta cooks.

To start the sauce, put the pancetta (or bacon) in the pre-heated pan, turn it down to to medium, and cook until it's starting to show browning around the edges. You can take bacon until it's a little crispy, but don't go much farther.

If you used bacon, you might want to pour off some of the fat at this point. Pancetta gives up much less fat, and reduces in size much less than bacon. That's why the ingredients specify twice as much bacon as if you use pancetta. Some people won't want that much bacon fat in the finished dish, but you at least want to leave a generous coating in the pan before adding the other ingredients.

Add the onion and garlic and reduce the heat further.



As you get more comfortable in the kitchen you'll be able to keep the heat up higher and not burn anything. Until then, don't risk scorching the garlic. It gets very bitter. Sauté until the onion is translucent, tossing or stirring occasionally.

If you've timed it right, the pasta should be ready about the time the onion is finished. Turn off the heat under the sauce but leave it over the burner, we'll use the remaining heat to melt the butter.



Add the butter to the sauce pan, and pour the pasta into your colander. While the pasta is draining, stir the butter into the pancetta/onion mixture.



Add the pasta to the sauce pan.



Add the parsley (if you want it) and Parmesan and toss well to coat everything.



Serve with garlic bread or a nice crusty Italian or French bread.

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1. Chefs will call this Mise en place. That's just French for "set in place" -- meaning get everything prepped and set out at one time before you start actually cooking.