40 years, an Anniversary Party costarring Homemade Lasagna!

Today is my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. Can you wrap your head around that number?  Because I have trouble.

Think about this: forty years ago was February 21st, 1970, a week after Valentine's Day, about six months after the moon landing, two and a half years after the summer of love.  They were 19, and only just.

That morning the two of them stole out of then-sleepy-little Modesto to even-tinier Carson City, Nevada to elope because neither's parents believed that they could possibly know at nineteen years old what they've spent the forty years since then proving: that the two of them just belong together. With only his sister and her then-husband as witnesses, and not even enough money for a whole bouquet for my mother to carry down the aisle, they entered into the relationship that has defined them and in which they've spent more than 2/3s of their lifetimes.

I've lived with this knowledge my whole life, that my parents met at 18 and were off on their life together before either of them was more than a teenager, but it wasn't until I found myself at that age (and then suddenly past it) myself that I realized what a tremendous and unlikely feat they managed to pull off marrying so young and making it last so well.
 Last night, in honor of their union and in celebration of them, Dana and I hosted a little Anniversary party here at the house.  I say little but we had somewhere around twenty-five adults and a passel of kids, a group that did not even comprise all of their close family.  For the occasion, we whipped up a lasagna we'd made once before, the recipe for which we received from our friend Sol, and Dana toiled over this unbelievable cake that I'll let her relate to you.  So unbelievable, though, that though it's six months early I've put in a request for a version of it for my birthday. You're going to die. (...it just occurs to me that while this flows off the tongue fairly easily, it looks rather macabre in print.  I'm really not trying to prophesy your death.  I promise. Please don't actually die.)

Anyway, the lasagna we made is really really good and, as I've learned both times I've made it, incredibly heavy.  We're talking like ten pounds at least.  This is a dish made to feed a crowd* and it will.  Granted, not the 25+ people that we had sitting on every possible surface in our house last night--to accomplish that task, we also counted a pizza, a plate of chicken skewers, half a tri-tip, bacon-wrapped crab, hummus, caesar salad, and a loaf of garlic bread among our ranks--but it'll fill up a good dozen stomachs.

I'll toss the recipe below but I wanted to take this opportunity to raise my glass once more to my dear parents whose long happy years together have given me something to shoot for, and whose unflinching joy and relentless happiness continue to provide me hope for my future.  Mom and Daddy, may your good times never end.

Family-size Lasagna
recipe adapted from Marisol Baca

for the sauce:

• 1lb lean ground beef
• 1/2lb ground pork
• 1 medium spanish onion, diced
• 4-5 whole cloves garlic, peeled
• 8 ounces Crimini mushrooms, scrubbed
• 2 cans whole peeled tomatoes, drained and cut up (I use the Cook's Illustrated trick of taking kitchen shears to them while they're in the can)
• 2 Tbsp tomato paste
• 1-2 Tbsp Italian seasonings (basil, thyme, oregano, parsley)
• 3 Tbsp olive oil

cheesey goodness mixture:

• 4 cups (1lb) cottage cheese or ricotta (didn't I tell you that this is a decadent recipe?)
• 8 cups (1.5-2lb) shredded mozarella, 1 cup reserved (didn't I?)
• 3-4 Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
• 1 egg
• salt and pepper

also,

• 1-2 cups of baby spinach, washed
• 1 package of oven-ready (no-boil) lasagna noodles, see note below

Preheat oven to 375F

In a large pot (I used a 3.5l pot and it was just barely big enough.  I advise a step up from that.) over a medium flame, cook the onion in the olive oil until clear then throw the garlic in and brown it in the oil.  Add your dried seasonings to the pot then add and brown the meat.  Drain off any collected fat and then add the tomatoes and paste.  Cook on medium-low for 10-15 minutes.

Meanwhile, combine the ricotta or cottage cheese, 7 cups mozzarella, parsley, and egg in a bowl.  Mix together well and set aside.

Note on the no-boil noodles: If you take the package's word for it and put them in dry, you'll get hard bits of noodle in your final dish.  Instead, fill a shallow baking dish with hot water and soak the noodles for 3-5 minutes.  This gives them time to soften up pre-baking and turns out a nicely firm but not crunchy lasagna.

To assemble: put 1/4 of the sauce into a large baking dish then layer noodles, cheese mixture, and then spinach in that order.  Repeat up to the edge of the pan being certain to end on a layer of sauce.  Top with the reserved Mozzarella and some fresh parsley or basil.

Cover dish with foil and bake covered for 40 minutes then remove foil and bake an additional 10 minutes or until heated through and cheese is slightly browned.

Enjoy!

*: On the first occasion of working our way through this dish--a week's endeavor which was an unexpected result of friends' plans falling through--we each must have gained a good five pounds.  This I write as a warning to you, lovely reader.

Gather about you your friends and your family and make sure they are hungry.  Do Not endeavor to eat this alone.

Savory onion pie and a quick cookbook review

One of the unexpected benefits of Dana getting a job at the library is that she's constantly surrounded by cool books that she can take home. In fact there's a whole system in place to facilitate that very thing. (From my understanding it works okay but I'm not sure this whole book lending thing is going to catch on.) Her first week there she was shelving fiction and ended up coming home with some awful Pride and Prejudice meets sexy vampires book. This had no discernible benefits for anyone, no matter what she says. Last week, though, the process totally came through. On her way out of the library, she had stopped off at the desk to check out two awesome cookbooks: Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess and Suzanne Goin's Sunday Suppers at Lucques, the cookbook from which the hazelnut brown butter cake recipe originated.

Sunday Suppers at Lucques is a visual feast, heavy glossy pages literally (figuratively) drooping with the weight of the exquisite food photography and deliciously typeset recipes. It's really a gorgeous book, well put together and considerable, but I paged all the way through it twice before I realized that it didn't make me want to cook. Sure, the brown butter cake was good -when Dana made it but I feel that that recipe was a good indication of the book's direction. That cake was an all-day affair, both in its preparation and--I think more importantly--its consumption. It was good but it was not the sort of thing you eat two slices of in a sitting. I liken it to taking weary steps up an unscaled mountain. Every step and every forkful are something new--I hesitate to say a revelation because I don't mean the word's more ecstatic connotations, but maybe exploration?--but each is just so damn exhausting that you're not anxious to rush into the next one. The food here, like the cake, is complex, dense in flavor if not texture, and despite the impression I got from the book's name, not cuisine I would want to spend a Sunday putting together. I'm sure the book has its devotees, a quick peek at the Amazon reviews certainly indicate so, but for me there's a missing link here between the potential of the recipes--which is great, apparently--and the enthusiasm and motivation necessary to follow them to an end. Every successful cookbook--actually, at this point, even every fiction book that stays planted on our shelves--must inspire just as much as it instructs. With the proper inspiration, I'll gladly, ecstatically spend a whole weekend putting dinner on the table, but I'm just not getting that. We have the book a couple more weeks. I'll let you know if anything changes.

The great success for us was Nigella Lawson's book. As I was finding myself decreasingly rapt with Lucques, Dana was becoming noticeably enamored with the tone of this book which is often just as no-nonsense, biting, and hilarious as Dana herself. The first recipe we tried from it was this Supper Onion Pie which had four red onions caramelized atop a simple scone dough. Easy and simple, but so tasty and incredibly photogenic.

Supper Onion Pie
from Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess

for the filling/topping

• 4 medium red onions
• 1Tbsp olive oil
• 1Tbsp butter
• 3-4 sprigs of fresh thyme or 1/2 tsp dried
• 5 ounces sharp cheddar cheese or Gruyere, grated

for the scone dough

• 1-2/3 cups AP flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3Tbsp butter, melted
• 1 tsp dry English mustard (we left this out because we didn't want to go out to the store for it)
• 1 large egg, beaten

Butter a 9-inch pie plate or 8-10 inch cast iron skillet and preheat the oven to 400F.

Peel the onions, halve them, then cut each half into 4 segments each. Heat the oil and butter in the pan, then add the onions and cook over a medium heat, stirring regularly, for about 30 minutes. For me, they were meltingly soft and gorgeously colored. Season with salt and pepper and add the thyme. Turn into your prepared pie dish and scatter 2 ounces of the cheese over the waiting onions.

Meanwhile, put the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl with the remaining cheese. Pour the milk into a measuring cup, add the melted butter, mustard (if using), and egg. Mix well and then pour onto the flour mixture in the bowl. Mix to a dough using a fork, a wooden spoon, or your hands; it should be quite sticky. Then tip it out onto a work surface and press into a circle about the size of the pie dish. Transfer it to the dish and press to seal the edges.

Put it in the oven for 15 minutes, then turn down to 350F and give it another 10. The dough should be golden and crisp on top. Let it stand for a couple of minutes then run a knife along the inside edge of the pie plate, place a plate over it and invert. Ours needed a little convincing but eventually plopped out beautifully onto a platter.

Nigella suggests serving with a brown sauce but we just dug straight in and it was heavenly. Your mileage may vary, though. Especially steer clear if you're not a huge onions fan like I am. If you are, though, it's hard to beat this for a low stress vegetarian dinner and some gorgeous photo ops.