TWD- Pizza Rustica

I know one of the first rules of cooking and baking is to read the recipe all the way through. I read this recipe through a few times so I knew what ingredients, how to make the dough, and how long it would take to prepare. I decided to make this for dinner tonight. I made the crust this afternoon and left it in the fridge for a few hours. 

We eat at 5pm so I thought I'd just start this at 4:20 or so because it bakes for around 30 minutes.

How did I miss that you're supposed to cool it completely before serving? We ended up just eating it hot. And a little runny.

This is an interesting dish- a sweet crust filled with a ricotta cheese, eggs, cheese, and prosciutto (my fave). The crust isn't subtlety sweet, my daughter thought it tasted like cookies and left out eating the filling. :) Both my husband and I really liked this. My kids, not so much.

Margaret and Jessica will have the recipe!

Homemade Pizza Dough

We love pizza. LOVE it. And I love to make it at home. It's fairly easy and low maintenance. I know on cooking shows, they recommend the easiest thing to use for pizza crust is buying some dough from your favorite pizzeria (has anyone tried that?), but I always just make it at home. My old go-to recipe was from Cooking Light, but recently, I tried a crust from Simply Recipes. It's equally easy and quick to put together, but I think it's chewier and has a better texture. And if you haven't checked out Simply Recipes, you should! There are great main dish recipes that I love!
Try this pizza dough out the next time you're in the mood!!

Homemade Pizza

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 cups warm water (105°F-115°F
• 1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast package
• 3 1/2 cups bread flour 
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar

METHOD

1 In the large bowl of an electric mixer, add the warm water. Sprinkle on the yeast and let sit for 5 minutes.

2 Attach a dough hook to the mixer. Mix in the olive oil, flour, salt and sugar on low speed for a minute. Knead on low speed, until the dough is smooth and elastic.

3 Place ball of dough in a bowl that has been coated lightly with olive oil. Turn the dough around in the bowl so that it gets coated with the oil. Cover with plastic wrap. Let rise until it doubles in size. 


Makes 2 10-12-inch pizzas.

Lasagna with Ragu Bolognese

I love lasagna. Seriously, LOVE it. When I was a kid, it was my favorite thing my mom made. Granted, her lasagna was not authentic, gourmet, or healthy- it was more like this:

Cheesey (yes, even cottage cheesey), bubbly, comforting.

Well, I married a bit of an Italian food snob (not just a bit, actually) and apparently, lasagna with cottage cheese, powdery Parmasan cheese and cheddar cheese is not "authentic". Whaaat?!! What's that about? So when we were first married, I came across this recipe from Martha Stewart Living for a lasagna with Ragu Bolognese.

There's three parts to the lasagna: the ragu:

 Bechamel:

 the lasagna noodles and some Parmigiana Reggiano

This recipe takes a while to prepare, but it's so worth it. I sometimes double the recipe and make an extra to freeze.  It won a "pretty authentic" from my husband, too!

Ragu Bolognese

adapted from Martha Stewart Living

serves 10-12

Makes about 3 quarts.

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 onions, cut into 1/4-inch dice
• 3 stalks celery, cut into 1/4-inch dice
• 3 carrots, cut into 1/4-inch dice
• 2 pounds ground sirloin
• 2 pounds ground veal
• 1 quart whole milk
• 1 quart Homemade Beef Stock, or two 14 1/2 -ounce cans
• 1 cup tomato paste
• 1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
• 3/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

1. In a large cast-iron or enamel pot, heat butter and olive oil over medium heat.
2. Add onions, and cook until they begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add celery and carrots, and cook until the vegetables are tender, 8 to 10 minutes. Add ground sirloin and veal, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the meat is no longer pink. Add milk, and cook at a gentle simmer, skimming fat from surface, until the liquid has reduced by half, about 50 minutes.
3. Add beef stock, tomato paste, salt, and pepper; simmer gently until sauce thickens, 40 to 45 minutes. If using for lasagna, set aside to cool slightly before assembling. The sauce can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, or in the freezer for 2 months.

 Bechamel

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, plus more for baking dish
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
• 1 cup milk

To assemble

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, plus more for baking dish

1. Make the Bechamel Sauce: In a small saucepan, combine butter and flour. Stir in nutmeg, and season with salt and pepper. Place over medium heat and stir in milk. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, and continue cooking until the mixture begins to thicken, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat, and set aside.
2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter a 13-by-9-inch baking dish. Spoon a little of the meat sauce into the bottom of the prepared baking dish, and spread to coat. Then, layer with lasagna sheets, one-sixth of the bechamel sauce, one-sixth of the meat sauce, and a little Parmesan. Repeat the layers five more times. Top with remaining Parmesan and pieces of butter. Bake until cheese begins to turn golden brown, 30 to 45 minutes. Serve warm.

Chicken Parmigiana

My mom has the Everyday Food Great Food Fast cookbook. As I was thumbing through it, I found this recipe. I like Chicken Parmigiana, but my husband doesn't like what he calls "big hunks of chicken" so I haven't made it. Since he's out of town, I thought I'd try it out. 

The recipe is easy and pretty quick. I thought we had mozzarella, but we didn't so I had to cut up string cheese sticks. Haha. We served it with tomato sauce and angel hair pasta. The chicken was moist and flavorful- I loved the crunchy coating.

Chicken Parmigiana

Ingredients

Serves 4.

• 8 chicken breast cutlets, or 4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves, split horizontally into 8 cutlets (1 1/2 pounds total)
• 1/2 cup dried breadcrumbs
• 1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 cups spaghetti sauce, homemade or purchased
• 8 slices (1/4-inch-thick) mozzarella cheese, preferably fresh (6 ounces)

Directions

1. Preheat broiler with rack set 4 inches away from the heat source. Combine the breadcrumbs and the Parmesan cheese in a shallow dish. Place the egg in a second shallow dish. Season chicken on both sides with salt and pepper. Dip chicken in egg, turning to coat. Transfer to breadcrumb mixture, turning to coat; set aside.
2. Pour spaghetti sauce into a 10-by-15-inch baking dish, or a rimmed baking sheet. In a large nonstick skillet, heat half of the oil over medium heat. Add half of the chicken, and cook until golden, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Transfer to a paper-towel-lined baking sheet to drain, then place in prepared baking dish. Repeat with remaining oil and chicken.
3. Top each piece of chicken with a slice of mozzarella. Broil until sauce is hot, and mozzarella is melted and lightly browned in spots, 5 to 8 minutes. 

Eggplant Parmesan

Eggplant is something that, I think, if you didn't grow up eating it, is weird- it's bitter, it has weird seeds, it gets all brown. I can honestly say when I was growing up, we ate eggplant next to never. My mom is the best, but she worked full time and wasn't really the type to venture out in the cookbooks and make a variety of dishes. My husband's family, on the other hand, apparently ate it all the time. My mother in law is more prone to cooking the types of food in which eggplant would more commonly be found. They also lived in Italy for a few years when my husband was young, so that probably influenced her cooking as well. As such, my husband + eggplant = best friends. Me + eggplant = I have to think about it. But since he likes it so much, I usually cook it once a month in something. Or, if I'm lucky, he'll cook it in some pasta. The best eggplant recipe I've found so far is this sandwich from Cooking Light.
Until now.
Now, of course I've heard of eggplant parmesan and seen it at restaurants, but not being an eggplant fan, I was never one to try it. But I found a recipe on Simply Recipes (I'm trying a bunch of stuff on there now right now) and thought it sounded like something my husband would like. This recipe is straightforward, but a little time-consuming. Preparing the eggplant and frying it takes some time, so I did this on a Sunday. This recipe is wonderful! My husband said it tasted pretty authentic Italian. Even our 17 month old ate a ton of it (the 3 year old ate Apple Jacks, but 50% success is good for us).
I'm not really sure why you bread and fry the eggplant in oil, only to top it with cheese and tomato sauce, but hey that's what it says. Next time, I would probably just bake it instead of fry it. Also, make sure you slice the eggplant thinly so they're soft after baking. If you have small children, you may even want to skin the eggplants. I would NOT recommend skipping the initial draining step. Eggplants contain a lot of moisture. Salting them and letting them sit cuts down the moisture, as well as the bitterness.
Eggplant Parmesan Recipe
adapted from Simply Recipes
Ingredients
2 lbs (about 2 large) eggplants
Kosher salt
1 28-oz can whole peeled tomatoes (I used no-salt added)
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
Olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup fine dry breadcrumbs
4 large eggs, beaten
1 1/2 lbs of fresh mozzarella cheese, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds (I used an 8-oz pkg of shredded)

1 cup grated high quality Parmesan cheese
1 packed cup fresh basil leaves
Method
1 Cut eggplants lengthwise into 1/4 inch slices. Arrange one layer in the bottom of a large colander and sprinkle evenly with salt. Repeat with remaining eggplant, salting, until all eggplant is in the colander. Weigh down the slices with a couple of plates and let drain for 2 hours. The purpose of this step is to have the eggplant release some of its moisture before cooking.
2 While the eggplant is draining, prepare tomato sauce. Combine tomatoes, garlic and 1/3 cup olive oil in a food processor. Season with salt and pepper to taste and set aside.
3 When eggplant has drained, press down on it to remove excess water, wipe off the excess salt, and lay the slices out on paper towels to remove all the moisture. In a wide, shallow bowl, combine flour and breadcrumbs. Mix well. Pour beaten eggs into another wide shallow bowl. Place a large, deep skillet over medium heat, and pour in a a half inch of olive oil. When oil is shimmering, dredge the eggplant slices first in the flour mixture, then in the beaten egg. Working in batches, slide coated eggplant into hot oil and fry until golden brown on both sides, turning once. Drain on paper towels.
4 Preheat the oven to 350°F. In the bottom of a 10x15 inch glass baking dish, spread 1 cup of tomato sauce. Top with one third of the eggplant slices. Top eggplant with half of the mozzarella slices. Sprinkle with one third of the Parmesan and half of the basil leaves.
5 Make a second layer of eggplant slices, topped by 1 cup of sauce, remaining mozzarella, half the remaining Parmesan, and all of the remaining basil. Add remaining eggplant, and top with the remaining tomato sauce and Parmesan.
6 Bake until cheese has melted and the top is slightly brown, about 30 minutes. Allow to rest at room temperature for about 10 minutes before serving.
Serves 8.