Lasagna Sandwich

In my continued pursuit to bring some excitement to grilled cheese, I have made the Lasagna Sandwich. Now, let me be clear about something right away: This doesn’t actually taste like lasagna. But it almost does, and it’s very good.

This sandwich is pretty much a grilled cheese with some Canadian bacon and a couple of sauces thrown in. I made mine with an Italian loaf and added some fresh basil, but I’ve made it before without those modifications and it was still very good.

I see where this recipe was going, but for me it mostly just suggests lasagna. You could pretty easily take the idea further, I think. Use prosciutto or thinly sliced sausage instead of Canadian bacon, or maybe even replace the sour cream with ricotta cheese.

Almost-Lasagna Sandwich
Adapted from Lasagna Sandwich
Makes 2 sandwiches

1/4 cup sour cream
1 finely chopped scallion
1 minced garlic clove
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
Salt and pepper
1/4 cup pizza sauce*
4 slices of bread
4 large fresh basil leaves
4 thin slices of Canadian bacon
2 thick slices of mozzarella, the size of your bread

Mix the first four ingredients in a small bowl. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Divide the sour cream mixture between two slices of bread. Divide the pizza sauce between the remaining two slices. For each sandwich, layer 2 basil leaves, 2 slices of Canadian bacon, and 1 slice of mozzarella between one sour-cream-coated and one pizza-sauce-coated slice of bread.

Grease a skillet with a bit of butter or some olive-oil spray, and cook sandwiches over medium heat for about 5 minutes per side, or until bread is toasty and cheese is melted.

*You can use store-bought pizza sauce or make your own by adding a small can of tomato sauce to some sautéed garlic and oregano. Or, if you have some, you could substitute marinara.

Noodle Love IV: Penne

Everyone is excited about spring, and I can’t join in. Not yet. I’m not ready for spring. I still have too many winter dishes to make. You see, every time I find a recipe I want to try (which is often), I add it to the queue. With my schedule being what it is, I’m not able to do the cooking as quickly as I’m able to do the finding, and I still have a list of soups, stews, and baked pastas I’m not ready to give up on.

It’s supposed to be 65 degrees here in Maryland today. Soon it’ll reach 70—warm enough to open the windows but not to turn on the air conditioner—and I will insist on turning on the oven to make chicken and biscuits, and our small apartment will become very hot, and I will get very cranky, and I already feel bad for Adam because I see where this is going. But I must make the recipes! I can’t wait another year. And meanwhile I’m collecting spring recipes, and pretty soon I’ll have too many of those, and so the cycle will continue.

This is why I can’t get excited about spring. But the good news is that this dish, Baked Penne with Roasted Vegetables, can become a spring dish.

As it is, I’d say it’s mostly suited to late fall/early winter. Turning on the oven to roast vegetables doesn’t initially scream “Spring!” to me. But I think that it can if you just play with the ingredients a bit. You could swap out the zucchini and peppers for asparagus and artichokes and use diced tomatoes instead of tomato sauce. Or even use roasted cherry tomatoes. Personally, I can’t stop wondering how this would taste with my favorite roasted vegetable of all time—Brussels sprouts. Brussels sprouts and pasta sounds sort of strange, but I’ll never know for sure unless I try it. So I’m adding that to the queue, as well.

Also, I want to point out that this dish is easier than it might seem. Just cook the pasta while the vegetables are in the oven, and when they’re both done, toss them together in a big bowl (or your pasta pot) with the sauce and cheese. Bake and you’re done.

Baked Penne with Roasted Vegetables
Adapted from Giada’s Penne with Roasted Vegetables

1 yellow and 1 orange bell pepper, cored and cut into 1-inch wide strips
1 zucchini, quartered lengthwise and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 yellow onion, peeled and sliced into 1-inch strips
5 garlic cloves, lightly smashed
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 tablespoon dried Italian herb mix
1/2 pound penne pasta
2 cups marinara sauce
3/4 cup frozen peas, thawed
1/2 cup grated fontina cheese
1/4 cup grated mozzarella cheese
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for topping
1 tablespoon butter, cut into small pieces
2 tablespoons chopped parsley

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

On a baking sheet, toss the peppers, zucchini, garlic, and onions with olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, and dried herbs. Roast until tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. When they’re done, lower oven temperature to 400 degrees.

Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook for about 5 to 6 minutes, until al dente. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup of the pasta water.

In a large bowl, toss the drained pasta with the roasted vegetables, marinara sauce, cheeses, peas, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Gently mix until all the pasta is coated with the sauce and the ingredients are combined. If your mixture seems a bit too thick, add some of the reserved pasta water until you reach the desired consistency. Remember that the pasta will continue to cook in the oven and absorb some of the sauce/liquid.

Pour the pasta into a greased baking dish. Top with extra Parmesan cheese and butter pieces. Bake until top is golden and cheese melts, about 20 minutes. Top with parsley.

I’m thinking I’ll submit this to Presto Pasta Nights, which I’ve never done before but sounds fun. Who can ever have enough pasta recipes? Not me.

Urban Legend Cookies

Today I made the famous Urban Legend Cookie. Have you heard of this one? If you want, you can read the details here, but basically the story behind this recipe is that a woman asked Neiman Marcus to share its cookie recipe and was told she could have it for “two fifty.” What she assumed was $2.50 turned out to be $250.00 and, to get even with Neiman Marcus for ripping her off, she spread the recipe around to everyone she knew. The recipe now circulates the Internet, serving as payback for the taken-advantage-of customer.

The story is, of course, false. This is its most recent reincarnation, but you may also have heard it told as the Mrs. Fields cookie recipe. Same tale, different name. Anyway, I don’t know where this recipe really came from, and I don’t much care. The cookies are delicious, and that’s good enough for me.

Urban Legend Cookies

2.5 cups rolled oats
1 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
.5 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
2.5 ounces chocolate bar, grated
1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a food processor, finely grind oats. Set aside.

Cream together butter and sugars. Mix in eggs and vanilla.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and baking powder and fold into the creamed butter and sugar mixture. Stir in the oats, chocolate, and nuts. Dough will be stiff.

Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto greased or lined baking sheet. Arrange about 2 inches apart. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until edges begin to turn golden brown.

Chewy Oatmeal Blondies

I get too many magazines. For a while, I was subscribing to Gourmet, Cook’s Illustrated, Simple and Delicious, Martha Stewart Living, and Everyday Food, not to mention a few other non-food-related ones. I couldn’t keep up with them. They would gather, in great tumbling piles, on my coffee table, until I finally had to toss some unread ones from 2006. Soon, I’ll need to toss the unread ones from 2007. I finally cut back, and, for a while, I was being very good about trashing the renewal notices that bombarded my mailbox. I let my Everyday Food subscription run out, because I can’t even keep up with the recipes I save online, let alone any additional ones, and I also let my subscription to Martha Stewart Living run out, telling myself that I wouldn’t renew it until we had a house and I could make more use of its brand of tips and advice.

Then, I didn’t realize who I was up against.

Martha Stewart is unrelenting, and she refuses to take no for an answer. She will win, period. I threw out dozens of renewal notices until, finally, after many many months of maintaining my resolve, Martha got me. When she told me that, if I only renewed my subscription to Living, I would get a year-long subscription to Everyday Food absolutely on the house, I gave up. I sent in my renewal, adding a memo on the check that this small payment was for both Living and Everyday Food. A few weeks later, I was surprised with a complementary Martha Stewart tote bag. Thanks, Martha.

I have to wonder, though, if Martha would have been so generous with her offer if she’d known that I would turn around and give away her recipes. I’m sorry, Martha, but when you come up with something as good as Chewy Oatmeal Blondies, I simply must share.

An added bonus with this recipe is that it begins with homemade baking mix, which is 3 cups spooned-and-leveled flour, 1.5 cups sugar, 1 tablespoon baking powder, and 1/2 tablespoon salt. This is great to have on hand when you feel like baking during the week. When you want to make dessert on a Wednesday night, your sifted dry ingredients are all ready to go. The April issue of Everyday Food contains four delicious recipes to use with the baking mix, including these Chewy Oatmeal Blondies.

Chewy Oatmeal Blondies
From Everyday Food

1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg, room temperature
1 1/2 cups homemade baking mix
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease an 8-inch square baking pan, line with parchment paper (letting paper hang over edges on two opposite sides to form “handles”), and grease paper. Set aside.

Beat butter and sugar together. Add egg and beat to combine. Slowly beat in baking mix, half a cup at a time, until just combined. Mix in 3/4 cups oats, and spead batter in prepared pan.

Sprinkle batter with remaining oats, and press gently. Bake for 30 minutes, and let cool in pan for 30 minutes more.

Using parchment paper handles, transfer blondies to a wire rack to cool completely. Using a serrated knife, cut into 9 squares.

Andouille Sausage Pizza with Onion Confit and Oven-Dried Tomatoes

Yesterday was a day of firsts for me. It was the first time I made a Michael Chiarello recipe. I've always enjoyed his show, and I wish it was one of the more popular shows on FN. It seems that, with the exception of Bobby Flay, all the shows hosted by chefs are fading away, and, in turn, the more advanced recipes, at least in terms of technique, are being replaced by all things quick and simple. It's true that I'll more often make a Rachael Ray-type recipe than I will a Michael Chiarello-type recipe, but that's only because there are 2 days per week that I have hours to spend on a meal, and 5 that I don't. So while I, like most home cooks, may more often turn to a relatively simple recipe, I much more appreciate a complicated one, because it is in working through those that I find my cooking improves the most. Although I wouldn't exactly call Andouille Sausage Pizza with Onion Confit and Fontina Cheese complicated; it is, however, a bit time consuming. Most of that is down time, but you have to have a couple hours free to let things cook slowly in the oven.


The other first I experienced with this recipe was the making of a confit, which refers to a food item that has been immersed and slowly cooked in a flavoring liquid, traditionally for preservation. The confit here consisted of onions cooked in a mixture of oil, vinegar, wine, salt, and sugar. Though I've only done it once, I already feel like the making of an onion confit is a valuable method to become familiar with. The onions really absorb the flavor of whatever you cook them in, so much so that, by the end, they hardly taste like onions anymore. So if you're ever looking for a way to take a liquid and concentrate its flavor in a solid form, consider an onion confit.


Overall, this pizza was very good. I wish I had a pizza stone, so that my crust would have turned out more crispy, but that's another item on my wait-'til-we-have-a-house list. The crust was tender though (I used Emeril's recipe), and the toppings worked wonderfully together. The spicyness of the andouille and the sweetness of the confit balanced each other nicely, and the cheeses brought all the flavors together. The oven-dried tomatoes were a welcome alternative to the usual pizza sauce--they were sweet, delicious, and full of the flavors of the garlic-thyme oil in which they'd been cooked.


Andouille Pizza with Onion Confit and Oven-Dried Tomatoes
adapted from Andouille Sausage Pizza Pie, using Emeril's Basic Pizza Dough

Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
2 links fresh andouille
4 cloves garlic, divided
2 yellow onions, sliced
1/2 cup champagne or white wine vinegar
Pinch of sugar for confit, plus 1 teaspoon for dough
2 tablespoons white wine
2 roma tomatos
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 cup warm (110 degrees F) water
1 (1/4-ounce) envelope active dry yeast
3 cups bleached all-purpose flour
1 oz. fontina cheese, shredded
2 oz. mozzarella cheese, shredded
1/4 cup grated parmesan
2 tablespoons chopped parlsey

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

First, prepare the sausage. Remove the casings from two links of andouille, then tear the sausages into small pieces and drop into an oil-drizzled skillet over medium-high heat. Saute until cooked through. Reduce heat to medium, add two cloves of thinly sliced garlic, and cook 2 minutes more. With a slotted spoon, remove garlic and sausage from pan and set aside.

Next, prepare the onion confit. Add enough olive oil to andouille renderings to equal about 1/4 cup. Add onions, and cook for a few minutes, or until they begin to soften. Add 1/2 tablespoon salt, vinegar, pinch of sugar, and white wine. Cover skillet with a parchment-paper circle that's had a two-inch hole cut out of the center to allow steam to escape. Place skillet in the oven and allow to cook for 2 hours, or until pizza dough is ready. (You can plan to cook the vegetables for 3 hours if you have the time, but I'm impatient.)


Slice tomatoes into four slices each. Drizzle a baking pan or sheet with about 2 tablespoons olive oil, top with tomatoes, then drizzle an additional 2 tablespoons of olive oil over the tomatoes. Top with 2 thinly sliced garlic cloves, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, a couple grinds of pepper, and 1/2 teaspoon of dried thyme. Place in oven to cook with onions (tomatoes and onions will be done at the same time).


About an hour before tomatoes and onions are finished, prepare pizza dough. In a large bowl, combine the water, yeast, 1 tablespoon oil, and 1 teaspoon of sugar, and stir to combine. Let sit until the mixture is foamy, about 5 minutes. Add 1 1/2 cups of the flour and 1 teaspoon of salt, mixing by hand until it is all incorporated and the mixture is smooth. Continue adding the flour, 1/4 cup at a time, working the dough after each addition, until all the flour is incorporated but the dough is still slightly sticky. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth but still slightly tacky, 3 to 5 minutes.

Oil a large mixing bowl with 1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil. Place the dough in the bowl and turn to oil all sides. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set in a warm, draft-free place until nearly doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Remove the dough from the bowl and briefly knead. Place on a lightly floured work surface and let rest for 10 minutes. Transfer to a lightly oiled baking sheet (or a baker's peel, if you have one) and shape into a large round.

Remove vegetables from oven, and adjust oven temperature to 450 degrees. Scatter shaped dough with fontina, then top with onions and the tomatoes and reserved sausage, being sure to include the garlic that was cooked with both. With a pastry brush, lightly brush the edges of the dough with the oil that the tomatoes cooked in, using just enough to lightly coat the outside of the dough. Finally, top with mozzarella and parmesan cheese and bake in preheated oven for about 12 minutes, or until cheese is melted and crust begins to turn golden brown. Top with parsley and serve.