Catching up

It's been a while since I was able to sit down at my computer and get the photos off the digicam. This is mostly because my main computer died, and I couldn't bear even sitting at my desk because I was too depressed. I'm glad to say that my computer is back up and running (I'm on it now) so all is good. For your computer geeks out there, it's an AMD Athlong 64 x2 5600+, Asus M2N-E with 2gb DDR2 ram. I'll probably upgrade that to 4gb sometime, but I couldn't get the nice rebate on two purchases.

Anyway, the first of the pictures I have is a nice bone-in ribeye seared in the cast iron skillet and ready to go into the oven with blanched fingerlings with garlic slices all around it. This was a great dinner. Typically at the farmer's market, their meat is very jaggedy cut and that night was no exception. However, I noticed that there was a long uncut bone-in rib ... loin (?) sitting on the counter just waiting to go home with me. So I prevailed upon the nice counter man to custom cut a nice smooth steak for us to take home. Score!

I've been making bolognese lasagna for the last couple years. I really love the silkiness of the bechamel but something about it just isn't hitting the mark for me. We always use fresh spinach pasta with a two-day (at least) simmered bolognese ragu. Perhaps it's that I think I prefer a meat-sausage ragu over a bolognese. I know it's blasphemy. Anyhow, this is how my bolognese lasagna turns out. It's got way more layers than an Italian-American lasagna and it feels like far more work to churn out and put together. I like to make the sauce one night, assemble it another, and then stick it in the oven on a third night, preferably a Wednesday or later when I'm usually too tired to cook.

Oh, I have also learned that lasagna is singular and lasagne is plural. Who knew?

I recently took a break from my bolognese lasagna and made a good old fashioned Italian-American lasagne. I made a simple meat sauce but I chopped the onions too big in the mistaken theory that they would all melt away, so I attacked it with the immersion blender. That resulted in a nice smooth meat sauce. Then came the layers of ricotta, sauce, and pasta. You gotta use the wavy dried pasta for this. I made a pan and a half. Amazingly enough, J and I finished more lasagna than ever. We polished off half a pan that night and after portioning out the lunches, the first pan was history!