Ambition, 2.1

One of the reasons I got so het up about the idea of making homemade ricotta was I found a recipe for ricotta gnocchi. Said recipe was part of an article about using homemade ricotta and sure, I could have just bought a tub of cheese at the store and called it a day, but I got ambitious.

Ricotta recipe one failed miserably. Ricotta recipe two turned out splendidly, and now that I had the main ingredient, I could turn it into gnocchi. The actual recipe was for ricotta gnocchi with some kind of mushroom sauce (serves six), but I skipped the mushroom part and figured on substituting my own tomato sauce.

Per the instructions, I weighed out a pound of ricotta and dutifully drained it until it had the texture of wet clay. I mixed in a half cup of flour, an egg, a tablespoon each of olive oil and melted butter, a 1/4 c. of Parmesan
and some salt and pepper. It felt very sticky, so I added another tablespoon of flour. After the fourth (do not add more than four! the recipe said) it was still pretty sticky, not slighty sticky, but, do not add more than four tablespoons!

I did pause a moment to consider that this was the same guy who wrote ricotta recipe one, and maybe, just maybe, he was wrong. Then I decided to follow what was written and play around another time, if necessary.

I covered and chilled the dough. A half hour later, I took the dough out again and tried to divide it into four parts, but it was awfully sticky. I ended up with three. Using copious amounts of flour, I rolled the dough into 3/4-inch-wide logs. Here, the recipe said to cut them into 1-inch pieces, but I thought they would look more, well, gnocchi-like if I pinched off pieces instead. They were still remarkably sticky, so I rolled them in flour before placing them on a baking sheet to chill some more.

At this point, I had to turn the operation over to Will while I took Keith to soccer practice. Shortly before we were due home, he put the gnocchi on to cook. They boiled in water for a few minutes, floated to the top, and he cooked them about two minutes longer and drained them. Keith and I weren't home yet, so Will kept the gnocchi warm by tossing them with some melted butter in a saute pan over low heat. When we finally got home, he served the gnocchi with tomato sauce.

THE VERDICT: Reaction one -- Serves six? I don't think so. We didn't have enough for four servings, with two of them kid-sized. Granted, I didn't do the mushroom sauce business, which might have had something to do with it, but we still should have had enough for four bowls.
Reaction two -- WOW. Wow, wow, wow. These were really good. The gnocchi were extremely light, with a nice texture and flavor. They also went well with the homemade tomato sauce. So next time, I double the recipe.

Making it up as I go along

One of the many differences between my husband and myself is he is a much more flexible cook than I am. He can come home from work and throw something together; when I try to do that, the answer more likely than not is pasta, probably with a quick-and-dirty alfredo sauce. He can make up dinners without a recipe; I have to know in advance exactly what I'm making and that I have the ingredients handy.

Sometimes, though, I venture into the realm of cooking without a precise recipe. For me, these are baby steps, starting with something I have a general idea about and may even have made before, and then tweaking it here and there. Something like lasagna.

Making lasagna is kind of the reverse of my binder-clearing project; instead of trying out different published recipes, I'm trying to create something worth writing down. Sure, I can make a decent lasagna using the recipe on the back of the pasta box, but the top layer is always too tough and jarred sauces never do it for me. So I want to make up my own.

My basic sauce recipe originally came from a friend, who also made it up as she went along. I started by sauteing a couple of pressed garlic cloves in a little olive oil. If I were making a strict pasta sauce, I would use three or four cloves. In a lasagna, however, I don't want the garlic to be overwhelming.

I put in some tomato paste and a large can of tomato sauce. I don't know why working from canned tomato sauce tastes better to me than using a jar of the stuff, but it does. I dream of getting enough tomatoes out of my meager garden to make sauce entirely from scratch, a dream deferred until next summer.

I like the flavor onions give to sauces, but I don't like the taste or texture of onions themselves and picking them out of my lasagna is not an option. To get around it, I dropped a tablespoon of granulated onion bits into the sauce. Next I added whatever herbs were handy, in this case, fresh oregano, rosemary and basil, a pinch of dried marjoram and two bay leaves. Normally at this point I also slosh in some red wine, but I didn't have it handy so I went without. Last, I tossed in a chunk of Parmesan cheese, and simmered on low for a while.

Meanwhile, I browned some sausages, another tip I got from a friend, and set them aside. I started the pasta. After confirming the milk in the fridge was still good, I went to work on a bechamel sauce. Finally, I threw some ricotta, grated mozzarella, Parmesan and a couple of eggs into a bowl and mixed it all together.

I started layering with some bechamel, a little tomato sauce, noodles, cheese, sausage, tomato sauce, noodles... two things quickly became obvious. One, I needed a lot more sausage than I had. Two, it probably wouldn't have hurt to mix it in with some of the tomato sauce. I skipped the sausage on the middle layer to save it for the top. After laying down the last of the noodles, I topped it with the rest of the bechamel and copious amounts of finely shredded mozzarella. And baked it.

VERDICT: The result was one fine-looking lasagne. It was pretty good, although a lot cheesier and less meaty than I would like; next time I scale back on the ricotta and double the sausage. The top layer of noodles wasn't too tough or overcooked. My husband was skeptical of the use of bechamel at first, but liked it after he tried it. The boys ate seconds. We're getting closer.