Foodporn

Lefse: a traditional soft Norwegian flatbread.  A staple of my childhood in North Dakota.  Or as I explain to my peers here, "it's like a tortilla, but with potatoes."

The lefse of my youth, the few times that I remember making it, was all about the instant potato flakes and teflon electric lefse grill. 

Not us, man.  We're all real spuds and cast iron.  We're the badass old school lefse makers.

Oh, except that part where we use an electric stand mixer to mash the potatoes.  And a gas range instead of, you know, wood fire or something. 

(At this point, Duke walks in and says "Hey, that looks like mashed potatoes!"  Good eye, man.)

Though we talked about the existence (and procurement) of a tortilla press, 100% of the lefse made on Sunday at my house was hand-rolled.  The mashed potatoes are mixed with cream, butter, oil, sugar, salt, and flour, and then rolled out impossibly thin.

This is a nice close up of my Communist flour.  What?  Yeah.  North Dakota Mill.  State-owned and operated since 1922.  Suck it, Obama.  You ain't got nothing on North Dakota wheat farmers.

I did all of the rolling.  Mom ran the lefse cookery.  The stick in her hand is a fancy, highly specialized tool called a "lefse stick".  I thought maybe there'd be a different name for it, but that rapidly turned into another "roof flaps" debacle, and I can't believe I'm admitting it.    

Lefse is slathered with butter, sprinkled with sugar, rolled up, and eaten with a pinky finger lifting up the end, so the sugar doesn't fall out.  At least in my family.  Some heathens put jam on it, I think Wags made a quesadilla out of it last year, and a few brave souls eat it with Lutefisk.  The rapper.

(Note from DuJane:  This is a new feature, since I'm falling behind in the Foodporn category.  Longtime listener, first-time caller Marc will be stepping up to the typically pork-laden plate to deliver a reprint of the monthly column he writes for his law school student newspaper, titled "Legal Mealism".)

By Marc

Hello readers! With Halloween behind us, we're officially past the halfway point of the fall semester.  It seems like just yesterday I was trying to grift a parking pass for this semester from an unsuspecting graduate assistant.  I used to run a game of three-card Monte in the alley between the law school and the Shaw parking ramp.  The lesson here, readers, is that you should never test your con game prowess against someone who's taking logistics courses at the business school; they know how to track transportation!  Anyway, as my loyal readers have likely figured out by now, I'm kind of a big fan of meat.  Pork, beef, chicken, or fish; if you've got it, I'll cook it.  As someone who loves to cook, however, I'm constantly trying to expand my horizons (not to mention my readership).  So it is with great pride that I announce a new venture: meatless cooking. I know, my fellow porketarians; I'm sorry that I have let you down like this.  We can do this though, with a lot of help from our best friend: cheese (Sorry, vegans; I just know that I could never appease your daunting dietary restrictions).  So, without further ado, I present vegetarian spinach and pesto lasagna!

Now readers, I know sometimes I write about some recipes that take quite a few kitchen wares to make the magic happen.  This recipe, however, is quite elegant in its simplicity.  All you're going to need today is a 13x9-inch baking dish, a sheet of aluminum foil, 2 mixing bowls, a kitchen spoon, potholders, and a kitchen knife to cut the lasagna.  Let's start our pre-assembly preparation.

First off, mix together 3 cups of ricotta cheese and 1 cup of shredded parmesan cheese.  Note that I call for shredded parmesan cheese here and not the grated kind that you might usually sprinkle atop your pasta dishes.  Season the cheese mixture with salt and pepper, and then add 1 egg and stir it into the cheese well.  Next, take 2 10-ounce packages of frozen chopped spinach, thawed, and mix them together with 7 ounces of pesto.  This will probably take a little patience, as the spinach can be a little difficult to break apart for mixing.  Now that you've got our fillings, you can begin assembling the lasagna.

Take that baking dish we talked about earlier, and brush or rub the inside of the dish with some olive oil so that the lasagna doesn't stick to the bottom.  For the assembly, you're going to need 12 no-boil (you're welcome for the headache I just saved you) lasagna noodles from an 8-ounce package and about 5 to 6 cups of your favorite chunky pasta sauce.  Take 1.5 cups of sauce and spread it across the bottom of the dish; note, however, that the area you need to cover is only the width of 3 of the lasagna noodles, so it doesn't have to cover the entire dish.  Now take 3 of those noodles and lay them across the bottom of the dish on the sauced area.  Take about 1/3^rd of the cheese mixture and spread it across the noodles, and then take about 1/3^rd of the spinach-pesto mixture and place spoonfuls of it evenly on your cheese-covered noodles (psst, meat eaters!  Yeah, I'm talking to you!  Don't let the vegetarians hear us.  Now would be a good time to sneak some sort of meat, like Italian sausage or some pepperoni, into the lasagna.  I'll distract them with more instructions.  Meat team, go!).  Hey!  Nice job!  Go ahead and take a 5-minute break; I'll watch the lasagna for you.  When you come back, repeat the sauce, noodles, cheese, and spinach-pesto layering two more times.  Finally, top it off with your remaining noodles, and cover that in your remaining sauce.

Did I mention you should have preheated your oven already?  Silly me.  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  While you wait for that to warm up, take your aluminum foil and cover the baking dish, making sure you seal the edges well.  Oven still not ready yet?  How about cleaning up some of the mess you made with the cheese and the spinach-pesto mixture?  No, I didn't realize you have a dishwasher; must be nice.  Don't accuse me of being snarky, I just really think that is must be nice to have a dishwasher!  I already told you I don't know why there is an empty package of sliced pepperoni in the garbage.  Did you ask your roommate?  Well maybe you should!  Oh, oven's ready.  Yeah, I'm sorry too.  Our blood sugar is probably low; let's get this thing in the oven already!

Put the lasagna in the oven and let it bake for about 40 minutes.  Then, very carefully, take the lasagna out of the oven with your potholders and remove the aluminum foil.  Cover the lasagna with 2 cups of grated mozzarella cheese (or Fontina, if you're fancy).  Carefully place the lasagna back in the oven and let it bake for another 15 minutes, or until the sauce is bubbling and the cheese on top of the lasagna has melted.  Finally, carefully remove the lasagna from the oven and let it sit for about 10 minutes.  Now you can cut up your lasagna to your liking and serve!  Enjoy!

The original version of this sadly meatless (wink wink) recipe can be found at Epicurious.

I had a wonderful Sunday.  I slept well, I had pancakes, I took care of a massive grocery excursion, I tried a new recipe, watched more things explode, soaked in the hot tub, and just generally enjoyed the hell out of my day.

While I was enjoying my day, I suspect Duke was cursing his.  Work on the new super giant deck began in earnest this weekend.  He has taken to calling it Ewok Village 2009.  I'm hoping that isn't an indication of design inspiration.  This weekend's launch included a concrete pour, installation of one of many ledger boards, and the framing of a step that connects old deck to new.

Look, it's like we have our own Chicago Spire in the backyard! 

Wrecks supervises.

This project brought to you by the makers of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I started cooking dinner as soon as I got home from the grocery store.  I decided it would be lovely to eat outside.  Dano was on his way, the food was ready to go, the only thing I had to do was clean off the patio furniture.  While scrubbing the table, I realized something underneath it was . . . swarming.  So of course I screamed like a girl, ran away, and made the man who has already taken ambulance ride to the ER because of our yellow jacket problem take care of it.  He did a great job.

My new recipe of the evening can be found here at 101 Cookbooks.  And because I like making Marc's head explode, I'll outline all of the things I did differently after giving you a perfectly awesome-sounding recipe that I never even tried to replicate as-is before making alterations.  I used half purple cabbage, for no other reason than color, I added sugar snap peas because I once made a chopped salad that was seasoned similarly and the snap peas provided the most amazing crunch, and my oil was a mix of sesame and olive.  Oh, and I gave the dressing a generous shake of red pepper flakes.  I omitted the jalapeno.  I also probably used more cilantro than called for, because cilantro is an entire food group in my house.  I think it's a keeper.

It's called coleslaw, but Duke won't eat coleslaw, so we called it "salad" last night and I'd appreciate it if you'd play along if I ever serve it to you.  This was the first slaw that I've made since purchasing my mezzaluna and I'm never going back to whatever I used to do.

I also made a fruit salad that is going to overtake the earth.  Shown here in Pampered Chef's trifle dish, and also taking up half of my fridge in various containers.  Washing and cutting strawberries and de-stemming grapes and pitting cherries is a pain.  I apparently only have the energy to do it once.  So I made enough to last the rest of my lifetime.

The focal point was teriyaki shrimp and beef kebobs with onions and peppers.  When Dano watched me loading up the grill, he asked "Who is going to eat all of this food?" 

About 20 minutes later, his eyes widened as he watched Duke gnawing meat straight off of a pile of skewers like a caveman.  I said "Do you understand now?" and he nodded.  Meekly.  As though he was scared he might lose a limb if he came between Duke and the feed bucket.

Then Dano and I chilled out and enjoyed the beautiful night.  He is in marathon training and my contribution is running music and the occasional home-cooked refueling meal. 

Wrecks says "Screw you, dude.  I run 14 miles every day.  You aren't special.  Give me some shrimp.  Right now."

And Duke went straight back to work.  Until long past dark.

More Ewok Village 2009 photos coming soon.

are very high-maintenance fruit.

There's the slicing.

And the scoring.

And the soaking.

And the picking.

And the draining.

But sometimes in the end, the pomegranate reminds me that once in a great while, something that is expensive and a relentless pain in the ass, something that requires more work than I'm usually willing to do?

Sometimes it's worth it.

Items purchased at Valli Produce this morning that Jane has never eaten:

Jane's review:  I bought both "red cactus pears" and "green cactus pears" (that's how they were labeled) at the store this morning because they were very cheap and something I'd never eaten before.  Much like my pummelo experience, I started by peeling it.  Because when in doubt, peel it. 

After peeling and slicing in half, I took a taste of the center section of each fruit.  The two did not taste remarkably different.  My first thought was "this would make a really good jelly".  Then I searched the internet and dagnabit, all of my recipe results were for prickly pear jelly.  So I took all of the fruit that I bought and froze it for my upcoming jam/jelly extravaganza.  I am also open to recipe suggestions - particularly those involving alcohol.

Items purchased at Valli Produce this morning that Duke has never eaten:

Duke's review:  No Data Available.