We're on Day #3 of three blissful days off, and I spent much of the last two back in the kitchen. The last few months I've not been cooking very much--and every week as I create the meal plan, I've regretted the absence of the excitement that comes with going out on a limb and cooking something different. These two meals weren't the most adventurous, but I had never made either before, and was completely floored by how delicious they turned out to be.
Saturday (and Sunday, as it were) lunch: Chicken Parmesan Subs:
Sounds simple, right? Sometimes the simplest things are the most difficult to make, and I was pretty intimidated to give this a go. Given that we're relatively health-conscious cooks, I knew I wouldn't be able to fry the chicken, but I thought baking it wouldn't give it the nice crispy crust that would make this sub delicious and authentic. So, I split the baby.
We pounded out the chicken so it was JUST a bit flatter than before. I coated them in flour, then an egg wash, then plain bread crumbs seasoned with italian seasonings, seasoned salt, and garlic powder. Into the frying pan they went with 1 Tbs I can't believe it's not butter, and 1 Tbs olive oil (to keep the butter from burning). Gave it about 2 minutes, each side, then popped all of the breasts into a 400 degree oven for 10 minutes. The result? A beautiful crisp breast of chicken that was incredibly juicy and flavorful. We topped them off with some Emeril's Marinara (my favorite--it's a little sweet), parmesan and mozarella cheese, made all brown and bubbly under the broiler. Like a little piece of heaven.
Next up was Giada's Vegetarian Lasagna from her cookbook, Everyday Italian.
We had planned to have our two favorite vegetarians over for dinner on Friday night, but Salmaan woke up with a terrible cold on Friday, so we had to cancel our plans and had soup instead. Saturday he was feeling better, and I had all the ingredients for this meal, so I still wanted to make it.
Let me say this: I have a hard time cooking vegetarian food. It's a mental thing. For example, we cook and eat vegetarian all the time! We truly do, but it isn't until I go into the kitchen, piles of cookbooks in hand, LOOKING for what I can deem in my own mind to be a TRULY vegetarian meal, that I get stuck. Additionally, my attitude is always slated against the truly vegetarian meal working out, as it is destined to taste like mushrooms and squash. Always the same flavor profile! All I can seem to find to fit into this very narrow mental category are recipes that actually have the word "Vegetarian" in the title. It's terribly silly, really, and I realized this when I was meal planning this week--spinach/feta dinner spanakopitas, goat cheese tart, spring things risotto, summer bounty pasta....LAURA!?!??!?! ALL OF THIS IS VEGETARIAN! And I was actually EXCITED about all of those meals...
I experienced this mental block last week, hence settling on Giada's Vegetarian Lasagna, despite my numerous reservations about this recipe. First of all, it called for 20 oz. of FROZEN spinach. Blugh. I'm not a spinach girl, folks. Popeye may have it goin' on, but I'll pass on the putrid greens, thank you very much. It isn't that I don't LIKE spinach, per se. I truly adore the IDEA of spinach. I like knowing that it's in a meal...I like being able to see it....I just don't particularly enjoy tasting it. Certainly not 20 friggin' frozen oz. of it. So, I already had it in my mind to make some sort of mod there.
The recipe also calls for a can of white beans. Really, I thought? White beans, with pasta? That's weird. But, whatever--I'm all for fiber across all spectrums of my life, so I let that one go. Lastly, asparagus.
This one really threw me. Asparagus is one of my favorite veggies, for sure, but it's very...asparagus. It's got a big personality, and I didn't see it melding particularly well with the squash, zucchini, carrots, onions, and the aforementioned spinach and white beans. Hrm.
I rarely modify a recipe before I try it "by the book" at least once. But, given that this dish was going to require the better part of my precious Saturday afternoon, I wasn't in the mood to have attempt #1 be a flop, so I went to the internets. The reviews were pretty consistent in a couple of respects: 1) it's too dry 2) the spinach tastes horrible and 3) there's not enough cheese and sauce. It was already a given in my mind that I wasn't going to make this dish into six individual serving dishes as Giada instructs--can we say unnecessarily fussy?
So, here's what I did:
I made the Marinara recipe that Giada recommends in her own book. However, I didn't have two 32 oz cans of crushed tomatoes, so I used two 28 oz. cans, and one 14.5 oz. can of diced tomatoes. I think that turned out really well, as the large chunks of tomatoes lent a great texture to the sauce. I probably used 4 cups of sauce total, in comparison to the cup and a half called for.
I only used one 10 oz. package of frozen spinach. I drained the heck out of it after it thawed, and combined it with about 12 oz of part-skim ricotta that I had in the fridge. I mixed that up very well with some salt, pepper, and 1 egg.
We couldn't find fresh lasagna noodles, and they didn't have any of the regular dry noodles in the pasta aisle when Salmaan went to the grocery store. He got the no cook ones, and I soaked them for about 5 minutes in a large casserole dish before layering them into the lasagna.
I diced an extra summer squash into the veggie mixture to make up for the lack of spinach.
One thing I would do differently next time: the recipe instructs you to saute the onions first, then the carrots, then the squash/zucchini and the asparagus last. I would switch up those last two ingredients. The asparagus definitely needs to go in before the squash/zucchini--it takes longer to cook.
As it turned out, even though my asparagus was cut into small pieces, by the time it was as tender as I wanted, the squash/zucchini had begun to disintegrate a bit, which was a bummer.
However, that was pretty much the only bummer of the dish--to my surprise, this tasted really, really delicious. I layered it like so: sauce, noodles, ricotta/spinach mixture, white beans, sauce, noodles, veggie mixture, cheese, sauce, noodles, ricotta/spinach mixture, sauce, cheese. There are more of these in the freezer, and I can't wait to pull them out on a night when all we want is a glass of wine and a good meal.
Who said vegetarian has to suck? Ummmm...you did, Laura. Ah. Yes. Consider yourself schooled.