SereneCooking

Tonight's dinner (neither low in fat nor vegan, because if my arteries can't handle an occasional treat, fuck'em):

Grilled havarti and red onion sandwiches on wild rice and onion bread

Campbell's tomato soup (yeah, yeah, I know. It was 30 cents a can after coupons and someotherguy and I really like it with grilled cheese.)

Stuffed summer squash (stuffing was sauteed in butter until it gave up all its moisture, and consisted of a fine dice of onions, garlic, mushrooms, carrots, and the innards of the squash, along with a little salt and seasoned bread crumbs. Oh, my goodness.)

Last weekend, stonebender and I got together and had a bulk-cooking day. I made three lasagne and four chicken-and-rice casseroles (one of which I spilled all over my kitchen floor). Seven huge casseroles (with meat) for around $70. Not bad at all. We ate one lasagne that night, I left one there, and I brought one home with me. This one is extra-special because I forgot to put the mozzarella in it. :-)

What I made:




Lasagne

[Note: Instructions are for my mom's version, without forgetting mozzarella; stonebender's mother uses breakfast sausage rather than Italian sausage, so I did that just for fun. It was good, just not exactly like my mom's. :-)]

Ingredients:

Approximately 12 lasagna noodles (a twelve-ounce box of pasta is more than enough for one pan of lasagne; two pounds made enough for three pans with a little left over)
1 pound each ground beef and Italian sausage, crumbled, cooked, and drained
enough of your favorite pasta sauce to just moisten the meat -- don't use too much (I make my mom's sauce from scratch, and I'd say I use around a few cups for one pan of lasagne. Mom's sauce ALWAYS has parmesan added at the end, so you might want to do that)
1 to 1.5 pounds mozzarella, shredded
1 to 1.5 pounds ricotta
1 egg
salt/pepper
1/2 to 1 cup parmesan cheese, grated or shredded

Get all set up:

1) Cook lasagna noodles until they're almost done (I'd estimate 6 or 8 minutes); drain and set aside in a bowl of cool water
2) Mix together meats and sauce
3) Mix ricotta with the egg, some salt, and plenty of pepper

Preheat the oven to 350F. In a 9x13 or so pan, layer the lasagna in this order (when I say "sauce", I mean the meat/sauce mixture). Steps 11-13 are not a typo: mom says it's necessary to do them that way in order to keep the mozzarella from drying out.

1) Enough sauce to cover the bottom of the pan
2) Lasagne noodles, lengthwise in one layer
3) 1/2 of the ricotta
4) 1/3 of the remaining sauce
5) 1/3 of the mozzarella
6) Noodles, sidewise in one layer
7) remaining ricotta
8) The second 1/3 of the sauce
9) The second 1/3 of the mozzarella
10) Noodles, lengthwise in one layer
11) Remaining mozzarella
12) Remaining sauce
13) All the parmesan

Bake at 350F for 60-90 minutes, uncovered. [To make ahead, wrap well and refrigerate up to 2 days or freeze up to 6 months. To reheat from frozen, either thaw overnight or add around one hour to cooking time. Today, I did a slow reheat, since we were off doing laundry before dinner. 2.5 hours at 275F and the last 30 minutes at 350F was perfect, but I found the noodles a little mushy.]



How we liked it:

sogwife: "It was yummy, and it had the right amount of sauce and everything."
someotherguy: "Yeah. By the time lasagne is cold, it should be finger food."
wtfpotatoes: "I like lasagne. This is awesome. I like MEAT in lasagne. This is AWESOME."
serene: I thought it was kick-ass, even though my mouth expected mozzarella. I thought the noodles were a little tiny bit soggy from the slow reheat, but no one else thought so. Not one of us was able to finish the size piece we chose for ourselves. This stuff is VERY filling.

Cost per serving:

Ten large servings (or eight HUGE ones, huger than any sane person could eat).

Total: $1.56 per serving (or $1.95 per HUGE serving)

Noodles: $1
ground beef: $2
sausage: $1.50
sauce: $2.50 (including the parmesan)
mozzarella: $3.50
ricotta: $3
egg: 10 cents
salt/pepper: negligible
parmesan: $2

What I made



We like seitan around here. Okay, all but wtfpotatoes -- she says it's evil. I mean, she eats it, because she's really not picky, but it disappoints her because it's not meat. But it's cheaper than meat, hits a lot of the same spots, texture-wise, and while it's highly refined, it's fairly benign nutritionally, so we have it probably a few times a month. sogwife says she could be vegetarian if there were always seitan available, so when she's going to be joining us for dinner, I know seitan is a good bet.

To make this particular sausage, I used the method from Everyday Dish, and searched the web for recipes for seitan bratwurst in order to decide which seasonings to use. I adjusted for ingredients I have on hand, but this method is SO flexible: change the seasonings about all you want, modify ingredients, etc. I just recommend that you keep the liquid to a little less (in volume) than the total dry ingredients. The "dough" for this should be a cohesive but not over-firm mass -- you can't go wrong if you follow Julie Hasson's instructional video.

Seitan Bratwurst

Dry ingredients:

2 1/4 cups vital wheat gluten
1/2 cup nutritional yeast flakes
1/4 cup chickpea flour
2 tbsp dried minced onion
1/2 tsp coarsely ground pepper, preferably freshly ground
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp salt
1 tablespoon ground mustard
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar

Wet ingredients:

1 cup cool water
3 whole cloves garlic
2 tbsp soy sauce
12 ounces firm silken tofu

Combine dry ingredients. Blend wet ingredients until smooth. Add wet ingredients to dry and mix until completely combined. You can knead it for a minute to make it all come together, but it's not really necessary. Divide into 10 roughly equal pieces (for this batch, I broke off approximately-100-gram pieces) and roll each piece into a sausage shape. Place on a rectangle of foil (or parchment paper) and steam all the sausages for 30 minutes.



Cost Per Serving:

10 servings. Cost per serving isn't very high. The gluten and tofu for the whole batch was in the two-or-so-dollars range, and the price of everything else is negligible. So wild-ass-guess is around $0.30 per sausage? I have begun to compile a list of the prices of all the ingredients I buy, so I will start having much better (Bay Area) price references for you in the future.

How we liked it:

someotherguy: "We should have this again, but you should tweak the recipe. Maybe just fry it. It would taste even more like meat if you could find a way to put some fat in it."
serene: I liked it fine. Not more or less than any steamed seitan sausage I've made before, and it's way more trouble than my usual recipe, which is so simple I have it memorized. The method is the same as above, but here's the ingredient list, adapted somewhat (I think) from Jo Stepaniak's Vegan Vittles version:

Dry ingredients:

1.5 cups gluten
1 tsp. each granulated garlic and granulated onion
.25 cups nutritional yeast

1 cup water (or 1/2 water, 1/2 tomato juice, or some combination to make a cup of liquid)
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp olive oil, optional

Tonight's dinner:

BLTs (made with applewood-smoked bacon and beefsteak tomatoes; someotherguy added avocado to his)
Soup (Clam stock, onions, garlic*, tomatoes, carrots*, green beans*, orange bell peppers, and new potatoes* -- I put some avocado in my soup bowl)

My tummy is VERY happy, and I only had half my sandwich. someotherguy was kind enough to finish it for me. :-)

And here's tonight's very simple (and very brown) dinner.

Dinner Seitan baked in barbecue sauce; wheatberries pressure-cooked, then tossed with butter/salt/pepper

My partners like seitan better than most "fake meat", and I do, too. We've been intending to try Joanne Stepaniak's seitan salami for a while (it's from Vegan Vittles, and tonight's the night. It's in the oven right now. I'll let you know how it turns out.


( More photos behind the cut )

	Seitan salami -- dry ingredients

Tonight's dinner:

Homemade seitan with onions, bell peppers, and green beans, in a sweet-and-sour sauce made of sugar, vinegar, water, soy sauce, and a bit of powdered ginger

Sticky white rice

Roasted fennel and baby squashes and onions

someotherguy's yummy miso soup

For dessert: Farmer's-market strawberries, banana slices, and Anna's capuccino cookies

I feel rich. :-)

(I'm getting better with the texture on seitan, I think. And adding a bit of tomato paste to the dough does make it more "beefy".)

Won tons and beet greens I used some of the remaining organic box to make won tons and greens.  The won tons are filled with TVP, spinach, green garlic, ginger, grated carrot and celery, and hoisin sauce. The beet greens are steamed, tossed with a little margarine, and sprinkled with salt and pepper. The sauce is tamari with sesame oil drizzled on top. someotherguy and I both thought the raw beet stems tasted like there was salt and pepper in them.  Kind of cool. There's another picture at http://pics.livejournal.com/serenejournal/gallery/0001e37f , but it's pretty much the same.

Riblets Just so no one ever thinks that everything we eat is (a) healthy; (b) homemade; (c) unprocessed; or (d) pretty. :-) Clockwise from top right: fat-free vegan coleslaw, leftover curried lentils, Gardenburger Riblet