Cazuela Lasagna

This is a longer than normal video where I make what I call Cazuela lasagna which is a home made, round, pasta lasagna.

To make the sauce, core and roughly chop approx. 10 pounds of tomatoes.

In a large pot add 1/2 cup olive oil and 8-12 garlic cloves (about a head). Cook over medium high heat and before the garlic browns add the chopped tomatoes. Add a large branch or two of rosemary and simmer for an hour or longer. Best made the day before.

Meanwhile, make the pasta dough. In a standing mixer add 4 cups of whole wheat flour, 4 egg yolks and 4 eggs. Mix until it comes together, if it is too dry add a few drops of water or another egg. Remove from bowl and let rest for 30 minutes. Divide into 8 balls.

In a separate bowl add 4 cups of ricotta*, mix in 2 eggs, 2 T freshly chopped rosemary, 1 teapsoon (or to taste) hot pepper flakes, and a generous portion of salt and black pepper, taste and adjust seasoning. Set aside.

Preheat the oven to 400 F.

Fill the largest frying pan you have and fill with water, add a pinch of salt and bring to a boil.

Roll each ball on a clean surface with plenty of whole wheat flour as thin as you can get them into rounds. These will be on the thick side, not to worry, the pasta acts as a sponge to all the tomato sauce and become silky smooth and light with cooking.

When all 8 rounds have been rolled, one at a time, place in boiling water, cook for 1 minute on each side . Remove from water, set aside and repeat.

In your cazuela, add some of your tomato sauce, grate some Parmesan over it then place a single layer of pasta over it. Repeat. Between layer 7 and 8 add the ricotta mixture.

On the final layer spread the remainder of the tomato sauce, grate Parmesan, and cover in thinly sliced disks of fresh Mozzarella (two fresh balls).

Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, finish off under the broiler under the cheese has started to brown.

Drain of any excess liquid created by the Mozzarella. This is best served the day after if you have the forethought to be able to make it a day in advance. When you serve it fresh from the oven it can seem a bit soupy, although usually the thickness of the pasta soaks up most of the sauce.

Not to worry it's delicious either way. Serve with home made bread and a salad.

A great party meal. Enjoy!

* All ricotta is not created equally, usually I buy local made ricotta from Saxelby cheese, when I made this it was a Sunday and I had not planned well so I had to go to buy commercial stuff and it was much creamery and ended up making a far looser lasagna, not ideal. If you buy ricotta that is loose and very creamy in texture add 1 or 2 more eggs and if you can serve the lasagna the day after you make it giving it plenty of time to absorb all the juices and firm up. This is mostly an aesthetic issue, it tastes great both ways it just can be a bit runny which I feel is less than ideal. Farmers cheese is also an option.

My first CSA box

I’m so glad we joined a CSA! The produce from Paisley Farm is picture perfect (as you can see in the video) and tastes even better. Ditto the coffee.

The important fact not included in the video is what a good value it is. With about 22 weeks of food it works out to $22.72 a week for a bounty that you couldn’t buy anywhere else for the price.

Join a CSA today!

(CSA = community supported agriculture)

Random New York Moment

I was in the Meatpacking district and saw this wall of graffiti and thought it was worth sharing. My narrative is a tad confusing, for the record I think of graffiti as art, street art, I was just having a brain fart or something...

Roberta's Pizz in Bushwick

Every day I get a few emails from Tasting Table, one of the recent ones was about this pizza restaurant in Bushwick, an up and coming, industrial area with several live, work lofts that's attracted lots of arty hipsters.

Depending on the train you take it's about 5 stops out, living on the Lower East Side as I do I took the J train to Flushing and walked through the projects for about 10 minutes or so. It was really eye opening. I live surrounded by projects, but somehow the uber-gentrified and gentrified LES has had a taming affect on the 'hood. Also the projects here have been around since the sixties and are now surrounded by large trees.

Listen to me being a back seat Jane Jacobs, anyway my point is simply where I live, even though it's got a huge density of subsidized housing, it seems livable and safe. This walk from the J train did not. Grim, barren, densely packed cheap fast food outlets, low end chain stores, elevated train, bleak, with lots of industrial emptiness and not so safe feeling.

Not that I felt threatened. I didn't. But if I was to go again I'd take the L and get off at the Morgan station, which stops just around the corner in the heart of the burgeoning industrial loft neighborhood that Bushwick is becoming known for and is nothing like the walk there from the J train. It's one of those typical New York things where you can be walking along one stretch of a block and be skeeved out and turn the corner and all of a sudden it's a whole different vibe and you are, in this case, in a very friendly pocket of cool and groovy.

Funny, Neil and I were at a party on White street a few Winters back at our friend Christian's place before he moved to Berlin and opened up his art gallery. Anyway, that night it was impossible to tell there was anything but vast empty lots, and lots of trucks. Today when I went I got the feel for this funky, few, blocks that was very appealing. A grocery store, wine store and several restaurants have all popped up to make this outpost of hip very livable, even desirable. The idea of space to grow your own garden in is more and more my idea of a place to call home.

Roberta's caught my attention because they are taking the local idea and running with it. Roberta's as you can tell from the video below is a non-descript grey brick building with a basic sign outside. The inside is like some turn of the century tavern, old wood, retro grunge feel, with a view out onto what looks like was a parking lot.

What the adventurous and smart owners of Roberta's have done is gotten some old shipping containers and are in the midst of building themselves a garden, rumor has it in addition to the garden they are also getting themselves a green house so that they can have tomatoes either fresh or ones they put up, all year round. They source everything locally and soon that source will be just outside. How cool is that?

I find the entire enterprise wildly exciting, so much so I left them a resume. I'm sure they laughed at me and wondered what such an old un-hip guy like me was doing applying for a job, but I figure it's better to try and work at places that speak to you.

My pizza was great, charred and chewy, with a perfectly cooked egg in the middle, tangy tomato sauce and wonderfully unctuous/crispy guanciale - a type of "classy Canadian Bacon", so said the perky waitress. In truth, speaking as a Canadian, it has little to do with Canadian bacon, which we in Canada actually call peameal bacon and is really a fatty pork loin, cut thick, rolled in pea meal.

They have a great selection of beer and a limited selection of red and white wine. It'd be nice to see some mention of organic or biodynamic on their wine menu given how important it is to their food.

I can't wait to take Neil here. In the video near the end you'll see guys on top of the containers planting tomatoes. In the early part of the video I go up close to the pizza ingredients, those aren't canned "ripe" olives are they?

Urban Gardening

I'm a bit rambling and not the best camerman around, but you get the idea.