Lasagna Rolls

One of the things I've never been able to do with my spaz-tastic nature is serve lasagna. I end up with a deconstructed mess of noodles and cheese. So, I came up with this recipe to try & remedy that and it works like a charm, and it makes me look like a dynamo when I entertain. Double score.

8 dry lasagna noodles
16 oz ricotta cheese
1/2 c mozzarella cheese, plus 1/2c for toppings
2 tbsp grated hard stinky cheese (romano, parmesan, asiago, etc)
1 tbsp dried oregano
1/2 tbsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried red pepper flake or a few drops of tabasco
1 garlic clove, finely minced
salt & pepper to taste
~2c marinara sauce

Start by soaking the noodles in very hot tap water. Depending on your noodles and the temperature of your tap, this can take as little as 20 mins or as long as an hour or two. You can also boil the noodles, but this will make them scalding hot (duh) and as a result more difficult to work with. I generally start soaking them, mix up my filling & go watch TV or something for the rest of the time. You want them to be floppy but not falling apart. After you make this a few times you'll know how you like them.

Mix together everything else but the marinara in a large bowl. You can also add other fillings... the easiest fillings are very bendable, like spinach. Dactyl likes ground turkey sausage when I let him get away with it. I'm also a fan of mushrooms, and sometimes I swap the minced garlic for a few cloves of roasted. The one rule of thumb is that you should cook all your non-melty fillings (ie, don't try and put your cheese in a saute pan) first and then drain out either the water (in the case of most veggies) or grease (in the case of most meats). Either too greasy or too watery will make the filling get sloppy and fall out. You can also swap your filling out for a different lasagna recipe. You may want to prepare extra noodles, too, if you add a lot of extras to your filling. If you want a bit of insurance against filling fallout, feel free to add an egg to the mixture.

To assemble, take a noodle and pat it slightly dry. For the barebones recipe, I put a heaping spoonful of the filling mixture, another 1/3 of the way up, and then roll it toward the end, adding more filling if I run out. Don't roll too tightly, or you'll end up with just noodle. If you add a hunkier filling, you'll need to spread it down the length of almost the entire noodle before you roll it up, and then roll very gently. Try to leave a little bit of empty space at the end with no filling. Place your roll seam side down and repeat.

It's just Dactyl and myself, so 8 rolls is slightly excessive. Here, I prepare half the rolls to eat, and put the other half on a cookie sheet. I freeze them for about an hour, then put them in a plastic baggie. Another fringe benefit... your lasagna pan isn't in the freezer until you decide to use them, and you can bake off a couple for a lunch or something if you'd like without preparing an entire pan of lasagna.

To prepare the rolls, put 1c of sauce on the bottom on your pan, then put the rolls on top of the sauce, seam side down. Ideally the rolls shouldn't touch. Once you put them down, try to not rearrange them... this will make them more liable to stick. For smaller batches, use less sauce... it should coat the bottom of your dish to ~ 1/4". For a twist, you can also use alfredo sauce or (my personal favorite) marinara on the bottom and alfredo on top. When you have all the rolls down, cover each with a few additional spoonfuls of sauce, then add cheese on top. Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil, then bake for 1/2hr at 400 degrees on a middle or lower rack. Uncover and let bake another 15-20 minutes until the cheese starts to brown. When baking from frozen, let bake covered at least 15-20 minutes longer.

Picky Husband Substitutions: I use part skim mozz and ricotta. I make sure I'm getting high quality ricotta too, because the cheaper stuff tastes 'gritty' to him.

The Verdict: two noms up.

Pizza Dough

Dactyl's favorite food. As he says, it's like sex in that 'when it's good it's great and when it's bad it's still pretty good.' We started making this at home because we can control what ingredients are in it and because we would never use our grill otherwise.

1 tsp active dry yeast
2 tbsp warm water (not higher than 120F)
2/3 c water
2 c unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp coarse salt
olive oil
toppings

Combine the yeast and warm water in your mixer bowl. Let it sit until it blooms, 5-10 minutes. 'Bloom' with yeast means that it'll go from a hard little pellet to a floating unattractive mass and it'll start to smell like beer. Add the rest of the water, flour & salt. Sometimes if I'm being fancy I'll also add some dried herbs... oregano, basil, marjoram, that kind of thing. If the consistency of your dough seems very sticky, add a tablespoon more flour. When I make this during the winter, the dough is very tight, but if I make it in the humid Atlanta summer it sticks to everything. I'd suggest you make it the way it's printed once, and adjust accordingly.

I said 'mixer bowl' because I use my stand mixer with the dough hook, and let it knead on a medium speed for 10 minutes at this point. If you want, you can do this manually, but you'll have to knead for at least double the time, probably more like triple. It'll go from a weeknight task to backbreaking labor.

While your mixer or hired labor is kneading, prepare a bowl by coating it in olive oil. Being the super-traditional Italian white girl that I am, I opt for plastic wrap over trying to get dried on library paste off a tea towel. When the dough is finished being kneaded, put it into the bowl, coat both sides with olive oil, cover it with the plastic wrap and let it sit in a warm area for 2 hours. After 2 hours, punch it down, re-form it into a ball, and cover it with plastic wrap again. Let rise for at least 2 hours, or overnight in the fridge.

Now, decision time. You can either bake this in the oven OR grill it. If you want to bake it, preheat your oven to 450 F. If you want to grill it, start up the grill! Put down some flour on your board, flour your hands, punch your dough down and divide it into 2 separate balls. Put it on the board in the flour, sprinkle some flour on top and work the dough back & forth. Typical pizza thickness will be a roughly 7 inch circle, but being from New York, I stretch mine out to a 9 inch circle.

For Baking:
Put your pizza on a cookie sheet. If you think it'll stick, put extra flour down underneath it. Add your toppings, then bake on a lower rack for 15-20 minutes, until the toppings are cooked and the bottom is browned. Let it cool for at least a minute before you dig in!

For Grilling:
I bring my board out with me, and plop the pizza directly onto the grates of the grill (oil lightly with a basting brush and olive oil). When the underside begins to brown, you will be able to lift the pizza off the grate easily... if it doesn't come off, let it cook a bit more and try again. DO NOT try and shift it around and move it, even if you put it on there kind of weird looking and you want to fix it. You'll only make a mess. Flip the pizza over and add your toppings while the pizza is still on the grill. We find a two-tong approach works best. Close the cover and allow the pizza to cook for 3-4 minutes. Again, let it cool at least 1 minute until you start slicing.

Picky Husband Info: We both love the 'grill' recipe because it gives him something to do when we have people over, and it's a surprising preparation so he gets to look like a super hero. He also gets to have (turkey) pepperoni and (low fat part skim) cheese so he feels super naughty without giving him a coronary. Plus, I get to force some veggies down his gullet in the guise of spaghetti sauce.

The Verdict: 'Can we have more? Maybe next week?' Every time.