Lidia Oh Lidia

"Oh no. OH no. Please don't squish me.
I do not want to be pasta today."



"Noooooooo! You can't make me do this!
I'm too young to go! It's not my time!
If you spare me just this once, I'll do your laundry for a year!"


"Crap."

No, I did not spare his life. Call me cruel, but I don’t see how a squished noodle without arms or legs could do my laundry. He put up a good fight, but in the end, his destiny was to be my dinner: lasagna with fresh spinach noodles and a Ragù alla Bolognese.
His was a noble cause. Who wouldn’t want to be flattened into a beautiful sheet of pasta, smothered with a four-hour meat sauce, sprinkled with mountains of various cheeses and baked in the oven until bubbly and crispy? You would.

That pasta, it sure was pretty. Smooth and silky, cool to the touch. A lovely pale green, flecked with tiny grains of spinach. And the smell...mmmmmm.....earthy and floury, with hints of egg and olive oil. I wanted to rub it all over my face. But I didn’t. Yes I did. No I didn’t.

After I got over the fact that I had made fresh spinach pasta with my own bare hands, and had called almost every single person I know to tell them the good news, I got to work making Lidia Bastianich's Pasticciata Bolognese, filling a baking dish with layers of pasta, Lidia’s Ragù, a besciamella (white cream sauce), and mozzarella and parmesan cheeses.
My oh my oh my oh my oh my oh my oh my.
I'm thinking that maybe you should be nicer to me next time you see me so that I might someday invite you over to my house to eat this. Also, I wish that Lidia Bastianich was my third grandmother.




So yeah, I made a fancy lasagna, basically. A heaven-sent fancy lasagna that was a LOT of work but a lot of fun and a LOT of tasty. But you could do anything with this spinach pasta. I'm thinking next time, if I don't have the time to make the accompanying four-hour meat sauce that accompanies this recipe, I'll just cut the pasta into noodles and serve it with sun-dried tomatoes, crispily browned garlic slices, and maybe feta cheese. Won't that be purty?
Any other suggestions?
Besides clothing your baby in it?




Spinach Pasta Dough
~ adapted from Lidia’s Family Table by Lidia Maticchio Bastianich

Ingredients:
One 10 ounce box frozen chopped spinach, thawed
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading and rolling
2 large whole eggs
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Directions:
Squeeze the spinach by handfuls to press out as much liquid as possible. When you think you’ve squeezed it enough, squeeze it again, by handfuls, using all your might. The drier the spinach, the better the pasta.

Crumble the spinach into the food processor bowl and purée it thoroughly, scraping it off the sides. With the spinach and the blade in place, add the flour and pulse to blend with the spinach, scraping as necessary.

Whisk together the whole eggs, yolks and oil in a bowl. With the food processor running, pour in the liquid ingredients on top of the green flour. Process for about 30 seconds, scrape down the work bowl, and scrape in all the egg residue too. Process another 20 to 30 seconds, until the dough has started to come together and a a ball on the blade.
Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead briefly, until it’s smooth. Wrap well in plastic wrap, and let rest at 30 minutes at room temperature before rolling. Store for 2 days in the refrigerator, or for 3 months in the freezer.

Remove googly eyes before cooking.

Makes enough for one delicious pan of Lidia Bastianich’s Pasticciata Bolognese

Panade Me?

Child.
How dare you turn up your nose at this dinner that I so lovingly created for our family?


Oh, I get it. You’re mad at me because when you asked for a snack today, I tossed some stale bread cubes at you and told you to go play in your room so I could concentrate on my iphone Words with Friends game.

Oblivious to your silent sobs, so wrapped up in figuring out how to get more points from a J, a Q, and 5 I’s, I barely noticed how you gathered up the scattered cubes in your chubby little hands and attempted to gnaw on them. I barely noticed how you walked over to the computer, typed in a search for ‘day old bread dinner’ and printed out a brilliant recipe by the Wednesday Chef. Not until I heard a little sniffle and was waving away the tear-stained printout that was blocking the view of my beloved electronic gadget did I hear you patiently saying, “Mom. Instead of ignoring your children and immersing yourself in a silly online game that you think increases your verbal intelligence but really is just a big timesuck, why don’t you turn these nasty hard bread cubes into something more palatable that the whole family can enjoy?”

Panade: Crusty bread cubes splendidly saturated with chicken stock and layered with chard, onions, and Gruyère.

OK none of the above is true. Because you are three years old and you don’t know what ‘palatable’ means. And while I do occasionally neglect you give you some alone time so that I can immerse myself in the glorious land of the Internet, it’s usually not for more than 3.5 minutes at one time. And I don’t feed you stale bread, UNLESS I have baked it myself AND it’s been soaking in homemade chicken stock AND layered with almost-caramelized onions, some sautéed chard, and a few handfuls of Gruyère. AND baked for 2+ hours in Le Creuset bakeware until it becomes a savory party in your mouth. It is called a panade. Just so you know. So stick your tongue back in your mouth, kiddo, and show me how delighted you are really are for this truly lovely dinner.



Thats’ better.

Readers, please see what Luisa, the Wednesday Chef, has to say about Zuni Cafe's chard and onion panade. She is more eloquent than I am, so I will not even attempt to describe the taste or the texture of this divine food. I'll leave it to her. So. Read her post, make the panade, and see for yourself!

Fancy Toast Personality Quiz (Sort Of)

Cassoulet on A Slice of Bread

There are two types of people in this world, and you can tell who is who by what they do with the fat that rises to the surface of a cooled stew on its second day.

The first type of person peers inside the pot and says, “Ew.” She then takes a slotted spoon, scoops off the fat, and discards it.
The second type of person shrugs and says, “Yum.” He heats up the stew and stirs the fat right back in.

Oh, and there is actually is a third type of person. The type who opens the lid of the pot, jumps for joy and exclaims, “MEAT BUTTER!”
She proceeds to grab a hunk of bread, slather it with meat butter, and happily devour it, smearing enough of the fatty goodness on her mouth and lips that she doesn’t need to use chapstick for the rest of the month.

Well, I suppose there is a fourth type of person, who makes a lean, healthy stew that doesn’t really have any fat.
And maybe there’s a fifth type of person who doesn’t ever make stew.

So that narrows it down. There are five types of people in the world, and all of the people on our beautiful planet can be categorized according to their feelings about fat upon the surface of a cold stew. Which one are you?

I am the third one. The gross one. Yes, I ate fat and I liked it. No, not fat...meat butter. And it was delicious. And if you came to my house, and I handed you a slice of home-baked bread with a lovely sienna-colored spread on it, and said, “Welcome. I made you a delicious meat butter,” I bet you would eat it and like it too, because you wouldn’t want me to cry. Even if you thought it was gross. But you wouldn’t think it was gross, because you wouldn't know what it was until after you had eaten it and proclaimed your love for meat butter and also, your friend, me.

Meat Butter (with beans). Doesn't it look good?

Recipe for Meat Butter on Bread
Here is the part where I usually post the recipe. But I’m not going to, because the recipe for the pictured cassoulet is pages and pages long, and honestly, if you’re going to make a cassoulet, you’re probably not going to take the recipe from a food blog that has had about 3 posts in as many years.
So.
Make a stew with at least one type of fatty meat. In this case, I used bacon, pork shoulder and chicken thighs.
Put stew in refrigerator overnight until fat rises to the surface and hardens.
Bake or buy a loaf of bread.
Smear meat butter (along with some stew) on a slice of bread.
Offer to a friend.

Getting Greens Into Her Diet.

Greens?

That looks like ice cream to me.

But it’s GREEN ice cream.

Basil ice cream!

That counts as a vegetable serving, right?

Yes it does, shut up. And make it. And then feed it to your toddler who won’t eat her vegetables.

(Even if you don’t count basil ice cream as a vegetable serving, you should still make it, because David Lebovitz made it and he is an ice cream genius and this ice cream is delicious. Come on, if a toddler will eat it, you know it has to be good. OK, so maybe this toddler eats ants off the floor, perhaps disqualifying her from becoming the next Gael Greene protégée, but who knows, some people think ants are delicacies, and maybe David Lebovitz should figure out a way to make ice cream out of them so I can feed it to my toddler and she can get a little more protein along with her greens.)

Basil Ice Cream

From The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz

• 1 cup packed basil leaves
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 heavy cream
• 1 cup whole milk
• Pinch of salt
• 5 large egg yolks
• 1 lemon, preferably organic

Using a food processor or blender, grind the basil leaves, sugar, and one cup of the cream until the leaves are ground as finely as possible. Pour half of the mixture into a large bowl and add the remaining cup of cream. Place a fine-mesh sieve on top of the bowl.

Warm the milk, salt and the rest of the basil mixture in a medium saucepan. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warmed basil mixture into the eggs, whisking continuously. Then scrape the combined egg and basil mixture back into the saucepan.

Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens into a custard and coats the back of the spatula. Pour the custard through the sieve and stir it into the cream. Zest the lemon directly into the custard, and stir the custard over an ice bath until cool.

Chill the mixture in the refrigerator (this usually takes a few hours), then freeze according to your ice maker’s instructions.

Alice Sucks at Jenga

Just a little glimpse into what Alice and I are doing these days when we're stuck inside the house waiting for springtime...

Baby Got Crabs

No, not every post from here on out is going to be a ridiculous picture of my infant participating in a questionable epicurean activity.

But most of them will be.

Just kidding...I suppose Fancy Toast will eventually get back to being a food blog.

Unless you don’t want it to.

In any case, I made some crab cakes the other day, and who really cares about that, not me and probably not you, but what I DO care about and what you SHOULD care about is the aioli dipping sauce, which I would eat by spoonfuls IF I had some left and IF it wasn’t mostly mayonnaise.

Saffron-Orange Aioli Dipping Sauce

I found the recipe on Epicurious earlier this spring when I was looking for a way to fancy up some grilled asparagus. Afterwards, we had so much aioli left over that we started putting it on salads, potatoes, and everything that could be enhanced by a drizzle of flavorful liquid fat. For the crab cakes, I added orange juice and grated orange zest to give the aioli a little more zang-a-lang.

You may or may not be delighted to know that this is really a fake aioli because you are using store-bought mayonnaise instead of whisking eggs and olive oil together yourself. But honestly, how many of you have actually made a successful aioli from scratch? If you have, please to send me the recipe so that I may try again?

Deliciously Fake Saffron-Orange Aioli
From Epicurious.com, adapted by Fancy Toast
1/8 cup red wine vinegar
1/8 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon honey
Large pinch of saffron threads
1 cup mayonnaise
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon grated orange zest

Whisk vinegar, orange juice, honey, and saffron threads in heavy small saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to boil. Remove from heat. Cool completely.
Alternatively and more easily, heat in a microwave.

Mix mayonnaise, garlic, and orange zest in medium bowl to blend. Mix in cooled vinegar mixture. Season aioli to taste with salt and pepper.

Drizzle over crab cakes, grilled vegetables, salads, napping babies, etc.