Polenta Lasagna

I tried making polenta for the first time during the week before Thanksgiving. It turned out okay, but nothing to blog about. This week, with all the snow and Adam stressed about finals I've been trying to make plenty of comfort food. Lasagna fits two of the criteria for being comfort food; it's hot and it's cheesy. I also really like that I can fit almost all of the food groups into it in varying amounts depending on what I'm craving.

One aspect of lasagna that is often challenging for me is the noodly part. If I take a no-boil approach I'm often left with undercooked noodles in the middle which eventually soften up when I reheat the leftovers. If I boil them first they stick together before I use them or they rip or break and are generally unwieldy. My solution was to skip the noodles and use polenta. In hindsight, this probably would have worked better if I'd baked the polenta and then sliced it, creating noodle-like segments of polenta. Instead I tried to layer the polenta as it cooled, which resulted in lots of small dumpling-like pieces of polenta. It tasted delicious, but wasn't really layered like a lasagna. I couldn't come up with a better name for it though, so polenta lasagna it is!

Ingredients/Instructions: This has quite a few ingredients, but it's really pretty simple. I arranged the ingredients by group, giving the instructions as you go. Take it one group at a time, otherwise you'll end up with a counter full of ingredients and no where to cook. Also, you could easily prepare the sauce and polenta a day ahead of time, then mix up the cheese and put it all together when you're ready to cook it.

Step 1: Cook these ingredients over medium-high heat, move to large mixing bowl when done.

• 1 lb ground turkey
• 1 tbsp chili flakes
• 1 tbsp italian seasoning (or 1 tsp basil, oregano, parsley)
• 1 tsp pepper
• 2 tsp salt

Step 2: Cook these ingredients until mushrooms start to give up some of their water and zucchini become slightly translucent. Add them to the mixing bowl.

• 3 small zucchini (width of quarter, 4 in long, cut into half circles 1/4 in thick)
• 6 oz mushrooms, chopped same size as zucchini chunks
• 1 tbsp balsalmic
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Step 2.5: Add this to the mixing bowl. Mix. The mixture won't be very saucy, but don't worry. Since we're not using any of the moisture from the sauce to bake noodles we don't need to add as much liquid as if it was real lasagna.

• 1 jar pasta sauce

Step 3: Mix these ingredients in a second mixing bowl. Make sure the egg is well incorporated throughout.

• 1/2 cup mozzarella
• 1/4 cup Parmesan
• 1 egg
• 2 tsp salt
• 15 oz ricotta

Step 4: Bring water and salt to a rolling boil. Add polenta in a thin stream, stirring rapidly. Lower to medium heat and continue stirring until the polenta thickens to roughly the same consistency as mashed potatoes. Remove from heat. (Or, lots of stores sell ready made tubes of polenta that you can slice thinly and use instead if you're not too confident in your own polenta making skills!)

• 1 1/3 cup polenta
• 1 qt water
• 2 tsp salt

Step 5: Layer the ingredients in a large pan. I used my favorite 12-inch Calphalon everyday pan

(no, I didn't pay that price), but I'm sure a 9x13 pan would work.

• Spread 1/3 of the meat, veggie and sauce mix in the bottom of the pan.
• Spread (or drop/smush) 1/2 of the polenta, covering as much of the sauce as possible.
• Carefully layer all of the ricotta mixture from Step 3 across the polenta, again trying to cover the previous layer.
• Add the second 1/3 of the sauce to the pan. (This is 1/2 of what's left in the bowl!)

• Layer the second half of the polenta. If you prepared the polenta just before you used it (like I did) this may be tricky, since the polenta gets stiffer as it cools. Do your best to spread it evenly across the sauce, but don't worry if it isn't perfect.
• Add the last of the sauce across the top.
  

Step 6: Sprinkle these on top.

• 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella
• 1/4 cup Parmesan

Step 7: Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes. The edges of the cheese should be browned and the sauce should be bubbly.

Step 8: Allow the polenta lasagna to rest for at least 10 minutes. This is important to make sure you don't burn your mouth and to let some of the sauce get soaked back up.

Black Bean and Vegetable Soup with Ham

Last week when it snowed a few inches I had a good time going outside and looking at the big sparkly fluffy flakes. Now, however, the snow and I aren't quite such good friends since it keeps piling itself on my car and sidewalks and then asking to be shoveled. In order to make yesterday's shoveling slightly less painful I rewarded myself with cooking this delicious soup.

We had two Thanksgivings this year, one with a turkey and one with a ham. I was lucky snag a quarter of the ham as leftovers but wasn't really sure what to do with it. You can only eat so many ham sandwiches, right? With this cold weather I knew I wanted to make it into a soup, but didn't know what kind. I dug around for recipes in books and online and decided to take advice from two very different recipes to create my own. The first recipe was for a black bean soup from Simply Recipes (my favorite food blog) that sounded a little spicy, very Californian with avocado and lime, and had a zillion ingredients. The second recipe was from the Joy of Cooking and was actually a recipe for navy bean soup with ham that only had five ingredients. I decided I wanted my soup to end up somewhere in the middle of the two.

I usually try to make substitutions in my recipes to keep them healthy. I have to confess, I cheated on this one and it was totally worth it. All of the recipes that I looked at for bean and ham soup used ham hocks or smoked pork of some kind. I had a fairly lean ham that really lacked the same smokey flavor of a ham hock but I didn't have any liquid smoke to make up for it. I did, though, have **don't judge!** bacon fat. We had cooked a little bit of bacon to go with our breakfast that morning and I hadn't cleaned the pan yet. It just sat there taunting me with it's smoky salty goodness, daring me to use it. And I did. And it was fabulous. I rationalized it by reminding myself that there wasn't much fat in the soup otherwise, and that I usually NEVER do anything like that, and then promptly got over my guilt once I tasted the end result. Don't worry though, if you can't bring yourself to indulge the same way I did. If you're vegetarian or just don't run with a bacon fat crowd, olive oil and liquid smoke can be substituted for the bacon fat and the ham can be left out but you'll need to add some extra salt.

Ingredients

• 1 lb dried black beans
• 5 cups water
  
• 3/4 tsp ground thyme
  
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 bay leaves
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 2 lbs ham
• 2 large parsnips (they look like white carrots covered in wax, usually near the turnips and rutabagas)
• 1 medium sized sweet potato (NOT a yam! These are white inside, not orange or yellow.)
• 2 medium sized carrots
• 2 tbsp bacon fat

1. Soak 1 lb black beans in a 6-8 cups of water overnight. From what I've read, some dried beans can get stale and soaking too long never hurts. I actually started mine soaking late at night and didn't get to them until late afternoon the next day, so they soaked almost 14 hours and turned out just fine.
2. After the beans have soaked, pour out the water, rinse, and strain again.
   
3. Place them in a 5 qt. stock pot with a thick bottom and add 5 cups water, bay leaves, salt, pepper, thyme, and baking soda.
4. The ham I used had a rind-like skin on the outside that had been glazed (ours was also about 1/4 the size of this one, if that helps!). If your ham also has a darker-colored edge (like the one above), trim it off with a quarter-inch of ham attached to it. If your ham is uniformly colored and textured, cut off 3-4 1/2 inch slices, no more than 1/4 of the weight of the whole ham. Add these to the stock pot.
5. Simmer on low heat until tender. This can take from 1 to 1 1/2 hours. For me it was just enough time to shovel our sidewalks and then prepare the rest of the ingredients.
6. Peel the parsnips, carrots, and sweet potato. Dice them into small cubes. (I recently made soup with my mom and we didn't cut the ingredients small enough so they were too big to eat with the spoon. Try to make these small enough that you could fit 2-3 in a spoon at once.)
7. Once the beans are tender remove the bay leaves and ham trimmings.
8. Heat a large saute pan with 1 tbsp bacon fat or olive oil. Saute the vegetables until they are almost tender enough to pierce with a fork. Leave the leftover oil in the pan, we'll use it later!
9. Add the vegetables to the soup, bring to a boil, then simmer until the vegetables are tender (approx. 15 minutes).
10. Using a large measuring cup (I used my big Pyrex one), scoop 3 or 4 cups of the soup out of the pot. If you have an immersion blender, blend the soup in the measuring cup. If you have a traditional blender, blend the soup in small batches. Since the soup is hot, hold on to the top! Blend until almost smooth. Pour the blended stuff back into the pot and stir.
11. Re-heat the pan you used to saute the vegetables with the remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Dice the ham into 1/4 inch cubes and saute until very lightly browned.
    
12. Add the ham to the soup and allow it to return to a boil.
13. Eat! This would go well with saltines or some crusty french bread, or just on its own.

*Note: This makes a LOT of soup. Freeze half if you can't eat it all right away. It will reheat easily later!

Fast and Easy Chicken Enchiladas

Most of my cooking knowledge comes from cooking with my mom or watching her cook. Chicken enchiladas have been a part of our family dinner repertoire for as long as I can remember and it's one of the dishes that everyone looks forward to. My mom has cooked chicken enchiladas so many times that she could probably put them together in her sleep! This recipe is easy, economical, and soooo delicious. If you know you're not going to eat them all you can freeze them and reheat them later for an even quicker dinner. To make it into a whole meal we usually start a pot of "pink rice" (rice made with salsa for half the liquid) before getting started on the enchiladas themselves then heat up some pinto beans halfway through.


makes 12 enchiladas

• 1 1/2 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 1 can Las Palmas Red Chile Sauce
• 1 can Ortega Enchilada Sauce
• 12 corn tortillas
• 16oz Pepper Jack cheese cut into pinky-finger sized chunks
• 16oz Colby Jack or Cheddar cheese cut into pinky-finger sized chunks

1. Place chicken in the microwave (yes, the microwave) and cook until nearly done. Microwaves vary in timing and power, so use any settings it may provide you with. Mine takes 3 minutes on each side.
2. Heat up the tortillas, one at a time. If you have a nice (clean) gas stove top you can turn the flame on low and place the tortillas right on top, flipping them as they start to get brown. For beginners or people with electric ranges heat your tortillas on a small non-stick omelet pan on medium-low heat.
3. When the chicken is nearly cooked (only slightly pink in the thickest parts) pull it apart into big bite-sized chunks.
4. Mix both cans of enchilada sauce in a large measuring pitcher or small bowl. Pour (or ladle) sauce to generously cover the bottom of a 9x13 pan. I usually use a Pyrex dish because then it can go in the microwave. The microwave in our apartment is too small, but they work just as well (only slower) in the oven.If you know you're going to bake the enchiladas to begin with you can use a metal pan.
5. Place one or two pieces of each kind of cheese and an equal amount of chicken in a line across the middle of a tortilla, parallel to your body. Fold the part closest to you over the filling and roll tightly to the edge of the tortilla. Hold the seam tight along the bottom and place the enchilada up against the edge of the pan.
   
6. Continue adding enchiladas to the pan, placing them fairly close together so they keep each other from unrolling. I usually fit 8-10 in one 9x14 dish.
7. Pour most (or all) of the remaining sauce over the tops of the enchiladas. The goal is to get some sauce on all of the tortillas so they don't dry out. You don't need to drown them. If you add too much sauce it can just end up floating the insides out of your enchiladas. Still tasty, but a bit messy.
8. I usually cut too much cheese to fit inside all of the enchiladas. If I haven't eaten it by now it gets broken up and sprinkled on top.
9. If you're baking, spray nonstick spray on one side of a sheet of aluminum foil, cover (spray side down), and bake for 20-30 minutes at 375. If you're microwaving, cover the pan with plastic wrap, leaving a small corner exposed to let the steam out. Some lucky people have microwaves with a "casserole" setting. Use this. Otherwise, 10-20 minutes on high will work, depending on how new/hardcore your microwave is.
   
10. With either method of heating, you want the edges and the middle of the pan to be bubbling and the cheese on top to be melted. I don't think I've ever overcooked them in the oven, but in the microwave it is possible to end up with enchilada mush if you cook them too long!
11. Allow the enchiladas to rest for 5 minutes before serving them. I usually can't stand to wait that long, but it helps to keep all the melted cheese from sliding out of the middle on it's way to the plate.
    
12. We enjoy eating these with beans and rice with an extra splash of leftover sauce on top. I was lucky enough to have some avocados last time I made this, so ours got some guacamole!