Cooking No. 6

I haven’t written any cooking posts lately because, in the epic words of Mama V., “It is just too hot to cook.” I never really understood that statement until now, but can I just say (and you can quote me on this): my mother is absolutely right! Apparently (at least in my case), the correlation between a 350-degree oven and a hot, sticky, summertime kitchen does not make sense until you are actually the one preparing the food. Thankfully, Bert is quite happy subsisting on a diet of burgers, hot dogs, and pizza – basically, anything I don’t have to stand around and actually cook – but this week the Trophy Wife gene kicked in and I felt obliged to throw the poor guy a culinary bone.

A few months ago, when I was hanging out with my fellow almost-Trophy Wife Martha, I found this recipe in her magazine. (CT girlz got to stick together, ya know?) Due to the fact that I know absolutely nothing about chard other than it is green (which was more than Bert, who still recovering from his introduction to artichokes the night before), I wasn’t quite sure what a Sausage, Chard, and Lemon Lasagna would taste like, but the photo looked like a work of art and suckered me right in. Swiss chard, you've met your match!

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that epic. Chard seems to be some sort of glorified spinach. Compared to the trouble I had with leeks a few weeks back (Question: How do you cut a leek?), it was an absolute breeze. My real, unforeseen problem? Cooking the lasagna noodles.

I thought maybe I just needed a larger pot, but then I realized our largest pot still wouldn’t be big enough. Eventually they all just melted down on top of each other. That works too.

The rest of the recipe went fairly smoothly and my final product even came out looking somewhat like Martha’s, minus the pretty hand towel, luxury stone countertop, and browned cheese. (30 seconds into broiling the top, I remembered you can't broil Pyrex. So we made do with slightly-warm cheese.) The lasagna tasted great (Bert had seconds. That’s how I tell.) and I'd definitely make it again. The lemon gave it a nice tang and the sausage was a lot cheaper than more conventional ground beef.

Note to Future Cooking Self: When Martha tells you to use a "nonreactive baking dish," she is not trying to get you to run out to Macy's and pick up one of hers. What she really means is, "don't use a Pyrex dish, because it will shatter into a thousand pieces as soon as you stick it under the broiler."

Learned that one the hard way...

However, I’d like to argue with the stated prep time of “20 minutes.” Maybe if you’re working in a commercial kitchen with a crew of professional chefs and one of those fancy stoves that boil water in 30 seconds. If you’re more like me, working in a PA-fabulous kitchen with two feet of countertop and a stove that boils water in 15 minutes, the prep time stretches out closer an hour. (In Martha’s defense, I am also really challenged when it comes to lasagna noodle-wrangling. And I couldn’t find no-boil noodles, so I had to cook those too.) Also, I am always up for more cheese, but I am not a big fan of the Pepto. You heard me correctly: this recipe is not kind in the dairy department. I used 1% milk instead of the required whole and it was still way too creamy for me. Next time, I think I’ll cut the Parmesan down to ½ cup.