A bunch of old friends from my days at Starbucks were weaving in and out of town, and many of them started school on Monday, January 7. I wanted to host a shindig at my new place. Consensus was that Saturday night (which I usually work) would be best for most people.
(bradley, left, lexi, back of caroline's head, danielle, and ryan. it was late; we were tired. except brad.)
After looking through a cookbook one of my cousins put together with recipes from family friends, I decided to start with Italian food. Jamie's compilation, The World in My Kitchen, includes recipes from Raffaele "Lele" Malferrari, who grew up outside Bologna. Apparently Lele loved bean soup as a kid, so Jamie included its recipe. She also included one for lasagna verdi al forno (baked spinach lasagna) that included bechamel and a ragu.
The pasta di faggioli, Lele's Bolognese bean soup, looked easy enough on paper. I soaked the navy beans overnight, and then some. The aroma of olive oil and garlic filling the kitchen was heavenly. Things were going well until the oil started splattering all over! I hurried and turned it down, but that front right burner runs extra hot. After I added parsley and tomato puree, the saucepan calmed down. I cooked the beans in the FLAME! oven, which also runs hot, and I can't believe those didn't burn.
After running the beans through the mini-chopper (oops! I guess when I read the recipe the first time, I didn't see anything about a food mill - which I don't have), with cooking water, I set the mush - not exactly puree - aside in a big china serving dish. I was trying to cook for the lasagna at the same time (I'll get to that) and was running out of stovetop food receptacles! After rinsing the oval oven and pouring the lasagna sauce into it, I rinsed the big pot and reassembled the beans and tomato/parsley/garlic sauce in it. I followed directions and added the rice and potatoes, but after waiting a while it seemed like the potatoes weren't cooking. So I covered it and turned up the heat.
If you're a real cook, you may have just winced at that.
I burned the soup. Didn't realize that was possible. And I didn't realize what was happening for a while, either. My phone was ringing off the hook and I was trying to concoct lasagna, and I probably didn't like the song on the radio, all at the same time.
As soon as I figured out something might be wrong with the soup, I pulled it from the heat, after playing musical chairs with the other pots on burners, and stirred it. When you can tell that the entire contents of the pot are rotating together, things are very bad. I used a spatula to pull up from the bottom of the pot, and there was my charred pasta di faggioli. I'm sure it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened, because it was surprisingly easy to scrape the soup from the charred part and keep cooking - after adding more broth, and going back to low heat.
The lasagna didn't give me any trouble, really. It was just more complicated than I expected.
Ragu alla bolognese - was supposed to be made with freshly ground chuck, which sounds like it would be damn good. But one of my presumed guests was vegetarian, so I substituted finely chopped (minced? I should learn the difference) portobello mushrooms. It turned out great - Danielle, the veg, loved it, and no one else noticed what was missing.
One of the ingredients for the lasagna was bechamel, a sauce made from butter, flour, milk, salt and pepper. It sounds fancy, and there are only a few ingredients, and it involves whisking constantly, so I was pretty intimidated.
Bechamel is the most forgiving sauce ever. I was mid-whisk when I noticed the soup crisis. I turned down the heat on the bechamel and dealt with the soup, and when I went back to whisking, the bechamel recovered marvelously. And I couldn't stop "tasting" it - next time I'll double the recipe, so there's extra for the lasagna.
I wanted to have dessert ready for my friends, too, but there was no way I could make something else. The boxed tiramisu (in keeping with the Italian theme!) from the frozen foods aisle worked GREAT.
Went well: Lasagna prep and cooking, chopping all the veggies the night before, substitutions. And we had such a good time!!
Didn't go so well: Figuring cooking times - when Caroline started into the soup, the potatoes still weren't done. Pot and pan and burner management - musical chairs on a stove is no fun. I went through the saucepan, the frying pan, the big pot, and the oval oven (that's all I've got) multiple times each before the meal was done. I hope that was a one-time thing.
I was given china when I got married that I had never used in three years. Well, why not now? We went through all eight place settings. I've never been happier to do so many dishes. Friends I hadn't seen in ages came by and ate and drank (and disregarded the vaguely squatteresque feel of the apartment). Dyson took pictures of the food, but I still haven't seen them. I only have the party pic, which is fine. Even though it felt like my head was spinning for hours, once my friends were over and food was done, it was SO worth it.
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