My kitchen. A place I like to be. Few things bring me more personal satisfaction than making supper each night for my wife and me. Or periodically an elegant dinner for the relatively limited number of friends that we have acquired. It's food. It's not all kitchen. I have to think about what to make. For guests or special occasions. It starts at my desk where I search recipes in cyberspace and fill out a menu grid, then sample what might be possible in the living room where my Kosher cookbook collection fills more than one shelf. It entails a survey of the weekly Shop-Rite ad which hints at what I can make economically. There is usually a two-hour expedition to the store itself, aisle by aisle. America has food abundance. I have the good fortune of ample funds to purchase pretty much anything that I can imagine as useful for a satisfying meal. Often too much, as the contents of my limited freezer need some juggling.
Most meals are simple. Something from the freezer. Pierogies, crunchy fish, faux meat packaged as a heat-up entree, fish fillets thawed a day in advance. Meat for shabbos, more often than not poultry, thawed two days in advance. And a vegetable. Sometimes perishable like a sliced tomato or cucumber. Often frozen like corn or green beans where I can extract as much as I need, then boil. Sometimes the vegetable Shop-Rite puts on sale that week. Simple, but with a modicum of which of the many options should I take.
Along the way, I have a few signatures, or at least go-tos. For shabbos cholent. For guests, a roasted turkey half-breast or chicken cacciatore, one needing little effort, the other requiring many steps. Desserts, a nut cake or a honey cake, one basic recipe with variants.
For suppers at home, I have two that require preparation, Macaroni and Cheese in the style of Horn and Hardart, which was my Automat staple, and Lasagna taken from the first cookbook judged worthy of the Artscroll Jewish publishers. Each needs some targeted purchases. Lasagna offers me more room for experimentation. Each lasts four meals, one out of the oven, one the following night's supper, and two rectangles cut cold, wrapped in foil, and frozen for a supper each of the next two weeks.
Lasagna has a spinach base, so I need to get frozen spinach when on sale and keep it in the freezer until the day before. I usually get the cut variety, but have gotten the leaf form. They thaw waterlogged, so I take a fistful at a time, give a good squeeze, placing a handful at a time into the mixing bowl until all has been drained. For a while I tried using a colander. My hands extract more water. Then a tub of cottage cheese. Most come as one pint but the Shop-Rite house brand comes as 24 ounces, which seems to leave me more filling to work with on assembly. Cottage cheese comes in a number of different forms. Large or small curd, reduced fat or full fat. After baking, the curd size doesn't matter. Small mixes more easily. And always full fat. The purpose of cheese of any type is its sensory pleasure, which comes from its lipid elements. And brand on sale when I go shopping. An egg is needed for binding. Dump into the bowl after the spinach, blend with a fork. Then seasonings. The Artscroll recipe calls for oregano and black pepper. I vary this. Oregano seems to work best. The half teaspoon given in the recipe comes out unnoticed. I use more, but since I never measure it, I don't really know how much more. Black pepper is not noticed at all when served. I look at my spice collection and pick one. The Middle Eastern spices don't do especially well, despite Lasagna being a Mediterranean preparation. Season salts and Asian spices are better. But the options and my selection make each preparation a little different.
The real variation from batch to batch comes from the cheese that is added to the cottage cheese filling. The Artscroll recipe calls for mozzarella. It is easy to find kosher-certified mozzarella. And it is a staple of Italian pasta recipes because of its melting qualities and texture. As a semi-soft cheese in its kosher formats, I find it difficult to shred with a processor's shredding disc. More liquified mozzarella, really more of a paste, mixes easily with the cottage cheese in the prep bowl. I have found cheddar a better option. Table-K cheddar is easy to find and reasonably economical. It shreds easily, which makes it better for the upper topping. I will most often use some form of sharp cheddar, either by itself or in combination with mozzarella. For flavor, I have used acceptable additions of blue cheese and Monterrey jack, but cheddar and mozzarella seem to offer the preferred texture and taste.
The lasagna is layered and topped with jarred spaghetti sauce. There are several brands that are kosher-certified and go on sale. The jars have become subject to shrinkflation, now containing 24 ounces when they used to contain 26, which is what the recipe calls for. I find the 24 oz usually adequate but sometimes pull a partially used jar from the fridge to supplement. The vegetarian jarred spaghetti sauces have their own variants. Marina, basil, garden tomato. The varieties without texture perform better.
So with just a few variable ingredients, the sauce, cottage cheese style, topic cheese, and spices, I can get a lot of different minor combinations from the same recipe. Not having any reason to standardize what I do, and indeed a lot of reasons not to, each batch comes out unique but never dramatically so. While I vary these brands, I do not do formal experimentation with the combinations or write them down. Instead, I will purchase the cheese in a half-pound brick without earmarking it for lasagna. Spaghetti sauce is purchased without lasagna or variety in mind, so I choose what is in the pantry. Oregano is a constant, a small handful crushed. Other herbs and spices vary from none to a shake or a few grinds of black pepper, to something in my spice collection that catches my attention when I see what I have available.
However I make it, the end result is usually good. Sometimes a little overbaked. More often just right. The underlying purpose, basically the enjoyment of my kitchen and the challenge of preparation is always fulfilled.
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