Passover Lasagna – Not a Myth but a Reality

My Canadian friend has submitted this recipe for Passover. She said something about passover lasagna and I got curious... So now you can enjoy a non traditional Passover meal thanks to Shira.

Passover Lasagna – Not a Myth but a Reality

I am not sure how many individuals who read this celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover, but for those, like me, who are forced into eating what amounts to “stale crackers” for a week, this is for you. Possibly the most aggravating thing about the holiday is giving up some food staples we often take for granted – bread, rice, and pasta. Other than being a great diet for week, it can be a severe pain.

The trick I have learned over the years while banging my head against a wall thousands of times while trying to come up with something other than the ever popular “meat and potatoes,” is to reorient my thinking. Although many of us tend to focus on the things we can’t have (my walk everyday past the donut joint is going to be a killer for a week), you need to focus on what you do have in order to make delicious, appetizing substitutes.

Possibly one of the biggest substitution tricks I have learned when it comes to Passover is making Matzah Lasagna. If you want to be creative, this is just the ticket. It is your garden variety of lasagna but you substitute lasagna noodles with matzah. You will also need to use cottage cheese instead of ricotta unless you can find kosher for Passover ricotta. (As a little science note – a common ingredient in ricotta is grain vinegar, though often called something like “catalyzer” on the ingredient list.)

This is a recipe good for two people but you can increase as need be!

• 2 pieces of matza
• Either jarred tomato sauce (or you can make your own like I like to do and freeze the rest for a post-Passover spaghetti and meatball fest)
• Cottage cheese
• 1 egg
• Shredded mozzarella cheese (as much or little as you like)
• Parmesan cheese
• Optional: Vegetables (I either like to sauté mushrooms or slices of zucchini to layer in my lasagna)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix the egg with one cup of cottage cheese and parmesan cheese. In an 8X8 pan, spread a layer of tomato sauce, but keep it thin. Place down your first piece of matzah. On top of the matzah, place another layer of tomato sauce and then a layer of the cottage cheese mixture. If you are adding vegetables, put them on after the cheese mixture is placed. Then put on a thin layer of tomato sauce and cover with the matzah. On top of the matzah, place more sauce as well as your shredded mozzarella. Place the lasagna into the oven and cook until the mozzarella on top becomes brown.

Obviously, you can add more layers if you like, but this is basic.

So for this Passover, I am telling you to be creative with your food and make something new and interesting. The week will go by much faster when you have good food planned!

 

BBQ Pasta Salad

I have finally gotten around to getting this thing up and running. Please comment. I am open to reader submissions. If you know me, let me know and we can figure something out. If you don't know me leave me a comment and we can try and work something out.

This is one of my all time favorite pasta salads. Every time I have made it has been a smashing hit. The original for this came off of the food network. I have modified it fairly heavily so it is now mine. As with any recipe I encourage you to make your own modifications. Play with it and have some fun.  That is what cooking is all about.

BBQ Pasta Salad
Ingredients
- 1 Lb fusilli pasta (or what ever kind of pasta you want)
- 2 T apple cider vinegar
- 1 t hot sauce
- 1/2 t chili powder (i always end up using a lot more...)
- 1/8 t garlic powder (i tend to use fresh crushed garlic and a lot of it, I recommend Zyliss garlic presses)*
- Pinch of cayenne (i have big fingers so my pinch is a healthy one)
- 1 C Mayonnaise
- 1/2 C BBQ Sauce (use what ever kind you want but I highly recommend Bone Sucking Sauce)
- 1 red bell pepper, chopped
- 2 ribs celery, sliced thin (can omit if you dislike celery like i do)
- 2 whole scallions, sliced thin
- 8 - 16 oz of pulled pork (pulled chicken works for those of you who don't eat pork)
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Parsley leaves for garnish

Directions

FOLLOW the directions on the package of pasta. They put the directions there for a reason, use them. Slightly under cook. That way it will have a nice firmness for the pasta salad.

In a large bowl, mix vinegar, hot sauce, chili powder, garlic, cayenne, mayo and BBQ sauce. Add vegetables to coat. pour BBQ dressing over pasta and mix well. You can then either place pork/chicken on top of the pasta or mix it into the pasta. I prefer to mix it in. Salt and pepper to taste. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. Let me stress that last bit. It has mayo in it. That stuff is one of the number one big offenders of food borne illness. Keep it cold until you are ready to serve. It goes great with beer or anything else for that matter.

If by chance there is any left (there shouldn't be), I advise chucking it instead of turning it into leftovers, especially if it has been at room temp for more than an hour or so. I would rather toss something than kill someone. Alternatively you can break out only what you need as you need it and keep the rest refrigerated.

 * More on the Zyliss. I like their presses for a number of reasons. There may be better presses out there but you are going to pay for them. I went on a search for a garlic press not too long ago and what I found was that presses in the same dollar range as the Zyliss were crap. They had shoddy construction, stupid ergonomics or just did a piss poor job. Some of the more expensive ones that I saw really didn't do it for me. I just couldn't justify dropping $50 on a garlic press when there is one out there that is well made and presses the hell out of some garlic for $14. I am not getting a kick back for plugging Zyliss (yet, maybe we can work something out???). I am trying to make it a point to only plug kitchen equipment that 1) I use 2) I think is awesome. Those are my standards.

Greetings

Welcome to my recipe blog. This is not my weekly recipe but more of an establishment of my mission statement. What I would like to do is to post at least one recipe a week of something I have cooked. I want to try and provide as detailed of an ingredients list and instructions as I can. However there will be plenty of times where I will not use an exact amount of something or use an exact technique but I will try and be as descriptive about what I am using or what I am doing as I can. It is cooking, not rocket science so have some fun…

I would also like to bring some of my friends on-board with this project. I know that many of them are no strangers to a kitchen and I think that the knowledge base that could be accumulated here is immense. So looking forward hopefully some of you will want to participate either by recreating what I am doing or by contributing your own recipes. Either way it should be good times.

Another aspect to consider is that I like to be challenged. So please feel free to either comment or contact me in some other way with things you would like me to take a stab at. Really I would like to make this as interactive as I can and as fun as I can. I mean, really there is no point playing in the kitchen if you are not having fun doing it.

A little about myself and cooking: I think my interest in cooking comes from my Grandma Stout and my Grandma Pat. My Grandma Stout was an amazing baker and just all round good cook. My Grandma Pat does fancier and more refined cooking. I can remember helping both of them out in the kitchen when I was younger. I am not sure if I was really helping of if they just put up with me in the kitchen… The other greatest influence was my mom. Of course most people will fiercely defend their moms cooking as the best in the world and that is understandable. My mom aside from being a mighty fine cook also taught me how to make something out of nothing, which is what she often had to work with.

For many of you this is probably the retelling of the abridged version of my life story…. For the rest of you … My formal culinary training consists of being a Navy cook for 7 years. More often than not it was mass production of food like substances more than it was actual cooking. But even in the worst case I still learned many of the basic skills of cooking during my time in the Navy. While I was in I also did a fair amount of cooking at home and really tried to refine those skills (thank you Kris for being a guinea pig). After my time in the Navy I went to school at Johnson & Wales and got a degree in restaurant management. I am pretty sure that the degree is not worth the paper it is printed on but I have it none the less. Now that I have totally divested myself from cooking for a living or for a scholastic endeavor my passion for it has picked back up (the Navy really did a job on ripping the passion for cooking out of me).

Now days I find that I primarily cook for me and my girlfriend. On occasion I will cook a little something something for a party, gathering or get together with friends. This seems to pick up during the summer when I am poolside and have access to a grill. If you have not been to one of my poolside cookouts you have no idea what you are missing…. So cheers! And here is looking forward to posting my first recipe. Not sure if I will be able to get to something this weekend or not as I have a term paper to write but I will hopefully have a chance to make something.