What's Missing From this Picture...

...if you guessed a picture, then you are correct. I was completely distracted throughout the entire cooking process today, which fortunately did not detract from the quality of the food, but it did make me forget to take a picture. Therefore, you will be subjected to more pictures of my dog. Simply because he is awesome.

Tonight we visit another recipe from the "Everyday Stuffed Pastas" section of the "Everyday Pasta, Polenta, and Risotto" chapter. Beef and Cheese Manicotti was more involved than I thought it would be, and being distracted, it was hardly a smooth process.

First of all, I will take time to commend Wal-Mart on their pasta selection. I went there to pick up a few things, took a look at their pasta section thinking they couldn't possibly have manicotti shells, but lo and behold, they had them in their "Great Value" brand saving me time and money on my day of shopping. I don't say this often, but kudos Wal-Mart, kudos.

I gathered all my ingredients together before I began cooking, but apparently I wasn't prepared enough. My beef was barely defrosted along with my marinara, I needed to chop an onion and some garlic that wasn't ready to go when I needed it, oh yeah, and I forgot that my baking dish doesn't fit in a toaster oven.

That being said, as I boiled my pasta water, I heated a pan and threw in the bit of beef that was defrosted (I really didn't need much of it), and the onion that I had quickly chopped up. Once it had browned and my onion was translucent, I removed it from the heat and let it cool. I then dropped my two manicotti shells in the boiling water and prepared my filling.

I mixed some ricotta, mozzarella, garlic, salt, pepper, and basil for the filling. Once the beef had cooled, I stirred it in. I then had to tackle my baking dish problem.

I covered my toaster oven tray with aluminum foil as usual, then partially covered that with some marinara sauce. I removed the manicotti from that water once they were firm, but gave a bit, then attempted to fill them.

In Giada's recipe, it simply says, "Fill the manicotti with the cheese-meat mixture," Easy right? No. Not without ripping the manicotti a bit and more filling falling out than going in. It was frustrating to say the least, but I survived. I placed the now stuffed manicottis on top of the sauce, then covered them with more sauce, mozzarella, and Parmesan. I baked it in the toaster oven for about 35 minutes at 350 degrees.

For some reason, I had a good amount of filling left over and decided to take a taste. I completely forgot that there was raw garlic in this mixture, so you can only guess what I bit directly into. Awesome. Thankfully I don't have to socialize with anyone today.

As I mentioned before, my distraction while cooking (which I didn't go into detail about. It was mainly text messages, answering our door, and talking to my roommates) did not take away from the goodness of my dish. I always feel so accomplished when my baked pasta is cooked through just right. It's a weird process leaving it all to chance in the oven after not cooking it completely in the pot. The cheese and beef mixture was creamy and smooth and full of flavor, and was complimented nicely by the marinara. I personally think I might make a big batch of this in place of something like baked ziti for a family party. That is if I can master the whole stuffing process.

Another day, another recipe, and I have two more planned for the week! I plan to cook again Tuesday, but only if I am able to obtain the main ingredient...check back then to see how it all goes down!

More Lasagna I Say!!

Tonight was quite the successful dinner if I do say so myself. I made Classic Italian Lasagna...with a few tweaks of course. But it did come out great! We had a roommate dinner tonight and the lasagna was my contribution and THIS is how I did it.

I started by cooking the lasagna noodles. Fortunately I had a pot that was big enough to fit the noodles (believe me, this was a big concern. I was actually thinking about it all day). I had to cook them until ALMOST al dente, or approximately six minutes. I went for the six minutes because I'm not really sure what point is close enough to al dente. After they were at this point, I drained them, rinsed them with cold water, and covered them with a damp paper towel. Giada says to cook them in the water with some vegetable oil so they don't stick together, but my mother told me long ago not to do that since NOTHING will stick to them afterward. Lasagna has a hard enough time staying together, I didn't want to make it anymore difficult.

After the pasta had been transferred to a different bowl, I used my colander to strain my spinach. Spinach is a pain to strain (no rhyme intended). I had to push out the water by using another bowl on top of it which dirtied another dish. Anyway, next, I browned the ground beef.

Whenever I have to defrost a frozen item, I try to be a good little chef and put it in the fridge to thaw. However, this takes an eternity. So my meat was still slightly frozen when I threw it in the hot pan. This concerned me a bit, but hot pans have a way of defrosting things quite quickly, and all was fine.

The next step after the meat was browned was mixing the ricotta with some eggs. This step would have been less difficult if I had used a bigger bowl. I had to whisk the mixture VERY carefully rather than my usual vigorous method.

And now, for the assembly!! The lasagna was supposed to be assembled in a 13 x 9 pan, but I only have an 8 x 8. Needless to say, this was a tightly packed lasagna. I started by putting some marinara sauce (which I had made the night before. It may have been my best batch yet) in the bottom of a dish that was sprayed with canola spray. I then put about four noodles over this. Next came the ricotta mixture topped with the spinach. After that I layered more noodles and topped that with the ground beef and more marinara sauce. Then came some mozzarella cheese and more noodles topped with the last of the marinara. The very top was more mozzarella and a bit of Parmesan.

I brought this concoction up to the kitchen (because after the raw potato casserole incident, I wasn't about to take any chances) and baked it for about 45 minutes. Some other residents shared the oven and I think they had some sort of lasagna too. The kitchen smelled like melted mozzarella and you really can't go wrong with that.

After it was done, I brought it back down to the room to serve with some salad and appetizers. I definitely enjoyed it and my roommate told me it was really good. Not too bad for my first shot at making lasagna!

I probably won't be cooking for the first part of next week since I have finals and I don't want to buy too much food before going on Christmas break. I will try to make up for lost time once I'm home the second part of the week (and this time, I promise I WILL actually cook while home!) Check back in about a week :)