Daily Archives: November 14, 2010

[66] Simple, Perfect Chili

Cover of The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond

I can’t lie to you guys. I really love The Pioneer Woman’s blog, and all of her recipes and photos make me drool. Except the ones with cilantro.

Bill also loves her blog. So when we found her cookbook in a bookstore, not too long after it’d been published, we both really wanted to buy it. We knew we could get most of her recipes online (thus costing us nothing), but we felt we should support her work. Also a book is, in some ways, more portable than the internet. For example, I can take this to my mother’s house and cook out of it more easily than hauling a laptop into the kitchen.

Not that I don’t want a kitchen laptop, even so.

I picked this recipe as one of the first to make out of this book because I really enjoy chili and I love having some in the freezer for cold days and lunches and so forth.… Continue reading →

[65] Classic Lasagne, Italian-American Style

How to Cook Everything, Revised Edition by Mark Bittman

So, the last lasagne in the freezer had all been eaten, and it wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind when I first envisioned a pile o’ lasagne in the freezer anyway. Given all of that, I decided to try again with Bittman’s “Classic Italian-American” version of lasagne.

h2. Ingredients

Salt (Assuming you boil your noodles.)
Lasagne noodles, fresh or dried (Dried is about a pound.)

~1 c ricotta cheese

~1 c mozzarella cheese

2 tbsp softened butter or extra virgin olive oil

~3 cups, Meat Sauce, Bolognese Style

1.5 c freshly ground Parmesan Cheese (We used 12 month aged Manchego)

h2. Instructions

This is a lot like the last lasagne, so the directions are going to be almost exactly the same. You might get a sense of déjà vu.… Continue reading →