Lasagna, soup style

Grocery shopping while hungry the other day, I had a craving for lasagna.  It's starting to get chilly outside at night and in the mornings, and instead of craving cold sandwiches and ice cream I want to bake bread and cook soup in a crock pot and make warm casseroles.

I'd found a recipe a long time ago for lasagna soup, and the idea has always been in the back of my head as something I wanted to try.  I made mine completely from scratch and while it took a while, most of the time is pretty passive.  Here's three ways to make it, depending on how much time you have or how skilled you are.

Lasagna soup.  Like tomato soup, but waaaaay better.

Lasagna soup, level three

3-4 big tomatoes

1 medium onion

2-3 cloves of garlic

1 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves, divided

1 cup cottage cheese

0.5-1 cup grated parmesan

4 wide lasagna noodles

S&P

1. Heat some olive oil in a medium pot.  Finely dice the onion and throw it in the oil, cooking until it's translucent.  

2. Medium-dice the tomatoes, reserving any juices that ooze out while you chop them.  

3. Either grate the garlic cloves or finely mince them, then saute them with the onions for about a minute.  

4. Once the onions and garlic are fragrant, add the tomatoes and juices into the pot.  Turn the heat on medium-high, salt the pot liberally, and bring to a boil.  (The salt will help the tomatoes release their juices.)

5. In the meantime, finely mince half the basil.  Add to the pot, which should be very juicy.  Add about a quart of water and bring back up to a boil, then turn the heat down to a simmer.

6. Combine the cottage cheese, parmesan, and the other half of the basil (minced fine), along with some freshly-ground pepper, in a separate bowl.

7. Once the soup has simmered for about 10-15 minutes, break the lasagna noodles into pieces and add directly to the soup.  Cook until the noodles are al dente.

8. To serve: dish up the soup into a bowl and take a heavy dollop of the cheese-basil mixture in the middle of the bowl.  

Holds up surprisingly well as leftovers, too.

Not that much time?  Try it this way.

Lasagna soup, level two

1 medium onion

2-3 cloves of garlic

1 jar pasta sauce

basil, fresh or dried

cottage cheese

grated parmesan

lasagna noodles or other pasta

S&P

1. Dice the onion and saute.  Mince the garlic and saute with the onions for a minute until fragrant.

2. Add the jar of pasta sauce and 1 jar's worth of water.  Bring to a simmer.

3. Add some basil to up the flavor.

4. Make the cheese garnish as above.

5. Add the noodles to the soup and cook until al dente.

6. Serve garnished with the cheese mixture.

This version leaves out the work of fresh tomatoes, but throws in a little prep so it's half-homemade.

Used up your food budget for the month? Haven't been shopping in weeks?  Here's a pantry items-only version.

Lasagna soup, level one

1 can tomato soup

dried basil

garlic powder

noodles of choice: macaroni or shells or lasagna noodles

Optional garnish: cottage cheese, or just parmesan

1. Prepare tomato soup as directed on the package.  Add dried basil (or Italian seasoning) and garlic powder.

2. Add noodles to the soup and cook until al dente.

3. Garnish if desired/available.  Enjoy!

Cheater French Onion Soup

If I had to pick one soup to eat for the rest of my life...it'd probably be French onion.  (It might be tomato soup, but I think it'd depend on the day you ask.)  There is something fantastic about the simplicity of it: onions, cooked slowly until they turn a dark, caramel brown; a few simple seasonings; a rich broth; and of course, a toasted, melty, cheesy crust of bread on top sopping up the juices.

There's just one problem.  French onion soup takes a long time to make.  I mean, caramelized onions are no joke--you have to cook them over low heat for half an hour or forty-five minutes before you're even close to ready, and then you have to add everything else and give it some time to simmer together....By the time you're lapping up the dregs from the bottom of your soup crock you've been hungry (and smelling soup-makings) for hours.

Well, I offer you a simple solution: cheat.

That's right, I said it.  Cheat.

Last year I was perusing foodgawker and the like and came upon a wondrous claim: that, by employing the miracle machine that is the crock pot, one could make caramelized onions without any effort or waiting or constant attention.  Turns out, it's really simple.  Combine pre-caramelized onions with a little vegetable (or beef, if you're into that) broth, some thyme, salt, and pepper, and a cheesy toast-thing for dipping, and you're good to go.

Caramelized onions
6-8 large yellow onions
2 T butter

-Halve and peel the onions, then slice evenly in the direction of your choosing.  (I went cross-grain, but you could julienne, too, if you prefer.  Not sure what difference, if any, it would make.)
-Put the butter in the bottom of a large crock pot. Throw all the onions on top of the butter, until the crock pot is full.
-Cook on high for a few hours to get things going, then turn down the heat.  Cook until the onions are caramelized to your taste.*

Yield: about 6-7 cups.  I put a jarful in the fridge, used some immediately, and froze two containers' worth.

*Note: I foolishly started mine at around 6pm, so at around 9 they were just starting to turn pale beige.  I turned the heat to low and went to bed, and they were perfect the next morning.

Cheater French Onion Soup
serves 1
1/4 to 1/2 c. caramelized onions
1 tsp vegetable bouillon mix or 1 veg bouillon cube
S&P to taste
dash of dried thyme
1 to 1 1/2 c. water

Combine all ingredients in a pot.  Simmer until warmed through.  Serve with cheesy toast things. 

Ready to be packed for lunch: in the bottom, caramelized onions.
Top right, dried thyme; bottom right, bouillon paste.

Cheesy toast things
favorite cheese
bread

Put cheese on bread.  Broil until bubbly.

Added hot water, stirred it around, and
let it sit for a few minutes.  Instant soup!

***
Here's how I cheated even more.  I packed this for lunch--our cafeteria has a hot water dispenser, so I put my onions and seasonings into a jar, packed cheese and crackers to eat on the side, and added hot water when I was ready to eat.  No fuss, plus it's warm and comforting when the weather has finally decided it's fall outside and should therefore be drizzly and gray all day.

Amateur Recipe Invention and Hurricane Noodles

We cook because we are hungry. It is for this reason that cooking, even at the most basic level, guarantees a sense of satisfaction. Whatever it is you cook, be it a soup or a fried egg, the end product will not only leave you fed but also with a sense that you have fed yourself. That is the fundamental. The act of creation. It is what makes cooking deeply personal. It is what makes it both endlessly rewarding and daunting.

This authorship in cooking inevitably means there is risk. Your self-esteem is on the line here. Right before I eat what I cook, my heart sinks in anxiety. I get stupid, my sympathetics go into first-world stress overdrive. The food is me, and if it is no good, neither am I, and the hours I had spent grocery shopping and dicing vegetables and adjusting heat and stirring and tweaking spices were a waste. It wrecks me. Don't get me started on how I feel when I cook for others.

It is for the moment of pure ecstasy---that food porn, imaginary camera shot in our own kitchens---that keeps us coming back with new recipes and ingredients and tools. On the flip side, there will always be those times when the stuff you cook is just bad. Blech. Bland stews. Gratuitously soy-sauced stir fries. Bone dry cakes. We've all been there. Most of the time,there's at least something to blame. Carrots just aren't for me. The recipe wasn't good. My oven thermometer is a fibbing piece of shit.

All those excuses become moot when you start from scratch. For the amateur cook, nothing feels more risky than inventing a recipe. It seems ridiculous that you would even attempt it. There are thousands of tried and true recipes that are already out there. Why even bother? What do I know? Well, I'm here to say there are lots of reasons to try and that you know more than you give yourself credit.

Reason #1 – You like food things
Jacque Pepin said that if you take a recipe someone else wrote and over time you make small adjustments to that recipe to fit your liking, that recipe is now yours. This definition of “your recipe” includes all the dishes that have been made by taking a recipe from Joy of Cooking and doubling the butter. While that may sound like L.H.O.O.Q.esque kitsch, it illustrates something important, which is to say, recipe invention happens when you take something you enjoy and combine it with more stuff you enjoy. I'd like to think that many of the gustatory combos we love today were made when some dude took a risk and made a strange combination of stuff they liked. Mint and chocolate. Tomato and cheese. Egg and paprika. If you like more than one food thing, you are on your way to inventing recipes.

Reason #2 – You already think about cooking with a critical and analytical mind
Cooking gives you freedom to eat what you want. It gives the freedom to not eat the same Subway sandwich for lunch everyday, to not pay the huge overhead cost, and to not get the teriyaki sauce that's sweeter than you'd like. You can definitely make something better.

That's pretty much the whole ball game of creating recipes: defining what you like and figuring out how to get there. But how DO you get there? Sounds tricky, like learning a new science, but you already do it all the time both purposely and accidentally. You like garlic, so you add triple garlic to your stir fries, and it's really good. You kind of burn your onions while caramelizing them, but it turns out really good in a different way. You're out of strawberry preserves so you substitute honey into your PB&J, and you have a new snack staple. You are watching out for your arteries so you use half the butter in your Alfredo sauce, and still, it's really good. You don't have bay leaves, so you leave them out of your soup, and you can't really tell the difference. You don't have baking soda so you use baking powder, and that was silly. You don't have onions so you use onion powder, and that was also really silly. Each time you have cooked, you have learned a little more about what each step does for the final product. You realize what you can leave out and what you absolutely can't. You begin to parse the flavors of a dish. You develop your palate.

Reason #3 – It's your kitchen, and you don't give a fuck
So you tried to make macaroni and cheese stuffed tomatoes, which on paper sounded awesome, but the end product was mushy red-tinted mac and cheese. Who gives a fuck! It's your kitchen. No one is judging. You are cooking for you and only you. You hold onto that fantasy of cutting into a oven roasted tomato bowl filled with creamy and crunchy macaroni and cheese that holds form for a mere moment before melting in your mouth. It's not going to be perfect the first time around. Of course it's not! There is so much to cooking and you don't know the half of it. Like me, you're a pretty big noob, but you're dish is going places, and even though it isn't THE divine macaroni and cheese stuffed tomato, it's still macaroni and cheese with tomatoes, and that's still pretty fucking great. Drizzle on some hot sauce, mix in a slice of butter, smile like a fatty, and try again tomorrow.

Aaand the recipe – Hurricane Noodles, aka miso chili noodles with basil

Here's a recipe I've made recently using the amateur principles I've outlined above. Cooped up waiting for Hurricane Irene to strike, I decided to cook what might have been … my last meal. I was craving both miso soup and bean and tomato chili, stuff I've cooked before. I thought, why not, let's combine them. And what the hell, chickpeas are awesome, and so is ginger, and so is teriyaki sauce, and so is Sriracha, and so is that Korean hot pepper paste (gochujang), and so is beer, and so is fresh basil, and hey, why not some noodles, because noodles make everything awesome. Sounding pretty good. (It's also vegan if you use miso without fish.) Let's do it.

INGREDIENTS
4 tbsp olive oil
1 pound extra firm tofu, pressed and diced into ½ inch cubes
½ medium Vidalia onion, diced
6 cloves ginger, minced
1 tbsp ginger, minced
5 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked for at least 4 hours and then diced

Powders – mix well beforehand
2 tbsp Chipotle chili powder
2 tbsp miso soup powder mix (powder called for 1 tbsp per 3 cups of water for miso soup)
2 tbsp ground cumin
1 tbsp all-purpose flower
1 tsp fresh ground pepper
1 tsp granulated sea salt

Teriyaki sauce – mix well beforehand
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp Sriracha sauce
1 tbsp Korean hot pepper paste (gochujang)
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
4 tbsp cold water

1 can (14.5oz) diced tomatoes
3 oz tomato paste
1 can (15.5oz) chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 bottle Magic Hat #9 (or whatever beer you think would be good)

½ pound somen noodles (or whatever noodles you like), cooked according to package directions
a few handfuls of basil, chiffonade-ed
a bunch of scallions, chopped

METHOD
In a large pot, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat and fry the tofu until golden.

Add onions and cook for about 5 minutes.

Add garlic and ginger and mushrooms. Cook for another 30 seconds.

Add in all the powders and stir until even distributed.

Add in teriyaki sauce. Stir well.

Add in half bottle of Magic Hat #9. Drink the rest. Bring pot to boil.

Add tomatoes, tomato paste, and chickpeas. Stir. Bring back to a boil. Then immediately bring back down to a simmer and COVER. Leave it for at least 2 hours, stirring every half hour or so.

Remove chili from heat (or continue simmering, since the longer the better, but you're starving by now). Adjust seasoning.

In an appropriately sized bowl, toss together the chili and noodles. Divide into individual portions. Top with basil and scallions.



And that's it. The dish turned out a little spicier than I expected, and more ginger would've been good, and my basil was a little old, but you know what? A lot of it was fantastic. The miso really comes out and works well to balance the heat and makes the chili so, so hearty. The mix of different spiciness along with the teryaki makes for a chili that is sweet, tangy, smoky, and rich. The tofu absorbs all this and makes the texture of the dish a bit creamy, and the mushrooms give a meaty bite. The basil is absolutely critical with its crunch and lemony and peppery aromatics that combines perfectly with the sweet and sour chili. The noodles and tomatoes serve their tried and true role of bringing everything together. I came away from this first attempt proud and elated and begged my roommate to eat some even though he was already stuffed from free med school pizza. And next time it will only be better.

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