Cannellini and Kale Ragout

From Epicurious:
The oversize croutons add a nice crunch to this warming dish, which is a cross between a soup and a stew. Serve with: Romaine salad with sliced oranges, black olives, and balsamic vinaigrette.

Yield: Makes 4 servings

Ingredients:
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
4 1 1/2-inch-thick slices Italian bread, crusts removed, each slice quartered
1 teaspoon plus 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme

3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
5 cups (packed) thinly sliced kale (about 1 large bunch)
1 14 1/2-ounce can vegetable broth
1 14 1/2-ounce can diced tomatoes with green pepper and onion in juice
1 15-ounce can cannellini (white kidney beans) or Great Northerns, drained

Preparation:
Heat 2 tablespoons oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add bread and 1 teaspoon thyme; cook until bread is golden on both sides, turning with tongs, about 2 minutes total. Transfer croutons to bowl; sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Add remaining 4 tablespoons oil, garlic, and crushed red pepper to same pot; sauté over medium heat 30 seconds. Add kale and broth; bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until kale wilts, about 5 minutes. Add tomatoes with juice, beans, and remaining 1 tablespoon thyme. Cover and simmer 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Ladle ragout into shallow bowls. Top with croutons and serve.

Results:
So easy and great for our first snowy weekend. I had to simmer it for a while without the cover because it was a little too soupy for my taste. I think it would also be good with other herbs than thyme, like oregano. So, I had this ragout with the crouton for lunch today, and I plan on mixing it with some pasta to take to work for lunch sometime this week. If you want to turn it into a soup, I would say your could just add more broth.

This was a really interesting article about how foods can (and cannot) affect your mood. I don't necessarily believe what they say about chocolate....

Flour measurements

I found this handy way to convert flour measurements in cookbooks from volume to weight. Food people are always blah blah blahing about how it's more accurate to measure flour by weight than by volume, and it's not a real cookbook unless it does flour by weight. Whatever. It's just easier for me since I got a scale.

• 5.5 ounces per cup for bread flour
• 5 ounces per cup for all purpose flour
• 4 ounces per cup for cake flour

Mushroom Lasagna

From Smitten Kitchen:

Serves 6 to 8 (more as a first course)

• Salt
• Olive oil
• 3/4 pound dried lasagna noodles
• 1 large clove garlic, minced
• 4 cups whole milk
• 3/4 cup (12 tablespoons or 1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, divided
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/3 teaspoon ground nutmeg (the recipe called for 1 tsp)
• 1 1/2 pounds cremini or portobello mushrooms
• 1 cup freshly grated parmesan

Preheat your oven to 375°F. Bring a large, wide (if you use a wide one, you can save a dish later and saute your mushrooms in the bottom of it) of water to boil with salt and a splash of oil, that will help keep your noodles from sticking together as they drain. Add the lasagna noodles and cook for 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Make béchamel: Bring the milk and garlic to simmer in a saucepan, or heat it in your microwave, and set it aside. Melt 1/2 cup (8 tablespoons or 1 stick) butter in a large saucepan. If your name is Deb, you will probably brown this butter, too. Add the flour and cook for one minute over low heat, stirring constantly with a whisk or wooden spoon. Pour in the hot milk, a little at a time at first and stirring until combined. Once you’ve added half of it, you can add the second half all at once, along with 1 1/2 teaspoons table salt, the pepper, and nutmeg. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring or whisking frequently, for 3 to 5 minutes, or until thick. Set aside.

Prepare mushrooms: Discard portobello mushroom stems and/or trim the ends of the cremini stems. Slice mushrooms 1/4-inch thick. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons butter over medium in the bottom of the large, wide pot you used to cook the noodles earlier, or in a large sauté pan. Cook the mushrooms with a couple pinches of salt for about 5 minutes, or until they are tender and release some of their juices, tossing to make sure they cook evenly. Repeat with additional oil and butter, and remaining mushrooms.

Assemble lasagna: Spread some of the sauce in the bottom of an 8 x 12 or 9 x 13 baking dish. (Ina recommends the former, I only had the latter; if you’d like to freeze or give this dish as a gift, remember to use a foil pan). Arrange a layer of noodles on top*, then more sauce (about 1/4 of what remains), 1/3 of the mushrooms and 1/4 cup grated parmesan. Repeat two more times then top with a final layer of noodles, your remaining sauce and last 1/4 cup of parmesan.

Bake for 45 minutes, or until top is browned and the sauce is bubbly. Let sit at room temperature for 15 minutes before serving. To freeze for future use, allow it to cool completely and wrap two to three times in plastic wrap before freezing.

RESULTS:
Holy nutmeg Batman! The recipe called for 1 tsp. I used 3/4 tsp, and it was a lot of nutmeg still. In the recipe above I reduced the amount. Otherwise this was very good. I would also recommend caution with cooking the mushroom. I overcooked them, so they released a LOT of their juices, and it left them a little dried out in the lasagna, but with a runny mushroom juice (I poured the juice in the final layer thinking the pasta would soak it up, but it didn't).

I'm procrastinating and thought I'd assemble some recent thoughts on and realizations about food.

Things I used to like and now, for various reasons, don't

Turmeric: There was an incident involving me and the wrong end of a practical joke. I'd rather not go into it at the moment, but let's just say a perfectly good white shirt was no longer white. [Chris wanted me to say that he had nothing to do with this particular incident.]

Scallops: It could be that I just thought I liked scallops because the chefs on Top Chef are always cooking with them, but I've decided that they just don't have any flavor and the texture isn't great. Meh. No wonder the chefs who cook with scallops tend to get sent home that episode.

Ground Beef: I think this is a case of me just cooking dishes with ground beef wrongly over and over that now I don't like it, at least when I make it. I like it when other people make it, say in chili, hamburgers, or sauce, but not when I make it.

Things I still don't like, and may never like

Arugala: It's just mean. You think you're going to get lettuce--nice, sweet, simple lettuce. And then BAM! You get socked in the jaw with this impostor lettuce, this sneaky spicy assassin lettuce that gets you when you least expect it. Pass.

Radishes: See above. I'll leave the radishes to the fraggles.

Raisins: I get creeped out just thinking about raisins and that awful grit that they have sometimes. Yeesh. Gives me the willies. And they're so cloyingly sweet. My dislike of raisins eclipses my dislike of any other food, which is to say that I will eat them when I have to, or when it would be rude to not, or if they are covered in a lot of chocolate, but given my druthers they would drop off the face of the planet.

Beets: This one might be iffy. I liked beets when Jean made them for me once, and I like borscht. I just never like them when I make them, they always seem to taste like pickled beets, which I do not like.