{Recipe at the end of this post. This photo demonstrates the important principle of Save a Step -- make more of what you are making. You can see that the salad is for four people, two of whom are not big salad eaters. But the casserole is for eight. Back in the day I would have made two of these. Go thou and do likewise.}
I am not sure why it is that it was a bit of a surprise for you to know that I'm a convert.
Hmm.
This makes me wonder what I've left out. Have you read my "What it means to be a woman" series so far? (You have to read from the bottom up.) I feel like I've let you know a lot about myself in those posts. Maybe I'm not as clear as I thought I was? Maybe we need some bios over there on the sidebar?
I'll have to think about "telling my conversion story," although that seems like it would be tricky. For one thing, doesn't it seem like I'd have to tell others' stories as well? Maybe they don't want their stories told. If I leave their stories out, it will seem to me that I've left out the important bits, and made things appear simpler than they are.
How to get at experience -- that's the hard part, especially when an integral part of the experience is coming to be more myself, or emerging from the emotional and spiritual vagueness and misery of not having faith, to the clear light of having it. I think I would need a verbal form of calculus - words that describe change in motion -- to be able to express myself. Working linearly seems tidy but ultimately misrepresents the case.
You knew that my father is Egyptian (a secular Moslem, if you know what I mean by that), right? And that early on, he remarried, to an Egyptian woman who's quite a character.
She had her way of doing things, and if questioned, simply could not give an explanation of why this was her thinking. Despite being intelligent and fluent in English (and anyway, I was fluent in understanding Arabic, although that was a long time ago), she was fairly inarticulate when it came to defending her ways.
My stepmother was a very good cook, mainly of Arabic food, which, honestly, at the time, I detested. I was horrified by vegetables and/or anything strongly flavored, so I never ate much of it -- but I remember how it smelled, and now that I love that food, I go by my smell memory, which seems to serve me fairly well.
She gave me my love of reading cookbooks, and she would often take a flight into French cuisine. She had gone to a French school in Egypt. (Everyone upper class went to an English, French, or more rarely, German school in those days. She is fluent in French as well. I don't know what they do now.) As to American food, she was somewhat snobbish or possibly uninterested, I think. If I asked her for something particular, she'd give it a try. I'd look at what she had served up and challenge her, saying, "Amina, this is nothing like --" fried chicken, or whatever it was I'd requested, and of course, she knew it.
"It's Egyptian fried chicken," she'd insist. It wouldn't even be that it had Egyptian flavorings or method to it, necessarily. It would just be... different somehow. She'd have decided to put a random sauce on the chicken or make it with rabbit (yes, she did that) or something, and rather than explain herself, she'd just brazen it out by saying, "it's Egyptian fried chicken." Or whatever it was.
So that's what I do, naturally.
It's also a handy way of forestalling the charge of inauthenticity. If I were Italian, I'd be outraged at someone calling this dish "lasagna" or even, "easy lasagna."
But Egyptian lasagna? Who could be offended?
When I was telling you about making your menus, I posted a little peek photo of my actual, scribbled menu plan to give you an idea of what sort of thing I mean. {Not for you to copy, because the truth is, that doesn't actually help you! My menu encouragement works by giving you a template and a method for making your very own menus that suit your style, your taste, your diet, and your life. Do take a look on the sidebar to see what I mean.}
Alert
This is the day.
Egyptian lasagna, aka E. Lasagna, because I'm not going to write out the whole thing on my little scribbled menu plan, but my family wants to know which kind of lasagna I'm making, because...
It looks like a regular Italian-style meat-and-pasta dish, but oh, how my family loves this casserole!
Other people as well. Bridget told a friend that this was her favorite meal, and her friend, who was tasting it for the first time, said, "Me too!"
It's nothing that special, really.
It's just that quick casserole (although it does somehow get a bunch of stuff dirty) that you know everyone will like, and will give you that satisfied feeling of having dinner ready on a busy weekday. It keeps well in the fridge. You can freeze it. I can't say that it's different from real lasagna that way, but whatever, they just like it better!
{Once a guest who definitely did not get himself in my graces for saying so, took one look at it and, without even tasting it, asked if I had any Tabasco sauce or something "to make this more memorable." How rude! But if I'm honest, I have to agree that there's nothing exceptional about it except that everyone loves it! To this day, my husband gets out the Tabasco "to make it more memorable."}
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| The two tools necessary to open this can of olive oil. They didn't save me from mauling the cap. What the heck? |
This is how far from Italy this recipe is. Egg noodles. Cottage cheese. Clearly someone ran out of eggs, called for to mix with (also run-out-of) ricotta in classical recipes, and subbed corn starch. Cheddar cheese! Ay Carumba!
The original recipe (which I found in a once-a-month freezer cookbook, but I don't remember which one, sorry) calls for ground beef. Over the years I've settled on a ground beef and Italian sausage combination as more tasty, and, possibly, more memorable.
I think it's a bit lighter and brighter tasting than regular lasagna, maybe? I'm sorry, I just can't explain why we love it so! Just make it!
Just keep your good Italian rolls in the freezer and be ready to provide a salad or green beans. Dinner is on.
Egyptian Lasagna
also known as
Easy Fake Lasagna
for 6-8 -- definitely double for your large family, or make four batches at once and freeze two.
1 package 12. oz medium egg noodles (I don't know why, but it's really good with this shape, although I've made it with pasta such as gemelli or rotini)
1 16 oz. container cottage cheese, full fat (why buy low fat, it's yucky)
1 tablespoon corn starch
8 oz. grated sharp cheddar cheese (for these meals I do use already grated cheese because my favorite regional brand - Cabot - has a good sharp one. Since you are getting the food processor out anyway, it won't be too much extra work to grate your own, but it will be another blade to wash)
24 oz. or 2 1/2 cups of good thick tomato sauce (hint: if you are using a jar of sauce, as I usually do, "rinse" it out with a little red wine!)
1 lb. of a mix of ground beef and Italian sausage, browned. You can use less or much more meat according to all sorts of factors such as how many you are feeding and whether you've been eating a lot of meat lately and whether you can squirrel some of your meat away for a different meal if you use less in this one, etc. During Lent you can leave out the meat and instead mix a package of spinach in with the cottage cheese, although to Bridget this is just about the worst thing you could do and ruins her life.
Oil a lasagna pan. Boil the noodles and spread them on the bottom of the pan. It helps the next step if they have a chance to cool off a little.
If your cheese isn't grated, grate it using your grating disc in your food processor, then remove it to a bowl. Switch to your blade and process the cottage cheese with the corn starch and a couple of ounces of the cheese. Don't think you can get away without processing if you are using cottage cheese. If you are using ricotta (and that's fine) it isn't as important and you will avoid that particular mess.
Do put some of the cheddar in with the cottage cheese. It sort of melts into the noodles as it is baking and makes all the difference.
You can simmer the meat with the sauce if you like, or you can just assemble separately.
Spread the cheese mixture on the noodles evenly.
Spread the meat sauce (or the meat and then the sauce) on top of the cottage cheese layer.
Top with the rest of the cheese.
Bake for 30 minutes at 350° or until the top is brown and the whole thing is delectably bubbly.
Let it rest for 5 minutes or so, and serve!
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| Sometime I'll replace this photo with one that shows the layers -- it just got late and we were hungry and needed to go to choir. |
