j a y s p u n: Monday Night Lasagna

Hey all. It's been awhile... sorry I've neglected everyone in the blogosphere. Quite honestly it's either neglect you or neglect my bed-ridden pregnant wife; no-brainer is an understatement. Since Shelese was put on bed rest I've had to pick up the slack and to be honest I didn't think it would be that dramatic of a change, with her being a second-year medical resident, she spent a lot of time working. Well that was flat wrong! My resident resident did a lot more than I realized. Between work and cooking and walking the dog and washing dishes and clothes and the rest of the house, precious little "ME" time exists these days. I feel like a 1960's housewife. Maybe a pint of ice cream and a good ol' Tupperware party will do the trick? Maybe not! It's all good practice for life after our daughter is born... did I mention that we're having a girl! Very excited indeed, we're both thrilled. Despite feeling overworked and sick of house chores I would not trade places with my precious wife who has to stay near horizontal 23 out of 24 hours a day. It's all worth it for every kick she gives us and we are eagerly awaiting her arrival. In the meanwhile, infrequent blogging is the best I can do. Last Monday I came home fired up to make and photograph my freeway-derived recipe brain child and photograph it and post the pictures and write about it and yeah, fired up! By the time I washed the dishes from our previous nights dinner (gross I know, get over it) and cooked and photographed, the most I could do was post the photos unpublished. It's Thursday now and what's that cliche about lateness being superior to neverness? Well insert it here and here we go. I took some liberties with the format of lasagna but most of the key players showed up for the game. The ingredients in the meatballs were ground turkey, bread crumbs, dijon mustard, parmesan, shallot, and parsley.

A little S & P of course.

Started some salted water boiling for the noodles. I would love to try this again with homemade noodles; in fact, a wider noodle would have better suited the final arrangement.

After mixing the meatballs up, tossed them in a hot pan with olive oil and browned.

After the meatballs were browned and removed I was left with a beautiful fond in the pan and threw a classic mirepoix in to start the sauce. Typically the mirepoix is in the background of a sauce. It lends that herbal, unctuous, vegginess that we expect to hold up a great sauce. In this case I wanted the veggies to play a more substantial role so I chopped them a bit larger and didn't soften them too much. Many sauces strain the mirepoix out at some point but I wanted them to stand front and center.

Tossed in some fresh thyme, bay leaves, and chili flakes.

The meatballs found their way into a baking sheet and into the oven to finish cooking.

After the mirepoix softened a bit I deglazed the pan with some vermouth and followed with some chicken broth. Once boiling I cut some tomatoes in half and grated them into the pan. This is a great method I found in one of Jose Andres books; it yields a nice consistency and is fast.