Lasagna by Ms. Marie a new twist to an old standard.

 

"Ms. Marie"

Old JB here has been making Lasagna for over 40 years and was first introduced to Lasagna by my mother-in-law who could really bake up a delicious dish. Over the years I thought I had tried just about every trick in the book, many variations and all usually really good. The only thing I have not done is to make the noodles homemade, that still is in my future.

So, I had a dinner invite from the most beautiful lady I will call Ms. Marie. She said she was making Lasagna, and so I was very curious as to her recipe.

Once she started talking about how she makes it I was scratching my head pretty good. Did not really make sense to me, cilantro in Lasagna? Cream cheese in Lasagna? Peppers? And the list goes on.

I will say that it turned out to be probably the best version of Lasagna I have ever had and the ingredients are not the usual.

Here I will post a pic of what you will need. Not including measurements, I would just do equal parts of each, add more of what you like. (not heavy on the carraway, thyme, basil and rosemary)

The Meat Sauce

The sauce is a meat sauce with 3 cans San Marzano tomatoes, two cans petite diced tomatoes slow cooked for 8 to 10 hours slow simmer. Add basil, oregano, salt pepper. The meat is a mix of 96% lean burger and Italian sausage. Cook the meat with one chopped white onion first then add to the slow cooker.

Chop and dice 3 peppers, 1 yellow, 1 red, and 1 orange, add with the meat sauce.

The cheese mixture is as follows.

Equal parts cream cheese, sour cream, and ricotta. Put in bowl add a little parsley, cilantro, oregano, and a little garlic juice. Mix, then put in a zip lock bag. Chill, when ready cut the bag at the bottom and squeeze in the lasagna tray while layering,

You will also need 2 bags of motz and parm.

For layering start with a light sauce on the bottom

Then noodles, then motz and parm, then layer of cheese sauce, noodles, then repeat.

Cook for 25 min at 425 covered. When it comes out top with motz and parm, re cover with foil. Let stand on top of oven for 10-15 minutes.

Some variations according to Ms. Marie is to add mushrooms and black olives put in sauce. A good idea is to Sautee the mushrooms first.

Also you can change up the cheese from bagged to fresh or homemade, Just make sure the motz is whole milk.

You can also make this vegitarian by simply leaving out the burger and sasuage.

Try this recipe, it is awesome!

JB

Keto Pasta. Jims Lasagna Recipe with homemade low carb noodles.

Ok Folks! Here is a delicious lasagna recipe that is fairly traditional with the exception of the noodles which are home made very low carb perfect for a low carb/Keto diet plus lots of protein.

First to make the noodles.

½ cauliflower riced in a food processor

1 ½ cup almond flour

1 ½ cup coconut flour

2 eggs and basil

1 cup of parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup of water

To prepare: After ricing the cauliflower in a food processor put the riced cauliflower in a bowl, covered and cook in the microwave for 6 minutes. Then put it in a tea towel and strain all the water you can out of the cooked, riced, cauliflower. This is a fairly traditional method of preparing cauliflower for a variety of Keto low carb dishes.

Next add the cauliflower the remaining ingredients and mix well. Add basil and garlic powder, as much or as little as you like. Hand press the dough into a ball. The dough will be a bit crumbly but when pressed it will hold together. Get a large baking cookie pan/sheet and cover it with parchment paper. Then place the dough in the center of the pan and place another sheet of Parchment Paper over the dough. Now simply take a rolling pin and roll out the dough as thin as possible covering the entire pan. 

When finished, remove the top paper, preheat oven to 375, and bake for 20 minutes.

Once done, take out and place on a cooling rack. GREAT TIP!!! When cutting the cooked dough place the dough on top of two cooling racks, but have the racks separated about an inch. This will create a grove where you can cut the scissors and still have support on both sides of the noodle. This will help prevent breaking and works very well! Once done, leave the noodles on the baking rack until you are ready to assemble.

The rest of the recipe is mostly traditional.

Meat Sauce:

2 cans san Marzano tomatoes

One can tomato sauce

3 teaspoons of tomato paste

Fresh chopped tomatoes if you can get them

1 pound of each//Ground veal, beef, and port

5 cloves fresh garlic crushed

2 cups fresh basil

Salt, pepper, garlic powder as much or as little as you like

1 cup red wine

2 cups water

To prepare simply brown and drain the beef then add all the ingredients. Simmer first 30 minutes uncovered, the cover and let cook on low for several hours.

Assembly

1 large container of ricotta

Fresh parm

Enough fresh motz to cover each layer.

Bottom layer. Spread enough meat sauce to cover a deep lasagna pan. Then cover the meat sauce with a layer of Motz. Next put your 3 noodles on top of the motz. Next pour meat sauce over the noodles, then ricotta over the meat sauce, then motz over the ricotta, then another layer of 3 noodles. Repeat this for as big as your pan is or for how many ever noodles you have.

On the final top layer top with a little ricotta, motz, basil and parm cheese.

Bake in the oven at 375 for 45 minutes.

Truly as delicious Lasagna that is high protein and extremely low carb.

Conclusion: Does this noodle substitute taste exactly like an original lasagna noodle?? No it does not. But then again, a real noodle does not have really any flavor. These low carb noodles actually do have a great flavor that adds to the dish, and these home-made noodles hold up well. The only difference I see is the consistency of the noodle. A real noodle is a bit slick even after it is cooked, where these are not. That is about it. But honestly, this dish is so good if you have a lasagna craving and you want to stay on a low carb diet, this does work great. It is very satisfying. My wife is Italian and is a true Italian food snob. She really loved this dish. That says something right there.

NOTE: When you make home made noodles, plan ahead, because it does take time. You could even skip the cauliflower in the recipe and just add more of the other flours. Precook the day ahead. This would save a lot of time on the day of cooking. Cheers JB

Jims Chesapeake Bay Deviled Crabs and stuffed Ribbonfish Pinnwheels

Deviled Crabs 

It has been over 50 years since I had one of my childhood favorite culinary treats a zesty delicious seafood special called the Deviled Crab. I was born in Norfolk Virginia back in 1961 and I remember my dad “The Judge” taking us boys to some little seafood shop near the water that specialized in Deviled Crabs. They were served to go and hot, wrapped in cellophane. I remember my dad loved these things and us kids had a great time enjoying them as well.

Not long after my introduction into the Deviled Crab, my parents moved to Richmond Virginia where I would grow up and eventually raise my own family before packing my bags, and living back on the water on the Peninsula in early 2002. For years I have wondered about the Deviled Crab, mostly due to the fact that I have never seen it anywhere since my youth. Never in a restaurant, supermarket, and I never would hear anyone speaking about them.

So with the power of google, I thought it was high time to dig up this recipe and what I found was that a lot of chefs, have no idea how to make a deviled crab. It you are not making Deviled Crab with the Cajun Holy Trinity… then it is not a Deviled Crab. At least not the crabs that I grew up with. There was a few recipes online but figured I would make a recipe that would come close to what I use to dine on when I was a kid. Here ya go.

First, get fresh crabmeat, backfin is fine, some claw, or super clump it will all work. I just bought backfin.

Ingredients:

1 pound of crab meat

Teaspoon of Worcestershire

5 dashes of cayeen pepper

Holy trinity (bell pepper, onion, & celery chopped)

1\2 cup Bread crumbs

Dash of mustard

1 clove garlic crushed

Pad of butter

Tablespoon mayo

Teaspoon of paprika

1 egg

Some empty crab shells cleaned out.

To prepare… EASY. First melt some butter in a pan with some olive oil and Sautee the trinity. Towards the end add the garlic.

Once done, in a bowl add the trinity and crab meat and all ingredients and mix gently by hand. Lastly stuff the empty crab shells with the stuffing and sprinkle liberally with paprika.

Place a pat of butter on top of each and bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.

Perfect for a meal or side dish and makes for a fantastic easy lunch. Serve this to guest and they will love you for it, great for a party.

Stuffed Ribbonfish Pinnwheels

It was the day after filming a Jim Baugh Outdoors TV show featuring Ribbon Fishing with Captain Billy Pappas JR that I got the idea to make Ribbonfish stuffed pinnwheels. The good captain told me how great Ribbon fish was and how he sort of stuffed them with crabmeat.

Well, I now already had the Deviled Crab Stuffing and thought WOW this would be great in a rolled up long piece of Ribbon Fish, so that is what we did.

First take your long piece of Ribbon Fish and lay it out on a board. Then take you stuffing and place it on top of the fish and press the stuffing don hard on the filet.

Next start at one end and roll the filet into a pinwheel (leave skin on, no scales). While rolling use your hand to keep all the stuffing in place inside the wheel, works very well.

Once done lay the pinwheel flat and insert 4 tooth pics in the sides of the pinwheel to keep everything nice and tight.

Now what we did was lightly pan fry the wheel and then bake off in the oven at 350. This was delicious. I did this because we were also having fried scallops. BUT this is fantastic simply baked in an oven and broiled off the end.

Serve with lemon and some tarter sauce, absolutely fantastic.

Enjoy!

Jim Baugh

Jim Baugh Outdoors TV

Boeuf Bourguignon by Julia Child with a JB Cast Iron twist!

As many times as I have made beef stroganoff and basic beef stew, I never tried Julia Childs recipe for boeuf bourguignon.  So with a wife that is always supportive of me trying something new in the kitchen I thought I would give it a try.

When I went online to research this recipe, I found that there certainly was many variations on the recipe and most of them resulting in some shortcuts. While looking at the recipes there were a lot of people that added bacon and carrots which I thought was a great idea. Not sure about her book, but on her TV show there was no mention of bacon, carrots, celery, or parsley.

My version of this classic dish is almost an exact replica of the original recipe however the above-mentioned ingredients were used and they were fantastic.

The biggest difference is that my version uses all cast iron for both braising and slow cooking. In my opinion nothing sears and braises better than cast iron, therefor making better deglazing for sauces and better caramelization. Here are the only differences between JB’s recipe and the original.

Nothing browns like cast iron!

We used in addition to the original recipe:

All cast iron for all the cooking

Carrots

Italian Parsley

Thick bacon or Virginia Cured Ham (I used sliced ham)

Braised Pearl Onions with butter and white wine.

Very thin slices of celery

Shallots

I am not sure why Julia made the roux gravy at the end of the recipe, I would have done it earlier in the process, but I stuck to her recipe and made the sauce 1 hour before it was finished. Total bake time was 4 hours.

You can follow Julia’s recipe HERE on youtube for details, I followed her exact recipe with the above-mentioned additions and it truly was a fantastic dish.

Here we go.

First cook your sliced bacon and set aside. Next take your cut chuck and braise in a cast iron skilled with a little olive oil. Do not crowed the meat. Once braise set in a covered roasting pot or dutch oven. Add the bacon.

Now Sautee (olive oil & Butter) the mushrooms then set aside. Julia does this later but I liked having the schrooms as a part of the deglaze. Once sautéed set aside. Now prepare your  onions and sautee them in white wine and butter in the skillet. Be sure that the pearl onions get some caramelization on them.  Once done, set aside. DO NOT PUT IN DUTCH OVEN YET.

Set schrooms and onions aside and add during last hour of cooking

Next sauté the carrots, celery, garlic, shallots in butter and some red wine. Once done add to the meat in the pot.

Now deglaze the skillet with about two cups of red wine and then add to the pot.

At this point you will add salt and fresh thyme, bay leaf, and parsley then fill the pot with red wine and a cup of beef stock until everything is covered. Add Italian parsley and tomato paste.

Put in oven at 325 for 3 hours. Then take out and strain the broth out into a bowl. Now make a roux in the skillet with butter and flour then add the broth to make a gravy. Once done, put everything back into the dutch oven. Now add your pepper some salt and maybe a little water plus some butter.  This is the stage when you will also add the pre-cooked pearl onions and mushrooms.

After 3 hours make roux and add to stew, bake another hour to finish

Bake for 1 additional hour and serve on pasta, rice, or potatoes. I made rosemary russet potatoes for a side and it was wonderful, My wife insist on large egg noodles. She got her wish.

Very glad we made this, it truly is excellent!

TIPS:

* Be sure to braise the pearl onions in butter. Get a good caramelization on them. Also slice the root end so the onions will hold together. (just a thin slice inwards)

* Use a decent quality of red wine.

* Always use olive oil & butter when sautéing.


* No Shortcuts! Don't throw everything in at once to save time like you would in a crock pot stew. Also be sure to put the onions and schrooms in during the last hour, not for the first 3 hours.


* Spring Onion Garnish


* Use unsalted butter


* Re season skillet when finished.

 

 

Black Drum Ribs!!!