And now, food!  I can't remember if I've mentioned it before or not, but I love stuffed pasta.  Ravioli, shells, tortellini, I love it all!  You will not catch me making it, though.  I've tried, and it's such a faff.  So much work!  You know what's a great cheat, though?  Lasagna.  That's right!  I said it!  Lasagna is overgrown stuffed pasta!  And I'm here to review a great recipe for it.  Whoops, I suppose I should have given a spoiler alert before I said it was great.  Sorry to give away the ending like that.

Let's talk chefs for a moment.  If you know me at all, you know I'm a massive Alton Brown fan.  But what about those other Food Network peeps?  Yeah, not so much.  Most of them, in my personal opinion, are a little too fancy.  They're cheffy chefs that want to chef up every dish and make it cheffing cheffy.  You know what I mean.  Ingredients you can only buy at gourmet grocery stores, fussing over every little thing, taking hours to do just one step...guh!  No.  Get outta here with that noise.  There is an exception here, however: Ina Garten.  I have never watched one of her shows, but this lady knows how to keep it simple.  If I'm Googling a recipe, I'll often look for one by her because she's pretty reliable.  In this case, I used her Turkey Lasagna recipe.

The first thing I liked about this recipe (and quite possibly my most favorite part besides how yummy it is) is the fact that you don't have to cook the noodles!  What a faff cooking lasagna noodles is!  You have to get the water boiling and and then cook the noodles and hope you don't over do it and then get them out without tearing them and burning yourself in the process.  That is why I never really made lasagna before.  Those days are over, my friends!  Just plonk your lasagna noodles into some water and leave them be.  I also appreciate that the recipe told us exactly how many layers to do, exactly how to divide up the filling, etc.  I don't want to have to do math while layering pasta.  And then you just bake it.

I did not do this recipe exactly the way it was written (shocker, right).  Instead, I went a more traditional route and just used ground beef and ricotta.  It was so stinkin' tasty!  And it works great with GF pasta noodles - if you've ever had to deal with GF pasta, you know how finicky it can be.  Sadly, I have no pictures because I didn't expect to like it as much as I did.  The hubs told our guests that night they weren't allowed to take any home and that they also shouldn't have any leftovers.  Said guests ignored him and went back for seconds anyway. :-)  Even if you just use this as a method, it's fantastic!  You could use store bought sauces to get really creative.  I best you could do a veggie version with squash and zucchini and alfredo sauce.  Or chicken with vodka sauce.  The possibilities are endless!  Try this recipe.  You will be very happy you did.

Cheers!

Dana

Not to worry, though.  I'll still be guest blogging here about food...delicious, magical, awesome food.  Speaking of, time for a recipe review!

So here's the scenario: a friend of mine is having a birthday this week.  Said friend loves madeleines.  Like, not just enjoys them, loves them and cannot control herself around them.  I was going to make her a butter cake for her birthday, but then I stumbled across a recipe for madeleines in the process and decided that would be better.

For those of you not up on your ultra-specific French food studies, madeleines are little, spongy, shell shaped butter cookies.

I have a fantastic idea for all of you.  Next time you have to bring something for a cookie swap, bring these babies.  If you go the extra mile and spring for a proper madeleine pan, everyone will be super impressed!  They are so classy and lovely.

Now, going against what I just said, despite my best efforts, I was not able to find a madeleine pan on short notice, so I had to improvise.  I used a mini-muffin pan and then 13 slots in my mini-scone pan.  I am a little disappointed by this because the little shells do make such a lovely presentation.  Well, you do you best with what you have.  And now the part you've all been waiting for, the recipe!

I used one from Martha Stewart's website here.  Say what you will about her ethics, the woman has some good recipes.  Some of the other recipes I saw were more fussy, which is why I eschewed them for Martha's in the end.  This one is pretty hands off.  Those of you who know mine is a celiac household might be wondering how I dealt with the whole gluten in traditional flour issue.  Thankfully, there are numerous brands of cup-for-cup, all-purpose, gluten-free flours available.  I happened to have used Cup4Cup, but only because I happen to have it on hand.  Honestly, (and I've said this before in a previous post about Victoria sponge) I find that Cup4Cup performs as well as other brands like Domata and King Arthur, but it's much more expensive, so I will likely not buy it again.  Nevertheless, it performed beautifully in this application.  And here's the great thing about GF baking: because there's no gluten, you don't have to worry about over developing it while mixing.  Which is why when my folding technique was failing to do the job, I was able to whack my bowl back under the stand mixer and let it do the work for me.  Then it was just a matter of scooping it into the little pans and baking it.

Quick question: Does anyone know how to keep a sponge from deflating?  Because I've never been able to get that.  I've read that some people drop their pan onto the floor, but that seems a little extreme.  Ideas?  Anyone?

Of course the big question is whether or not the birthday girl liked her gift.  After all, some people claim that GF baked goods are not as good as the "real thing", can never be as good.  Well, let me put it this way.  Of the twenty-one madeleines I made, she ate twelve.  Twelve!  She could not stop herself from going back for more.  That's what I call a roaring success.

Thank you all for reading, and I do hope you'll pop by and visit my author blog as well.  Until then, cheers!