Thursday, November 8, 2007

Clif's Salmon Lasagna - have the electric knife handy

We're pretty gutsy around here when it comes to cooking/eating. I hardly ever follow a recipe exactly as it was written. This has apparently worn off on my husband. He has 1 dish that he can make....microwave chicken with cream of mushroom soup. He just doesn't really enjoy cooking.

Lunch was interesting today.

Clif has an office in the house. Most days he doesn't even get to go to his office because he's out making sales calls. In Atlanta traffic that can mean long days. On the days that he's at home I never know when he's coming up for lunch. Lunch time depends on how busy things are. This translates into him fixing his own lunch when he's here.

Today he came up to eat about the time I was feeding the kids so we got to witness him fixing lunch. (He's not gonna like this post. But it makes me laugh.)

Most days he fixes a salad and/or a sandwich. He's not a soup person, but he's a big pasta person. Today he had a craving for pasta. I didn't have any kind of pasta in the house except for lasagna noodles. These noodles were some that I picked up from the store that were specially produced for the easy lasagna recipes (no boiling ahead). He decided after reading the recipe that he could put this together and microwave it for 15 minutes.

Off he went. Here's some of our conversation:

Clif: "Do we have ricotta cheese?"
Me: "No, but we have cottage cheese."
Clif: "Do we have spaghetti sauce?"
Me: "No, but we have diced tomatoes and tomato paste." (I hardly ever buy canned sauce.)
Clif: "Hey, I could put in some leftover salmon from last night."
Me: "Uhh, ok."

...Clif reading the recipe to himself......(those who know him are starting to grin)
Clif: "How do you know how to lay out the noodles?"
Me: "There's a picture on the box." Luckily for me there is an illustration on this box.

He pulls out a square baking dish and in that dish mixes 2 eggs, a can of tomato paste, a can of diced tomatoes, and the cottage cheese.

Clif: "This isn't going to be enough to layer."
He pulls out a 9x13.
Me: "I think you need to re-read the recipe. You mix the cheese mixture with the eggs and the sauce separate and layer the sauce, noodles, cheese mixture, etc."
Clif: "This will work!"
Me: "Ok."

At some point and some place he adds the leftover broiled salmon.

I didn't take a shower before the kids woke up today, so I slipped out of the kitchen to take a shower while he was "cooking". When I returned from my shower he was trying to cut into his lasagna.

He was on his second helping already! And the kids were gathering around him asking for more.

The layering didn't work very well. He started out with 7/8 of his sauce on the bottom, added noodles, then shredded Parmesan and a shredded Mexican cheese mixture, then noodles and the 1/8 leftover sauce and more cheese. Let's just say that the top layer was overly al dente.

He was laughing and said, "It tastes really good if you can get through the first layer. Do we have a chainsaw?"

He was right. It tasted good. It was just really, really chewy on top. And he said, "I didn't know lasagna was that easy to make!"

Now I'm in trouble. He probably won't try anything new in the kitchen ever again because this is out there for the whole world to see.

But, honey, you have to because your kids love your cooking?

I'm going to a spa party at my friend Julie's tonight. I can hardly wait to find out what's for supper? Daddy's in charge.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Clif, you are very creative!!!