Sometimes you get to thinking a certain way about things and get stuck. Then if you’re lucky, someone or something gets you unstuck. For me, oftentimes wine does that. It can turn the way you think about something on its ear. I've written about wine and cooking disrupting my depression. A wine can show me a way of being - from combining flavors you'd never think of putting together - to carrying dark depth with grace - that help break out of my lulls, particularly with regard to feeding myself. So this is a post about herbs of all things to the tune of Patti Smith. I'm starting to understand my rage gets channeled into through and around food in some weird ways!
I’ve been very curmudgeonly and a little dogmatic about not having too many herbs in my kitchen. Sometimes it's fun to be a curmudgeon, lately I don't enjoy it as much. During the year I avoid buying herbs to the point that I avoid any recipe that depends on them. They are expensive, and I never use the whole clamshell container and they go bad, with the exception of thyme maybe. Bon Appetit magazine is the source of this wonderful, slightly tedious and helpful guide on how to store herbs properly. For a long stretch in the late mid-aughts BA was also responsible for lots of recipes that required many different fresh herbs. This annoyed me, in that it seemed to always require a pricey trip to the store and was not pantry-cooking-friendly. In summer, I keep a few herb pots that mitigate this issue, although we still need to buy herbs from the store sometimes.
I tend to think of a wine as having either a tender or soft stemmed herbal quality or a woody herb quality. Soft-stemmed herbs are: parsley, mint, cilantro, dill, basil, tarragon ~ while hardy-stemmed herbs are: thyme, oregano/marjoram, rosemary, bay. But then this false binary is broken up by some wines like syrah which classically hold aromatics of both fresh mint and thyme. And thus, in wine I find things go together that I would never reach for in my cooking.
The person I share my kitchen with loves to cook with blends of herbs and spices, and I always enjoy his use of them. His favorite is herbs de Provence. This blend of thyme, rosemary and a differing combination of chervil, bay, marjoram and sometimes also lavender, is reflected in the concept of garrigue. Garrigue is the French term for the wild vegetation along the Mediterranean coast but broadly in the south of France. Rather than a single plant or scent, garrigue refers to a variety of aromatic, resinous herbs like rosemary, sage, bay leaves and thyme. It also includes shrubs like juniper and artemisia as well as lavender and mint. Em, who visited the Languedoc this spring, confirms that when you stand in the vineyard at a winery like Le Petit Domaine de Gimios, it smells like this.
I made this lasagna in that same spirit of crossing my artificial boundary of soft and hard herbs - using thyme, fennel seed, and a basil garnish that seems minor but is very important for fragrance and texture.
In addition to crispy noodles and cheese on the surface, I wanted to include the crispy leaf of the kale in this lasagna. This is kind of like a lasagna version of Em’s pasta, sausage, broccoli (PSB). For a vegetarian version, I recommend switching the pork for chopped fennel. It takes a little work to collect the perfect bite for the eater, but this is only because I wanted to keep it as simple and gestural for the cook (me) as possible. Lavering on a bed of fresh green curly leaves, for instance, feels really good even if it takes an extra second to cut it on the plate later on.
*** and to drink ***
The Rainbow store now offers packs that highlight certain themes or producers, as well as a custom option. We have more wines in stock than are reflected in the packs detailed online. With the custom option, there's a space to give us some info about what you'd like. We encourage you to share what you're looking for - whether you would just like something new, or seasonal, or to go with what you're cooking this week. For instance, if you wanted an herbal pack including a syrah, we have wines for that, and it's just about our favorite type of thing to put together.
Lasagna
Makes 1 tray / casserole dish about 9” x 13”
Par-boiled Noodles*
Cream Sauce (see below)
Pork & Onion (see below)
1/2 lb cleaned and destemmed Russian red kale leaves, kept whole
1/4 c grated parmesan
Small handful basil leaves, chopped
Splash olive oil
*Buy lasagna noodles and par cook them according to the package instructions, or make pasta according to the egg dough recipe from the blog. Roll out into ¼” thick sheets, then cut into strips. Don’t worry too much about making them evenly sized, it’s nice to make a little patchwork when you assemble it. In boiling, salted, water, cook the noodles for a minute, you just par boil them before baking them in the casserole.
Cream sauce
This started as a failed attempt to make Ricotta and turned into something nice between a fresh cheese and a bechamel
2 c heavy whipping cream
½ c greek yogurt
1 tablespoon distilled white vinegar
Combine the yogurt and cream in a saucepan, and whisk until smooth. Bring to a low boil, then add vinegar. Keep cooking at a low simmer for 20 minutes, whisking occasionally to keep the sauce from burning on the bottom of the pan or on the sides of the pan. It should be reduced by about a half.
Pork & onion
1 lb ground pork
10 or so spring onion bulbs or shallots, peeled and quartered
¼ c dry white wine
1 tablespoon fennel seeds, toasted and ground
3 or so thyme branches, leaves removed and chopped roughly
In a skillet, heat a glug of cooking oil. When hot, add the ground pork. Season with salt, chili flake and black pepper. Let pork brown by letting it sit in the pan and not stirring it around too much. Cook it til it’s no longer pink then remove to a plate. Deglaze the pan with ¼ c dry white wine. Add the onions and cook on medium-low heat until tender, about 15 minutes. Combine the onions and the pork and ground fennel and thyme.
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Assemble the lasagna by placing cream sauce on the base of the casserole dish, followed by the noodles, then the pork, then the kale, and repeat. Finish the top with kale leaves, a drizzle of cream sauce, the grated parmesan and a few splashes of olive oil.
Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Let rest 10 minutes out of oven before serving. Serve with basil sprinkled on top.
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