Happy Cooking and Happy Hour on Friyay

I'd worked arduously this week teaching freshmen how to research for slide presentations on Elizabethan England and also book talking to them about my young adult favorite reads like Elsewhere and The 57 Bus.  And so I was ready to kick back with a glass of wine, crackers and cheese, and happily ever after last episodes of Sex and the City.

A couple weeks ago I also felt compelled to put lasagne back into my rotation because of a column in Milk Street on bolognese romagne, and so I spent a couple days making the ragù, boiling spare ribs and browning ground beef, chopping onions, celery and carrots and simmering it for hours with my summer tomato preserving.  It culminated in buying fresh lasagne pasta from Draegers and then whisking butter, flour, milk, and nutmeg into a béchamel.  

This lasagne was not my usual gut bomb of ricotta and spinach and Italian sausage and thick pasta--just layers of the delicate fresh noodle, ragù, béchamel, and sprinklings of pecorino romano.  Not what he expected, said my husband, but good along with some Swiss chard sauteed with garlic and olive oil on the side.  My refrigerator is now empty of most of the leftovers including this lasagne.  Onward and onward.