Wecipe Wednesday:Mother Hubbard Ain't Got Nothing on Me

What do you get when you combine two birthdays, Christmas (so I guess that's technically three birthdays), a tax-crazy government, an early payday in December and a five-week January? Well, you get a whole lotta creative use of frozen foods, canned goods and a general emptying out of the pantry. You know: leftovers, rogatons, ressurection pie or as my Mom used to call it: "hushta-mushta-nushta-tushta". Tune in later to see what I can create with whatever I can find!  It's bound to be exciting, right...? Well, it will either be exciting or disasterous - either way it's worth a butcher's.

And if all else fails, there's always Kraft Dinner. The contraband supply of sachets brought in last summer is still well-stocked, so I at least I know we won't starve.

Ok, so here's what happened (he says, full to the gills from the most delicious leftover-leftover lunch EVER. Seriously. Think all the best food and drink you love delivered over a double-rainbow by a white unicorn doing double dream hands. Got it? That doesn't even come close, sucka!)...

I got home and opened the fridge. Then I opened the freezer. Then I opened the cupboard. Then I did all three again. A couple of times. I still believe in fairies, and I was pretty sure this time one of those little guys was going to deliver something delicious to my otherwise uninspired kitchen. But, it didn't happen - and once I got down off of the merry-go-round of disappointment, I looked into things a little closer. If you look closely in th cupboard, you'll see what I saw... 1) a can of soup that's been there for over a year. Wrong flavour, apparently. 2) a jar of honey that has gotten to the stage where it's not really honey unless you heat it up, and then it's more like syrup. 3) about 2 dozen cans of tinned tomatoes - can you say 'sale'? Of course you can. 4) lots of stuff that babies eat.

So what about the fridge...? Again, at first glance... not great. Fruit, butter, coleslaw, yogurt, sour cream and another can of tomatoes (I'm beginning to think George Clooney was on to something...)! If it was summer and we were planning to eat outside, we'd be quids in. But it's January, and I'm pretty sure one of our cats is frozen in the back yard, so eating al fresco is al-out-o.

Right... so, amongst this car crash of items, I found a couple of useful things round about the same time I remembered a conversation I had with my chef brother last week. I was trying to explain that I'd made some spaghetti bolognese - which, over here, means spaghetti with a meat ragu. Brother dear informed me that traditionally, a 'bolognese' is made with wine and milk. Say wha...?!? Of course, I did what every good l'il brother does when his PROFESSIONAL chef of a brother tells him something about cooking... I Googled it. (why trust the advice of a well-known expert when I can troll the world wide web of lies and take advice from strangers...?) Anyway, turns out he was right! With that in mind, and having found the following, I set off to make a lasagne al forno, milk and all.

I found:

• 1/2 a piece of stweing steak. I grind my own minced beef... I really don't trust what could be in the supermarket
• milk (?!?!)
• 1/2 a tub of ricotta cheese, leftover from a tomato sauce I made for our daughter.
• an egg
• some 'grated Italian hard cheese' 
• most of a sprig of parsley (mostly stalks, but enough leaf to show)
• onions
• some celery
• tomatoes (managed to find some)
• tomato puree (tomato paste for the Yanks)
• celery
• a glug of red wine still leftover from Christmas
• Balsamic vinegar
• Garlic, basil, salt, pepper
• Bread
• Salad stuff

The idea behind the recipe that I skimmed enough to decide that I didn't really need it, was that you start the meat cooking, add the celery, onions and garlic for a bit, then the wine til it's reduced by half. Then slog in the milk and cook those things together slowly for about ten minutes before adding the basil, tomatoes, puree and seasoning to taste. The milk tenderises the meat, apparently. I've got to admit that I was extremely sceptical at this point. It just didn't seem right to reunite the milk and the meat we'd worked so hard to separate from each other in the first place.

Anyway, that done, I layered that bad boy up with some lasagne pasta, white cheese mix (parsley, ricotta, egg yolk, sour cream and 'grated Italian hard cheese'), my milky bolognese and mozzarella cheese (leftover from pizza night last Friday). 20 minutes and 180 degrees later, I had pretty much the best looking and best tasting lasagne I've ever had. And, as lasagne and pizza always is... it was even better today.

Thanks bro! And thanks to the interweb for convincing me he wasn't speaking out of his ass...