February: Harissa Bolognese

Just had dinner party number two last night! For the past few years, Nick has made me a lasagna on Valentine's Day (an incredibly romantic, if not fattening tradition, as then we eat lasagna all week). When I found a lasagna-esque recipe in the Times a few weeks before Valentine's Day, I sent it to him and suggested it might make a good dinner for us. Not content to let me creative direct his one dinner of the year, Nick decided to go his own way following last year's sausage and peppers lasagna with another creation all his own featuring not one, but two types of sausage, kale, green pepper, and several onions. And I have to give it to him, it was awesome — a total flavor bomb.

Nick’s Valentine’s Day lasagna. In February, it’s basically Garfield’s dream house over here.

With the recipe from the Times still on my mind, I decided I'd share this Valentine's Day tradition with our friends and make them lasagna too. With the main dish locked, I struggled a little to think about what else would work with it. The recipe was sort of throwing me for a loop — the harissa, cumin, and coriander were making me think Middle Eastern flavors, but everything else in the recipe felt Italian, and without having tasted it, I couldn't be sure which taste was going to win out. After much agonizing and poring through of cookbooks, I decided to let the spices guide me and I leaned hard into Middle Eastern flavors. 

The week before the dinner party, I was struck down with some of sort of tonsillitis/flu situation and the only fever I can remember from my grownup life, and it was under these conditions that I placed my FreshDirect order. 

I woke up late yesterday morning, knowing I still needed to pick up a few ingredients (manicotti were super difficult to find) as well as some hors d’oeuvres and a dessert (I decided not to bake this time around after last month's cookie crumbs, but I'll be back at it in March, I promise). So I was already little behind schedule when I finally started to cook. I made Smitten Kitchen's Fall-Toush salad first — I kept all of the ingredients separate until everyone arrived, and I thought it turned out really well. I had to go to a few stores to find sumac, but I think it was worth it — it added a cool citrusy flavor. Then I moved on to an Ottolenghi recipe I found after googling "Ottolenghi roasted carrots" — I mean, I figured the man had to have at least one, and I found a great recipe for honey roasted carrots with a tahini yogurt sauce. The recipe asks you to cut the carrots into batons and I made the mistake of making some of mine way too thin. I could smell them burning well before the timer went off, and when I pulled them out of the oven, the majority had turned into coal. I salvaged what I could, but there were not enough left to feed 9 people. You'll recognize this move from last month, but that's when I panic texted Nick who was at the gym (conveniently located across the street from an amazing prepared foods store) and asked him to look for roast carrots.

Typos, or it didn’t happen.

They had them! And honey roasted ones! They were of course cut differently than mine, but it really felt like a small dinner party miracle. 

Then I moved on to the "lasagna," another Ottolenghi recipe. I was doubling that recipe as well, and as soon as I started to get the ingredients out I realized I'd feverishly Fresh Directed in haste. I was short 1 pound of beef, probably half of the harissa paste the recipe called for, and I was just about to run out of cumin. I pored through the freezer looking for ground beef, stared at one of the leftover spicy Italian sausages from Nick's lasagna, and debated texting Nick again asking if he could also pick up the missing ingredients. In a very unlike me move, I decided to just go with what I had — I threw the sausage in with the other meats, blitzed up some whole cumin seeds, and hoped for the best. And even without all the ingredients, it was awesome to watch this recipe come together — you basically cook a bolognese in the oven, and then cook the noodles (broken manicotti) in the sauce back in the oven. It definitely turned out a little more liquidy than I think it would have with the right amount of meat, but it was insanely delicious (and felt like magic in the same way Martha Stewart's one-pot pasta does).

When everyone arrived, I was still working on the lasagna (and sweating profusely with the oven turned way up). And despite having stuffed grape leaves, three types of olives, tzatziki, and baba ghanoush with pita out for people, everyone still seemed to want to congregate at the kitchen door and chat while I frantically chopped parsley. Finally, both lasagnas back in the oven, I swapped my sweater for a t-shirt and joined the group. 

I am not lying when I tell you this is an actual candid photo.

All in all, the food was great and the company was even better. Nick even admitted he was over his lasagna, and preferred this one! We polished off a few bottles of wine and ended the night with a lemon tart (that I bought, but still). Two of the greatest conversation topics that popped up — what’s the most illegal thing you've ever done (customs is not optional) and what's your least popular opinion (don't get me started on the sound in Roma). 

Rundown:

One-pan pasta with harissa bolognese (I made two of these and we ate about 1.5, as a group of 9)

Fall-toush salad (I doubled this recipe and used butternut squash instead of delicata, there was basically none left over)

Honey-roasted carrots with tahini (I tried to double this recipe, but you know the story…also, I put the tahini yogurt sauce ingredients in the food processor because my tahini was really hard, and it came out super smooth)

Butter leaf lettuce with chives, dill, and feta plus lemon, olive, oil and salt

1 store-bought lemon tart