Lasagna Verdi al Forno

        This is emphatically not your 30 minute dinner.  It is one of the great treasures of Italian cuisine.  And despite the length of time it takes, this version is not entirely labor-intensive.  A great part of the time is the slow simmering of the rich meat sauce.  It sits on the stove for 3 hours, requiring only an occasional stir and tasting to make sure its seasonings are correct.  It is even better if you let it rest overnight and allow the flavors to fully develop.  Then the next day, the assembly is actually quite speedy, as long as you have the right kind of pasta. 

Review of Resto, a Belgian restaurant on E. 29th St.

      

Restaurant Week in New York City is getting stranger and stranger.  First off, it lasted for 2 weeks before ending its run last Sunday.  When it started, the prix fixe made infinite good sense.  In the 1999, lunch cost $19.99. In 2007, it was $20.07.   Something odd happened this year because despite its being 2010, Restaurant Week’s prix fixe at lunch is now  $24.07.  But it’s always represented an opportunity to go somewhere new and try something different which is what a group of us decided to do last Friday when we met at Resto, 111 East 29th St. between Park and Lex (212-685-5585) http://www.restonyc.com/

Chicken Pot Pie

If the photos accompanying this recipe look familiar, it’s because I used the same pastry technique in my very first posting Jamie Oliver's Beef and Guinness Pie from Jamie at Home: Cook Your Way to the Good Life” (October 18,2009). But this time, I used it with that avatar of comfort food, the Chicken Pot Pie.