Lasagna

Thursday's dinner was rich and classic Italian.  We had:


Caesar salad
This was my least favorite of the salads we've served so far.  Caesar isn't very exciting to start with.  The croutons we'd made out of the homemade focaccia were a little stale -- if we'd tested them earlier we could've crisped them in the oven, but we were doing the salad last-minute.  We dressed it with roughly equal parts lemon and olive oil, with a lot of smashed garlic and salt and pepper in there.

Broccoli
A repeat from earlier this week, since the guests had all rotated out.

Lasagna - One meaty, one veggie
From this recipe.  We also made a veggie version of the sauce by adding olive oil for sauteeing and not putting any meat.  Then we sauteed some zucchini and yellow summer squash with olive oil and wilted onion and garlic, and layered that in to the veggie lasagna.  It was a big hit!

Garlic bread
This was not my proudest bread.  I followed the recipe for French bread from the Reinhart book.  I even started the day before to make a paté de whatever, and refrigerated it overnight.  Although I had to hurry along the rising time a bit on Thursday itself, things were still going fine.  I prepared the oven with baking tiles and a pan for water, so that I could get really nice crusts.  Then I slid in the loaves and splashed water all over the place, figuring that if a little water every 30 seconds was good, then a hearty amount of water every 30 seconds would be even better.  Unfortunately, as we learned in our post-game analysis, my water splashing managed to extinguish the pilot light, and make the oven stop heating.  So the bread baked very slowly, and not very well.  Lesson learned!  I will go easier on the water-splashing next time.  It still worked out and came out to be an all right garlic bread.

Chocolate mousse

From this recipe.  This was delicious!  We served them up fancy, with whipped cream, strawberries, and grated chocolate.  The mousse itself was very rich and chocolatey.