There is nothing better over ice cream.  Keep in mind I’m not an out-of-her-mind chocolate fan.  I like chocolate and all, but if there’s a vanilla or fruit or caramel or nut alternative, I’ll take that.

This salted caramel sauce is so, so good.  I made it to go on a turtle pie, and I’ve been consuming the leftovers steadily.  For those of you who must have chocolate, I bet this would be good alongside hot fudge sauce for a kind of one-two punch situation.

Salted Caramel Sauce

• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• 5 tablespoons butter, in pieces
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• generous pinch kosher salt

In a heavy-duty saucepan that’s bigger than what you’d think you’d need (seriously, err on the side of large), dissolve the sugar in the water over medium-high heat.  Once it’s dissolved, stop stirring.  Just let it boil, swirling the pan occasionally, and brushing down the sides now and then with a water-moistened brush.

Once the sugar is a nice medium amber, remove it from the heat.  Add the butter and stir until it’s fully melted.  Pour in the cream, watch it bubble up like crazy, and stir with a whisk until it’s smooth and uniform.  Add the kosher salt and stir some more.  Don’t lick any utensils, no matter how much you want to, because this stuff is HOT and you will regret it so deeply.

The sauce will thicken as it cools.  I suppose it will keep in the fridge for a while, though it never lasts very lost.

Last night I made my old favorite Pork with Grapes and Onions.

Tonight I’m getting a bit more ambitious and making this lasagne.  I have tomato sauce in the freezer (well, actually it’s simmering on the stove right now, but until recently it was in the freezer) from last summer’s tomato harvest, so I substituted that for the canned tomatoes and omitted the basil and salt, since those were already in the sauce.

There are a few unusual things about this recipe that I like:

• Fresh mozzarella instead of aged
• Goat cheese
• A genius technique for noodle management that involves soaking the pasta in hot tap water.  This is so much easier than boiling an enormous pot of water for the lasagne noodles, fishing them out and burning your fingers in the process.  And yet, it yields better results than any no-boil technique or product I’ve tried.

I’m hungry already.