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yendiFor years, Lasagna was about the only kind of pasta I didn't like. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shadesong was baffled by this, since I love pasta, meat, cheese, and tomato sauce. There were two problems: First, I'm simply not a fan of the long, flat noodles, which seem to be the worst form of pasta in terms of the texture/flavor ration. Second, every lasagna I'd tried was a crappy one built around the noodle as the primary ingredient (see this image for a typical one). These monstrosities were over 50% noodle, and sometimes had five or six layers of noodles in them. They were nasty, and I thought that's what a lasagna was supposed to be.
Fuck no.
Once I discovered the truth, that the noodles in a good lasagna exist solely for the purpose of providing a minimal structure to transport oodles of cheese and meat (with some sauce attached), I realized how good a lasagna could be. It's also surprisingly easy to make, and like making a cake, has the advantage of usually providing some yummy prep-leftovers. I made it again last night for Mother's Day, and am still feeling kind of full the day after.
Here's my recipe, modified from a few I'd found in books and online. Note that I make it gluten-free, since 'song has celiac disease, but no one who's ever set foot in our house has ever complained about it; as I said, the pasta's the least important part, and if you're tasting the pasta in a lasagna, you're probably eating a crappy lasagna:
Ingredients:
1 package gluten-free lasagna noodles (or any lasagna noodles that don't need to be boiled/soaked first).
1 65-ounce jar of Prego Pasta Sauce With Meat. You're welcome to make your own sauce, of course, but I'm a fan of not doing work when I don't have to. You'll still be modifying this so that the ratio of meat to sauce reaches a more acceptable level, anyway.
1 container (usually 1.75 cups) low-fat ricotta cheese (regular-fat will work just fine of course, but the low fat stuff doesn't lose much flavor)
2 cups low fat, small curd cottage cheese (small curd is more important than low fat, if you're wondering).
1 1-lb ounce package (or two 8-oz packages) mixed, shredded Italian cheese. I'm partial to the six-cheese mix from Sargento. Do NOT use low-fat cheese here.
1.5-two pounds of ground beef (from my chili-making, I'm guessing you could sub ground turkey easily enough, and probably other meats, too; I'm less certain about a veggie lasagna.)
1 large yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, minced
salt, pepper, anise
First mix the ricotta and cottage cheese together in a bowl.
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Start by sautéing the onions until they're somewhere in the soft/brown range. I usually use olive oil here. Then throw in the garlic and sauté for another minute or so. Add the ground beef and sauté until it's all browned and mixed in with the onions and garlic. Turn off the heat (and if you're stuck with a fucking electric stove like I am, remove the pan from the burner), then pour in the sauce and stir. The residual heat will warm it up just fine. Season with salt, pepper, and anise/fennel to taste.
Now, take a 9X12 pan and ladle in enough sauce to cover the bottom of the pan. Then cover with a layer of noodles (you'll probably need three full ones, and one partial one to go horizontally across the top). Take the ricotta/cottage mix and spread thickly on all of the noodles (I try to make it thick enough to make the noodles invisible). Then ladle in sauce to cover the cheese (again, thick enough to cover it up). Then layer in noodles, and repeat. You might get a whopping three layers of noodles if your dish is deep. Do NOT, for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, overfill your dish.
Once you're done (the top layer should be a sauce layer), sprinkle the shredded cheese on. I go for a thick layer of cheese, and it usually ends up being about 10-13 ounces of the stuff. Then cover the dish in foil and place in the oven for an hour. If you've got any leftover sauce or cheese mix, eat these; it's the savory equivalent of eating cake batter.
After that, take it out, take the foil off, and let it sit for about fifteen minutes; at this point, it's bordering on soup, and you should give it time to set. In the meantime, take advantage of the melted cheese and possibly slightly crisp that's stuck to the foil. Melted cheese is yummy, and you shouldn't let any go to waste.
Finally, eat! We usually put ours in bowls, not on plates, as things will get messy otherwise. Makes a decent number of servings. Let's call it ten, unless I'm there, in which case it's more like six.
shadesong was baffled by this, since I love pasta, meat, cheese, and tomato sauce. There were two problems: First, I'm simply not a fan of the long, flat noodles, which seem to be the worst form of pasta in terms of the texture/flavor ration. Second, every lasagna I'd tried was a crappy one built around the noodle as the primary ingredient (see this image for a typical one). These monstrosities were over 50% noodle, and sometimes had five or six layers of noodles in them. They were nasty, and I thought that's what a lasagna was supposed to be.Fuck no.
Once I discovered the truth, that the noodles in a good lasagna exist solely for the purpose of providing a minimal structure to transport oodles of cheese and meat (with some sauce attached), I realized how good a lasagna could be. It's also surprisingly easy to make, and like making a cake, has the advantage of usually providing some yummy prep-leftovers. I made it again last night for Mother's Day, and am still feeling kind of full the day after.
Here's my recipe, modified from a few I'd found in books and online. Note that I make it gluten-free, since 'song has celiac disease, but no one who's ever set foot in our house has ever complained about it; as I said, the pasta's the least important part, and if you're tasting the pasta in a lasagna, you're probably eating a crappy lasagna:
Ingredients:
1 package gluten-free lasagna noodles (or any lasagna noodles that don't need to be boiled/soaked first).
1 65-ounce jar of Prego Pasta Sauce With Meat. You're welcome to make your own sauce, of course, but I'm a fan of not doing work when I don't have to. You'll still be modifying this so that the ratio of meat to sauce reaches a more acceptable level, anyway.
1 container (usually 1.75 cups) low-fat ricotta cheese (regular-fat will work just fine of course, but the low fat stuff doesn't lose much flavor)
2 cups low fat, small curd cottage cheese (small curd is more important than low fat, if you're wondering).
1 1-lb ounce package (or two 8-oz packages) mixed, shredded Italian cheese. I'm partial to the six-cheese mix from Sargento. Do NOT use low-fat cheese here.
1.5-two pounds of ground beef (from my chili-making, I'm guessing you could sub ground turkey easily enough, and probably other meats, too; I'm less certain about a veggie lasagna.)
1 large yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, minced
salt, pepper, anise
First mix the ricotta and cottage cheese together in a bowl.
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
Start by sautéing the onions until they're somewhere in the soft/brown range. I usually use olive oil here. Then throw in the garlic and sauté for another minute or so. Add the ground beef and sauté until it's all browned and mixed in with the onions and garlic. Turn off the heat (and if you're stuck with a fucking electric stove like I am, remove the pan from the burner), then pour in the sauce and stir. The residual heat will warm it up just fine. Season with salt, pepper, and anise/fennel to taste.
Now, take a 9X12 pan and ladle in enough sauce to cover the bottom of the pan. Then cover with a layer of noodles (you'll probably need three full ones, and one partial one to go horizontally across the top). Take the ricotta/cottage mix and spread thickly on all of the noodles (I try to make it thick enough to make the noodles invisible). Then ladle in sauce to cover the cheese (again, thick enough to cover it up). Then layer in noodles, and repeat. You might get a whopping three layers of noodles if your dish is deep. Do NOT, for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, overfill your dish.
Once you're done (the top layer should be a sauce layer), sprinkle the shredded cheese on. I go for a thick layer of cheese, and it usually ends up being about 10-13 ounces of the stuff. Then cover the dish in foil and place in the oven for an hour. If you've got any leftover sauce or cheese mix, eat these; it's the savory equivalent of eating cake batter.
After that, take it out, take the foil off, and let it sit for about fifteen minutes; at this point, it's bordering on soup, and you should give it time to set. In the meantime, take advantage of the melted cheese and possibly slightly crisp that's stuck to the foil. Melted cheese is yummy, and you shouldn't let any go to waste.
Finally, eat! We usually put ours in bowls, not on plates, as things will get messy otherwise. Makes a decent number of servings. Let's call it ten, unless I'm there, in which case it's more like six.
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(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-13 05:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-05-13 06:13 pm (UTC)I ♥ lasagna, but I can't stand the "no boil" noodles. The consistency is just...ick.
psst: bowls. Not bowels.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-13 06:19 pm (UTC)Yeah, noticed the typo. D'oh! Although after eating too much, that spelling might come into play, too.
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Date: 2013-05-13 07:01 pm (UTC)I can vouch for a veggie version, as keeping kosher means I've never had a meat lasagna and will never make one, unless we use veggie cheese, and I think that's weirder than using veggie meat. You can make a fake-meat sauce with your favorite meat substitute; Veggie Ground Round is dandy. Mixed diced mushrooms could be another easy substitute, LOTS of mushrooms. You could also skip the meat altogether and use a layer of sauteed veggies of many sorts. I've sliced zucchini in thin strips and used that for a layer; you might want to pre-cook those a little (steam, lightly broil) so they're soft first if they're not very thin.
I've even made a fish lasagna, which was weird and wonderful. Thinly sliced salmon, julienned carrots/zucc/onion sauteed, and cheese, no tomato sauce. Lasagna can be like salad: it's the concept of how it's put together, not specific ingredients. (Even though my husband says lasagna MUST BE meat and cheese and sauce and what I make is ... something else he eats with resignation but of course he loves everything I make.)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-13 09:31 pm (UTC)I'm intrigued by the fish one, as salmon remains one of my favorite foods on the planet.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-05-13 10:03 pm (UTC)1st layer: white sauce
2nd: noodles
3rd: veggies of choice, julienned and sauteed
4th: thin slices of salmon to cover the whole thing!
5th: white sauce to cover, then repeat layers. I like to have a layer of noodles at the top, then little bit more sauce for wetness, then shredded cheese. Very little noodle, lots of taste. If you have a deep enough pan, add more layers.
I wrote it up...
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