The Story
Lasagna is kind of ugly.
Lasagna (or apparently, lasagne) is very easy to make, and I guess I could make this post more "exciting"by making my own sauce, but alas, I was lazy yesterday, and Mina requested a lasagna recipe. Additionally, my brother is moving to New Jersey and will be living alone, so this is a basic recipe for him to reference when he has to start cooking for himself regularly. But, the pictures in this post are super boring.
Also, while I wouldn't describe myself as a super-healthy cook (I love butter, and olive oil, and cheese, and carbs, and the word "paleo" makes me involuntarily scrunch up my face and make gagging noises- sorry!), I always try to ensure that my food isn't devoid of nutritional content, so I did add spinach and onions to this recipe, and only used 3 layers of noodles to avoid making this dish too pasta-heavy.
The Food
STEP ONE: Vegetable prep. Defrost a 10 ounce box of frozen chopped spinach according to the directions on the box (remove from paper box, microwave for 3.5 minutes in a microwave-safe bowl, stir, and microwave for another 3.5 minutes). When it's done, try to drain off the excess water and set the spinach aside while preparing the sausage layer. While the spinach is in the microwave, finely chop half of one medium-sized sweet onion, and mince two cloves of garlic.
STEP TWO: Make sausage sauce. Saute the onion and garlic in one tablespoon of olive oil over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. Take a package (one pound) of bulk hot Italian sausage and add it to the pan (I used bulk so I didn't have to deal with the super icky task of removing the sausage from the casing, but sausage in casing would work fine as long as you remove the casing). You could also just use ground meat instead of sausage. Or, if you're a vegetarian, you could scramble soft tofu in with the onion and garlic. Or, if you really want to increase the healthiness of this dish, you could use mushrooms (any kind will do, but I prefer portobello or baby bella) in place of meat.
Ewww, bulk sausage.
Add a little bit of salt and pepper (about 1/2 a teaspoon and a 1/4 of a teaspoon, respectively), and red pepper flakes if you want more heat, and cook the sausage until it seems thoroughly browned, taking care to break it up during cooking. If you are using regular ground meat, or tofu, or mushrooms, add more salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes to taste, and also add in some oregano and basil.
Browned sausage.
When the sausage is cooked through, add an entire jar of tomato sauce (I used Barilla Tomato-Basil), mix it in, cook it for about two minutes, then turn off the heat and let it sit while you prepare the cheese layers.
Sausage sauce.
STEP THREE: Prepare cheese layers. Shred about 3 cups of mozzarella cheese (you can use whole milk or part skim- I used part skim- and it took about 2/3 of a 16 ounce/ 1 pound block).
Mounds of shredded mozzarella.
Take the slightly cooled spinach, and add 3 large eggs (the spinach needs to cool so its heat doesn't cook the eggs). Mix well.
Eggs and spinach.
Next, add about 1 pound of either whole milk or part skim ricotta (I used part skim), 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt (my brother likes things salty), 1/2 teaspoon pepper, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, 2 teaspoons oregano, and 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons of dried sweet basil (regular dried basil or fresh basil wold also work, but I had dried sweet basil from my mom's garden on hand).
Pre-addition of herbs, but seriously, doesn't ricotta look like ice cream?
Mix well.
Also, this looks like spinach artichoke dip.
STEP FOUR: Assemble. First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Then, stir the sausage sauce, and spread a very thin layer (just so the noodles don't stick) in the bottom of a large glass baking pan (9" x 13"). I used about 1/6 of the sauce.
Thin layer of sauce to prevent the noodles from sticking.
Next add a layer of oven-ready noodles (or, if you want, boil and cool non-oven-ready lasagna noodles according the package directions, and use those, but again, I am lazy). I had to break some to fill the pan.
Broken noodles look messy, but it will be fine once everything is baked.
Spread half of the spinach-herb-ricotta mix over the lasagna noodles. Use a spoon to spread it out evenly.
Herbed spinach ricotta layer.
Top the ricotta mix with a layer of the sausage sauce. Use about 2/5 of what is left. Spread out evenly.
Sausage sauce layer
Top with about 1 cup of the cheese.
Cheese.
Add another layer of lasagna noodles, and repeat: ricotta, then sausage sauce (about 2/3 of what is left), then a cup of mozzarella cheese, then a final layer of lasagna noodles. Top the final layer of lasagna noodles with what is left of the sausage sauce- you want to make sure all of the noodles are "wet" so that they don't turn hard and dry during the baking process. If you don't have enough sausage sauce to cover all of the noodles, open another jar of sauce and use some of that. Top the sauce with the remaining one cup of mozzarella, and sprinkle with about 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese (I use the stuff in the green container, but you could use legit shredded parmesan).
Fully assembled: I belatedly realized this looks almost exactly like the "Cheese!" photo above, but maybe you can tell that the pan is totally filled with lasagna components?
STEP FIVE: Bake. Cover the baking dish with foil, taking care to "tent" it a little so that the foil doesn't touch the cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove the foil, and bake uncovered for another 10 minutes at 350 degrees. Let it cool for a couple of minutes, and enjoy.
Eat it.
P.S. Mina- I owe you a pie dough post as well. Coming soon!
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