Saturday, October 29, 2011

Classic sausage lasagna with only some cheating





Sorry for the long break. I was busy reading Game of Thrones, which is totally exasperating me, because it is roughly 1,000,000 pages long, I really need to know what happens with all 500,000 characters, I don't seem to be making a dent in it and yet I cannot put it down. But I digress.
Before the move I promised to give you a classic lasagna recipe. It still involves a little cheating. Sorry. If you want a recipe for great marinara you can look at Giada DeLaurentiis' recipe, which is not complicated and very tasty. If you want a recipe using fresh tomatoes, you are on the wrong site and I wish you well with your copious free time.  I use jarred for the most part. Yes, jarred is a little too salty sometimes, but life isn't perfect and the lasagna still tastes great.  The other cheating aspect is that I use so much sauce and cover the pan for a while in the oven, so you don't need to pre-boil the noodles.

You'll need:
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 lb of Italian sweet sausage, casing removed (I LOVE hot in this recipe, but for kids I recommend sweet.)
5 cups marinara sauce (This is about 1 cup more than an average jar. Sorry.)
1 15 oz container ricotta (You can use either part-skim or full fat. I don't know about fat free.)
10 oz package frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed out
1 egg
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried oregano
9 uncooked lasagna noodles
3 cups pre-shredded mozzarella or provolone, or a mix (again, part skim mozzarella works fine)
1 cup parmesan cheese

Heat the olive oil in a very large skillet over medium heat. Add the sausage and mash up with a fork to break up the meat, sautéing it until browning, which takes about 7 minutes.  (This can be tricky. Sometimes I brown it a bit and then chop it up fine on a cutting board and then put it back in the pan.) Add the sauce, and simmer a few minutes.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
In a small bowl, break the egg and whisk it a bit (kids love to do this). Then add the ricotta, spinach, basil and oregano, and 1/2 cup parmesan in the egg and mix well. Now you are going to make 3 levels of lasagna. Layer 1: Take the sauce and put 1 cup over the bottom of a 13x9 glass baking dish. Make a single layer of lasagna noodles over the sauce (should be 3 noodles).
Layer 2: Take another cup of sauce, and spoon it over the noodles. Make sure they are covered with sauce. Now spread 1 cup of the ricotta mixture, and sprinkle one cup mozzarella and about 1/4 cup parmesan over the top. (This will be messy. It's okay if the sauce and cheese gets mixed up a little bit.
Layer 3: Repeat Layer 2.
Top of the lasagna: For the top,  first add one cup of the sauce over the noodles. I always seem to have a little ricotta left, so I just dollop the remaining ricotta on top. It looks like little ricotta islands.  and sprinkle the remaining mozzarella and parmesan. Use remaining sauce to cover all remaining exposed noodles. Cover the whole dish with foil, and put into the hot oven. Bake for about 50 minutes, then take cover off and bake for about 20 more.
You can make this a day before and reheat in a 350 if you cover with foil,but it takes about 40 minutes. You can also just microwave it.
And now as I finish up this post, it is suddenly snowing. WHAT? It's October 29!!!
Enjoy your hot lasagna..... Christina
P.S. If this was all just a little too complicated for you, check out my post called "Lasagna for Cheaters"

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