What's Cooking Wednesday - Lasagna

You know how everybody has their" thing"? It's what you would bring to a potluck or any other social gathering. It's your most requested recipe. For example Yoles = lemon squares; Grandma Linda = macaroni salad, Robin = mexican pizza, Mom = dessert. Well my thing is lasagna. Actually I have quite a few things... pumperknickel bread, broccoli salad, cheese buns... but lasagna is by far my best one. I think anyway. It's my "company dish". This isn't a recipe I got from any cookbook, just what I've come up with over time with trial and error. Mike's always telling me I should write it out. I think he's afriad I might forget how to make it one day. I've never written an orginal recipe before so please excuse me if my instructions don't make sense.

My neighbour did a really incredible ROAK for me the other day and as a thank you I thought I'd make her a lasagna. Well I knew all that bragging about organized meal planning and shopping would come back to bite me in the ass. As I began to assemble my lasagna I realized I had no lasagna noodles. How the hell do you do that? I still have no idea, but I did manage to do it. So my impressive lasagna turned into baked pasta with cheese and it did not go over to the neighbours. Like I said, lasagna is my thing, and I could not send a sub-par lasagna. So armed with my shopping list I managed to ick up all necessary ingredients again this week and managed to put together a very impressive lasagna.

Lasagna



1 lb ground beef
2 cups sliced mushrooms
2 cans/jars spaghetti sauce
1 small can tomato paste
1 (19 oz) can stewed tomatoes
600g mozzarella cheese, grated
2 (500 g) tubs of ricotta cheese, extra smooth
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1 tsp garlic powder
1 box oven ready lasagna noodles

1. Brown ground beef and mushrooms in a large pot. Drain fat. Add tomato paste and stir until blended. Add stewed tomatoes and tomato sauce. Stir and set aside.

2. In a medium sized bowl mix ricotta with 1/2 the grated cheese, parmesan and garlic powder.

3. In two oblong baking dishes (9X13 or smaller) layer the ingredients as such;
a) Place a bit of the sauce on the bottom of the pan.
b) Place three oven ready noodles in a row on top of sauce.
c) Spread 1/4 of the cheese mixture on top of the noodles.
d) Cover with a two ladles of sauce.
e) repeat a - d one more time.
f) Place one more layer of noodles on top. Cover with remaining sauce, top with remaining cheese.

Bake at 350 for 1 hour.

What we would/did change: Well it's my recipe so there's not much I would change, but it does allow for creativity. If you'd like you could add onion, green pepper zucchini or anything else to the sauce. The last two times I have subsitituted ground chicken for the ground beef. Mike didn't even notice the difference. To cut down on costs I have occaisionally switched one or both tubs of ricotta for cottage cheese. The great thing about this recipe is it makes two pans. It's great for a larger gathering or eat one that night and freeze the other for a future meal. Sometimes the second pan I will cut into pieces and freeze them individually in ziploc bags. They're great for lunches.

Score 5 stars