Lasagne
This recipe looks very generic - printed from somewhere and cut and pasted onto an index card. It even repeats a couple of lines on the front and back. And I'm pretty sure lasagne should be spelled with an "a" at the end in place of the "e". There was an omission on the ingredient list and my mom hand wrote "tomato sauce". But WOW! was this good! Maybe this is the recipe that she always used and that's why it tastes so good to me. Seriously, I usually ad-lib lasagna but never again. This will be my go-to recipe. It is the perfect balance of noodle, meat and cheese with a perfect blend of spices. Of course, I made a non-cheese version for the non-cheese eater and his was sort of dry.
Good think I like math because this recipe was a constant conversion process since I did not need two 13x9x2 inch pans for only 3 of us. So I cut the recipe down to 1/4 and then that I split into 2 pans (one omitting the cheese). I love the Portuguese word for putting together a lasagne - "montar". Whenever I make lasagne I almost always make it ahead of time, as I did with this recipe. Sunday "eu montei a lasagna" and Monday I called home from working and told them to put the lasagna in the oven which I had pre-programmed to pre-heat.
I didn't measure my onion but aimed for 1/2 cup. I needed 1/2 clove of garlic and since I buy the pre-minced jars and 1 tsp is 1 clove I used 1/2 tsp. and threw it on top of the chopped onions until I was ready to cook the meat. I didn't see the point of buying whole canned tomatoes and breaking them up so I just used a can of diced tomatoes (with built in Italian seasoning - I did not adjust my seasoning though). I might use petite diced next time as these were a little large for a sauce, I thought. I had a jar of basil in the spice rack I inherited from my mom. It has individual jars that screw into lids permanently affixed to a wheel. I don't know if it was crushed basil but it was flaky. I used ground oregano because we are not really fans of the oregano spines getting stuck in our teeth.
My 16 oz box of lasagna noodles had 18 noodle sheets. 18 divided by 4 is 4 1/2 but I didn't want to break a dry noodle because I doubted it would break cleanly so I just used 5 whole noodles. I wound up with about half a noodle left over and promptly beat my husband with it because he teases me based on a story I once told him about my childhood. My sister used to threaten to hang me by my toes from the closet and beat me with a wet noodle. I swear, I was in my late 30s and married to my husband before I really stopped to imagine that the beating with a wet noodle was really no threat at all. (Hanging by the toes probably more so but it was always the noodle part that got me scared.)
I tried to break up these chunky tomatoes with the spoon a bit.
It seemed like it was going to be too dry but the tomato sauce made it okay.
Since the recipe specified "well-drained" I placed them on a tea towel (very thin cotton, usually white) that I use to cover cakes if they are still cooling when I am ready for bed. This particular towel was a gift from my friend Cory Brunet. She added an applique and embroidered around it on the other side.
I think my problem with ad-lib lasagna is I use too many noodles. I was surprised that this recipe only has 2 noodle layers. The bigger pan was my cheese pan since there are 2 cheese eaters. I put the noodle in, sliced the end off, and put the end in the other pan. I cut a small piece to fill in the middle of the small pan.
1st layer complete - getting the cottage cheese evenly distributed over the mozzarella was little challenging. The recipe calls for "creamed" cottage cheese - I don't really know if that's different than regular cottage cheese but I just used regular straight out of the carton.
Ready for the oven (after it refrigerates overnight because I worked ahead.)
Comments
Post a Comment