Lasagna!

Great segue from my last post - Saturday afternoon I made us a big pan of lasagna. One of my New Year's resolution is to cook at home as much as possible. Lasagna is a great way to do this, as it makes for lots of yummy leftovers for the rest of the week.

I used my LC large roaster and followed Pioneer Woman's lasagna recipe. Now for those of you who haven't tried it, you just must. It is truly one of the best tasting lasagna recipes in the world. It's amazing how the addition of spicy breakfast sausage and the roasting of the tomatoes adds wonderful flavor to the dish. As a Midwesterner, for years my lasagna was always made with just ground beef and sauce from a jar. But, after living in the Northeast for the past 9 years, with all the Italian influences around (I'm guessing 60% of our all local restaurants are Italian!), my old recipe just seemed too bland. I had started substituting sliced meatballs into my recipe, but that is a costly and time-consuming option. Good yes, but not ideal, as the meatballs came from an Italian grocery in Utica! Maybe someday I'll perfect my own meatball recipe, but that's another post....

Please do give PW's (or P-Dub as she calls herself!) recipe a try - you won't be sorry. I make a few modifications when I make it - I cut the ground beef back to just a pound, and I don't pre-cook my noodles, but do add about 12 oz. of water to my sauce to make more liquid to cook the noodles while baking in the oven. No-boil noodles are a bit too wimpy for this recipe - all this meatiness calls for the robustness of a regular lasagna noodle. Red wine might actually be a nice addition to the sauce as well - I think I'll try that the next time I make this. I also increase the amount of the cottage cheese layer to 4 cups, to balance out the meatiness. If you are a purist, by all means use ricotta cheese instead - it's not my favorite, so I stick with small curd cottage cheese.

My LC pan is extra large, so this full recipe fits well. I found it to be too much volume for a regular 'ole 13x9" pan, so if that is what you have, save some of your sauce for another baked dish. The wonderful flavor of this dish comes from the roasting of the tomatoes in the sauce, so you'll be disappointed if you just try using the sauce over pasta - it tastes totally different if not baked.

Mmm, the lasagna leftovers are so yummy!