Filed under: Pastas & Sauces
I’m branching out. Not so much in terms of cooking, but in terms of making new friends. It’s exciting stuff. This past week, I learned I have a common interest in cooking and baking with Cyp. Cyp is quite the maker of desserts. So we decided to do dinner. He’d make dessert, I’d handle the rest. This plan went down last night and I must say it was pretty successful. Seven of us gathered around my dining room table and feasted on venison lasagna, roasted vegetable lasagna, french bread, Cesar salad, and Cyp’s chocolate torte with vanilla ice cream. Dessert was, in a word, awesome. Dinner was pretty good to. I swear, one of these days I’ll start taking pictures. I don’t know what’s going on with me, but I seem to be dropping everything in the kitchen. Things just haven’t been going right. Which is pretty disconcerting. It’s usually the one place I can count on for consistency. So instead of trying some new, fun dish, I stuck to an old standard with a twist: lasagna, which i could make blindfolded, but with venison instead of a mixture of beef, pork, and veal. The french bread was an interesting endeavor. It tasted fine, but every step along the way, it just seemed wrong. We polished off the first loaf, but I ruined the second one by dropping a lot of the vegetable lasagna on the bread. Remember I said I was dropping stuff? This was just step one of the mess of dropping things all over my kitchen. Anyway, the venison lasagna was really tasty, but the noodles seemed overcooked or something. Tasty nonetheless. It’s great for feeding a crowd, it’s easy to make, and people always think you put a lot more effort in than you actually did. Sounds perfect to me!
Lasagna
1 lb. lasagna noodles, cooked al dente
Olive oil/olive oil spray
1.5-2 lbs. of meat (venison, pork, beef, veal, or any combination of those)
1 medium onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
Salt, pepper, and your favorite Italian seasonings
2 large jars of tomato sauce (this is way easier than making your own, but if you want to make it, you probably need about 8-10 cups), reserve 1 cup of the sauce
1 lb. ricotta cheese
3 cups shredded mozzarella
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Lightly coat a large sauce pan with olive oil and brown the meat, onions, and garlic. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and other favorite Italian seasonings like oregano or red pepper flakes (or just use some Italian seasoning!). When the meat is cooked through, add the majority of the tomato sauce.
3. Time to layer the lasagna. In a lasagna pan or a 9×13 baking dish, pour the 1 cup of reserved tomato sauce. Put down a layer of the lasagna noodles, so that they overlap slightly. Spread 1/2 of the ricotta on the noodles. Pour a little more than 1/3 of the meat sauce evenly over the ricotta. Sprinkle 1/3 of the mozzarella cheese on the sauce.
4. Repeat the pasta, ricotta, sauce, and cheese layer.
5. Add a third layer of pasta. Top with the remaining meat sauce and mozzarella cheese. Sprinkle the Parmesan cheese on top.
6. Cover with tin foil and put in the oven. Back for 30 minutes, then remove the foil for the remaining 20 minutes, allowing the top layers of cheese to turn slightly brown.
7. Let the lasagna sit for 10 minutes or so before cutting, otherwise the pasta and layers will fall all over the place!!
8. Serve with some good bread and a nice salad.
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
