More Lasagna I Say!!

Tonight was quite the successful dinner if I do say so myself. I made Classic Italian Lasagna...with a few tweaks of course. But it did come out great! We had a roommate dinner tonight and the lasagna was my contribution and THIS is how I did it.

I started by cooking the lasagna noodles. Fortunately I had a pot that was big enough to fit the noodles (believe me, this was a big concern. I was actually thinking about it all day). I had to cook them until ALMOST al dente, or approximately six minutes. I went for the six minutes because I'm not really sure what point is close enough to al dente. After they were at this point, I drained them, rinsed them with cold water, and covered them with a damp paper towel. Giada says to cook them in the water with some vegetable oil so they don't stick together, but my mother told me long ago not to do that since NOTHING will stick to them afterward. Lasagna has a hard enough time staying together, I didn't want to make it anymore difficult.

After the pasta had been transferred to a different bowl, I used my colander to strain my spinach. Spinach is a pain to strain (no rhyme intended). I had to push out the water by using another bowl on top of it which dirtied another dish. Anyway, next, I browned the ground beef.

Whenever I have to defrost a frozen item, I try to be a good little chef and put it in the fridge to thaw. However, this takes an eternity. So my meat was still slightly frozen when I threw it in the hot pan. This concerned me a bit, but hot pans have a way of defrosting things quite quickly, and all was fine.

The next step after the meat was browned was mixing the ricotta with some eggs. This step would have been less difficult if I had used a bigger bowl. I had to whisk the mixture VERY carefully rather than my usual vigorous method.

And now, for the assembly!! The lasagna was supposed to be assembled in a 13 x 9 pan, but I only have an 8 x 8. Needless to say, this was a tightly packed lasagna. I started by putting some marinara sauce (which I had made the night before. It may have been my best batch yet) in the bottom of a dish that was sprayed with canola spray. I then put about four noodles over this. Next came the ricotta mixture topped with the spinach. After that I layered more noodles and topped that with the ground beef and more marinara sauce. Then came some mozzarella cheese and more noodles topped with the last of the marinara. The very top was more mozzarella and a bit of Parmesan.

I brought this concoction up to the kitchen (because after the raw potato casserole incident, I wasn't about to take any chances) and baked it for about 45 minutes. Some other residents shared the oven and I think they had some sort of lasagna too. The kitchen smelled like melted mozzarella and you really can't go wrong with that.

After it was done, I brought it back down to the room to serve with some salad and appetizers. I definitely enjoyed it and my roommate told me it was really good. Not too bad for my first shot at making lasagna!

I probably won't be cooking for the first part of next week since I have finals and I don't want to buy too much food before going on Christmas break. I will try to make up for lost time once I'm home the second part of the week (and this time, I promise I WILL actually cook while home!) Check back in about a week :)