Yes, it's been quite a while since I posted up on here...this is basically my recipe blog now, where I'm going to store some good eats for everyone to enjoy.
There are approximately 17.9 trillion lasagna recipes floating around in cyberspace, and you might be overwhelmed because of this. Don't be! The more recipes you find, the more you realize that there's no one way to make this dish. Rock it how you like it. Once you get the basic concept down, you can change around the ingredients to your heart's content, to suit the preferences of you and your loved ones.
A'ight, here we go with our lasagna recipe. We're going to lay out the ingredients in stages: Noodles, Sauce and Assembly(Assembly requires cheese. Lots and lots of cheese of many different varieties. If you're not grinning at this, you might not want to follow this blog).
First, we start making the Sauce. You will need:
@ 3# ground beef
1/2c chopped onion
4 cloves minced garlic
3 tbsp olive oil
1 28oz can crushed tomatoes
1 6oz can tomato paste
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cayenne
1 tbsp oregano
1 c water
1 bay leaf
For today's recipe, I used about 2.8lb pure ground beef, 85/15. You can use about 2lbs beef and 1lb Italian sausage, or all sausage, or however you want to make it.
Fire up your cast iron skillet, dump in a good splash of olive oil and toss in the onions and garlic. Saute that mix until the onions are soft. Add your meat, whatever it may be, and brown it. Add the next six ingredients and stir thoroughly. Crack the bay leaf and place it in the center of the pan where you can find it later. Cover and simmer for about one hour.
When 50 minutes have gone by, start making the Noodles. You'll need 12 lasagna noodles; I generally make a couple more because I always end up tearing one or two. Make them according to the directions on the package. If you can't handle that, you might not want to follow this blog. At this time, get your oven preheating to 350*.
Now we're going to perform the Assembly. ( Yay cheese! ) You will need:
16oz ricotta
7oz shredded mozzarella
8oz shredded parmesan/romano
12 provolone slices
1 pkg thinly sliced pepperoni
Grease the usual 9x13 baking dish. Throw down four noodles, layered. Pull the bay leaf out of the sauce.
Cover the noodles with a fairly light layer of sauce, and cover that with ricotta. Some folks swear by cottage cheese instead of ricotta, and that's OK. Use whatever you prefer.
Throw down four more layered noodles. Cover evenly with more sauce, mozzarella and parmesan/romano. Once again, if you find a cheese combination you prefer, use it, There's no right or wrong answer here.
Throw down the final four noodles , cover with the rest of the sauce. Then layer the provolone slices over the lasagna and layer pepperoni over them. Bake at 350* for one hour.
When it's done, let it stand for 10 minutes and serve. If you alter this to suit your own tastes, especially if you've done something most folks wouldn't consider trying....I'd like to know!
