an lasagna!

[alexseanchai]

basically what I did was glue together pieces-parts of The Pioneer Woman's veggie lasagna and what AllRecipes calls World's Best Lasagna, while taking some advice from Mashed list of mistakes everyone makes when making lasagna, and seasoning it however I pleased

I described it to Yuletide Discord cooking channel as follows:

canned diced tomatoes + tomato sauce + tomato paste
mystery freezer ground meat that we're pretty sure is sausage
onion, garlic, carrot, zucchini, whatever greens were in the spring mix box (so baby spinach plus at least three other kinds)
brown sugar, white sugar, Italian seasoning, herbes de Provence, Montreal seasoning, Healing salt blend from Inked Goddess Creations, MSG
ricotta, parmesan, egg, salt, pepper
mozzarella and more parmesan on top
and the left pan has mushrooms and the right pan has eggplant

and then it fed us for four days and was very tasty

but that does not add up to what I would call a followable recipe? so let's try and fix that:


• start Italian bread dough in bread machine
   ⁃ or don't, it'll be fine without bread on the side, but I wanted bread on the side

• brown in big pot:
   ⁃ 1–2 lb ground meat (beef and/or mild sausage)
   ⁃ diced white onion
   ⁃ minced garlic

• add however many cans of tomato products works out close to:
   ⁃ ~28 oz diced tomatoes
   ⁃ ~13 oz tomato sauce
   ⁃ ~12 oz tomato paste
   ⁃ 1/2 c water

• measure the spicing with your heart!
   ⁃ brown sugar
   ⁃ white sugar
   ⁃ Italian seasoning
   ⁃ herbes de Provence
   ⁃ Montreal seasoning
   ⁃ Healing salt blend
   ⁃ MSG

• simmer, covered, for at least an hour

• chop veggies for sauteeing; squish excess water out of any that are squishable

• next bullet point is formulated on the assumption that one person eating the results of this recipe cannot eat eggplant, another dislikes mushrooms, a third will eat either, and the cook wants to eat both

• saute veggies!
   ⁃ in another big pot, saute 1 can mushrooms; remove mushrooms to bowl
   ⁃ in that second pot, saute:
   ◦ diced carrot
   ◦ chopped zucchini
   ◦ baby spinach and/or spring mix dark green leafy veggies
   ◦ consider remembering at this stage that the white wine bought for the purpose of sauteeing lasagna veggies exists
   ⁃ move all the veggies (and wine) to the first pot
   ⁃ in the second pot, saute chopped eggplant
   ⁃ move half of the first pot to the second pot; add mushrooms to pot without eggplant

• simmer another half hour

• ricotta mix!
   ⁃ squish water out of ~15 oz ricotta (or ~30 oz, in which case double the other quantities in this bullet point)
   ⁃ mix in:
   ◦ 1 egg
   ◦ 1/4 c grated parmesan
   ◦ 1/8 tsp salt
   ◦ 1/8 tsp ground black pepper? idk less than I actually added anyway

• cook lasagna noodles according to package directions
   ⁃ rinse with cold water after draining, so as to be able to assemble the thing with your hands

• assembly! keeping track of which pan has eggplant and which has mushroom:
   ⁃ 1/2 pot meat sauce
   ⁃ 3–4 noodles
   ⁃ 1/2 ricotta mix
   ⁃ 1/2 pot meat sauce
   ⁃ 3–4 noodles
   ⁃ shredded mozzarella & grated parmesan

• bake!
   ⁃ meat lasagna recipe linked above says 375F, veggie lasagna recipe says 350F, and our new oven is a liar; setting it to 25F below what the recipe says has reliably produced good results
   ⁃ so I set the oven to 350F
   ⁃ 25 minutes while covered with aluminum foil
   ⁃ 15 minutes without foil, then check whether it's done
   ◦ the mushroom lasagna needed 20 minutes without foil
   ◦ the eggplant lasagna needed 25

• rest 15 minutes

• enjoy!

Comments

[senmut]

Congratulations!

[sithjawa]

It was super delicious!

[azurelunatic]

The gluten-mushroom-eggplant breakdown:

Alex: can't eat gluten, wants both mushroom and eggplant
Steph: can eat gluten, wants both mushroom and eggplant
Azz: can eat gluten, wants mushroom, can't eat eggplant
Silver: can eat gluten, doesn't like mushroom but can deal, meh on eggplant

So it makes sense to do the gluten free with mushroom and eggplant, gluten yes with mushroom only on the idea that Silver can deal

[azurelunatic]

Oven note from this time: the lower lasagna could have used another 5 minutes alone in the oven to finish the cheese; putting the smaller one on top was probably good but it did get more crispy than maybe wanted. I rotated both pans when I took off the foil.