Quicker Than Usual Spinach Lasagna

SP and I spent some time at his place on the weekend after Christmas. We visited some of our usual haunts that I'll tell you about on other posts, but I wanted to cook one night and suggested lasagna roll-ups. I ended up making lasagna instead.

We went to the grocery store together, which was kind of cute. He kept saying, "That's an awful lot of cheese." He said it until I put the thing in the oven.

There is a lot of prep work to lasagna, because I make my sauce from scratch. You don't have to. You can buy a good jar and use that...but I'd recommend at least two jars, then. For the sauce, I finely chop two ribs of celery, one small or one half of a large onion, and then sautee them in a little bit of olive oil. After they become near transparent, stirring to prevent burning and sticking, I add about 3 or 4 chopped cloves of garlic. You can add garlic to taste after you play around with the recipe.

Then I add a negligible amount of ground pork or meat, or a piece of meat of some sort just to cook it down and make it nice and brown to get some tasty bits that will deglace into the sauce when I add tomato stuffs. Next, I open a 29 oz. can of tomato puree. It's big one. I pour that into the pot along with two 6 oz. cans of tomato paste. Then I add 4 c. of water and stir well, incorporating all ingredients.

I bring the sauce to a slight boil, not a rolling boil, and then I reduce the heat to simmer. As it simmers, I add my spices. I eyeball stuff, so a small palmful (probably about a T.) of oregano, 1 1/2 T. of basil, and 2 T. of parsley flakes or you can chop fresh, but use more fresh herbs then. Also, add salt and pepper to taste and simmer at least an hour, but my usual recipe is at least two hours with meatballs in it. (I'll give you that recipe another day...this is lasagna.) Oh, and if you want to get rid of that metallic can taste that can be in pasta sauce, add a teaspoon or so of sugar to the pot and let that simmer in. It works.

While the sauce simmers, we grated a half wedge of parmesan and a half wedge of romano cheese. I also opened a bag of frozen fresh spinach and some grated skim mozzerella, and I mixed a large tub of ricotta (the big one) with two eggs and some parsley flakes to make it pretty.

When the sauce was ready (or good enough) I began assembling the lasagna, and I preheated the oven to 400 degrees. To assemble, grease a casserole or lasagna pan. Coat the bottom of the pan with some sauce, then a layer of lasagna noodles (the oven ready ones, unless you want to mess with boiling and then also washing another two dishes), then ricotta, spinach, romano and parmesan, repeat, repeat, until you run out of ingredients. You can use as many noodles as you have room for in the pan for layers. I used one box of noodles and all the ingredients. I left a nice cheesy top and then I tented the top with foil and popped it in the oven for 45 minutes. I then removed the foil and let it get all brown, bubbly and happy for another 15 minutes.

When it's done, you will want to take it out of the oven and let it rest a bit to set up. If you are starving and can't wait, it will not cut into nice squares and stay set on a plate. Instead, it will blob out all over the plate, but it'll still taste heavenly. After 20 minutes or so, it does set up nicely and stay that way to plate it.

I reserved some sauce to add over the top. I don't always have enough, but I like it when I do.

SP made a point to tell me that, "It's not too much cheese at all! It's the perfect amount of cheese. This is really good lasagna!" The biggest compliment, though, was when he suggested we take half the pan to his sister and brother-in-law to eat while they're holed up expecting their first child any day. They ate it and gave me rave reviews as well.