Spinach and Ricotta Lasagna

Time for another Cooks Clubs Challenge from the Taste.com.au forums!

Spinach and Ricotta Lasagna
Serves 4 – 6
Dried instant lasagna sheets or fresh ones
500g tub ricotta or cottage cheese
Bag of fresh spinach or box of frozen spinach
3 -4 spring onions
2 - 4 cloves garlic – according to taste
Nutmeg
Ground black pepper
1 Egg (optional but tends to keep its form better, hence easier to serve)
2 tbsp grated parmesan
Tomato pasta sauce – homemade or jar
Shredded cheese – cheddar, tasty or mozzarella or a combination

In a food processor, combine the spinach, (prepared as per pack if not fresh) roughly chopped spring onions and garlic, process until combined, add the ricotta or cottage cheese, egg, parmesan and a generous grind of nutmeg, a good grind of black pepper and process until combined.
Smear a layer of tomato pasta sauce on the bottom of a suitably sized baking dish. Cover with a layer of pasta. Then layer the cheese/spinach mixture alternately with pasta. Cheese layers should be approx ½ inch deep each.
Top with a layer of pasta then pour over the remaining tomato sauce.
Sprinkle with grated cheese
Bake at 180c for approx 40 minutes.

Fresh from the oven

My "proper" sized dish is in the freezer full of mac n cheese, so I had to be crafty with alfoil and a roasting tray. It still was a little too big though, so I only had enough tomato sauce for the half layer under the first layer of pasta, and one full layer in the middle. So there was no tomato sauce over the top, just a generous layer of grated tasty and mozzarella cheeses.

Check my funky loaf pan 'divider'!

It didn't suffer from that lack, although me forgetting to buy parmesan, and just skipping that DID make a difference - our spinach mixture was a little bland, but the Parmesan would have prevented that. We did use the egg, and it kept it's form wonderfully. All three kidlets wolfed this down, and I quite liked it too. If DP likes it, we have a make again dinner to add to the list. This was so easy and quick to make!

Introducing Flash Game Friday: Lasagna from Heaven

Because Friday tends to be a lazy dinner night fairly regularly, and because it's friday, and you need to kick back, I'll be starting a new weekly theme post. You'll get this whether or not I post a "real" post on a Friday, so be prepared to waste entire weekends, and away we go...

This wasn't a highly addictive game, but I thought I'd start with this as it's semi-food related, and c'mon... it's Garfield! Just be careful not to eat Odie!

Lasagna from Heaven

Spinach and Pumpkin Lasagna

It's been a while since I took part in a Cooks Club Challenge. This is the recipe taken straight from the forum over at Taste.Com.Au

Spinach and Pumpkin Lasagna
baby spinach
½ pumpkin, sliced
1 red onion, sliced
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
2 cups milk
2 cups tasty cheese, grated
1 cup mozzarella cheese, grated
1 ½ cups parmesan cheese, grated
4 cloves garlic, crushed
Salt & pepper
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tub philly cream cheese
Lasagna sheets

Melt butter in saucepan, add flour, nutmeg, salt & pepper. Stir until smooth. Add milk and stir over medium heat until sauce thickens. Add cream cheese, garlic and 1 cup of tasty cheese. Stir until melted. Place a layer of pumpkin slices in base of a roasting dish. Add a layer of silverbeet and a layer of onions. Spoon 1/3 of sauce over veges. Sprinkle with a little parmesan. Top with lasagna sheets. Repeat until all ingredients are used up, ending with cheese sauce. Mix remaining cheeses together and sprinkle evenly over lasagna. Bake at 200C for 40 minutes or until browned on top

This is one of my all time favourites - so handy to have in the freezer - just pull out and heat and serve - yum. You can also add bacon to the layers for a carnivore who just won't eat it without some meat.

The white sauce took ages to thicken, so the kids ended up having sandwiches, and DP and I ate this after the kids were in bed. There was heaps left, enough for everyone to have some tomorrow for lunch. I loved the pumpkin in it, but not too fond of the spinach in it. I used to love baby spinach, but I'm starting to go off it now - tastes too metallic-y to me. I ate it a lot and never minded the taste when I was pregnant, I guess my body just needed the iron so it tasted good then. I might experiment with other vegies instead of the spinach, maybe zucchini would go nicely.

Pioneer Woman's Lasagna

Miss Two's serving

I'm not having a great amount of luck with my Pioneer Woman's recipes I've tried. Her site is full of great sounding dishes, and lovely clear step-by-step photos, and thousands of comments from happy cooks. But I'm afraid they just don't do it for me. I tried the Apple Dumplings, and while they were diet-destroyingly good, DP had one, and didn't think that much of them. Likewise with her Lasagna. It was very nice, but I feel I've had nicer, and although it's touted as having caused marriage proposals, I think I could make a nicer one. Ok, so I didn't follow the recipe exactly, but we don't have breakfast sausage here, and I straight out refuse to buy or eat powered Kraft Parmesan cheese. Two points I'd like to make right here to all the Americans reading, and I say this knowing full well it may put some of you off my blog forever, but it needs to be said. Cheese is not orange, and it is not a powder. Sorry. I'll get off my soap box now.

Ok, anyway, I thought I'd take this opportunity to show you all how I cook these days. It's all very sophisticated. At our last house I used to just bring the recipe up on my computer screen and then run in and out of the computer room to the kitchen while I was cooking to consult the recipe. I was connected to a printer, but it only printed with special ink, and I couldn't use the network printer for some reason. Well, those days are gone. I can print through the network on the laser printer now, and all my recipes go on the fridge while I'm cooking.

Miss Two underneath my printed out recipe

I'll let you go to Pioneer Woman's site for the recipe, since she made it up it only seems fair to let her get the traffic for it. But I did make a few tweaks. I can't help myself, even when I try so hard to copy a recipe it ends up different.

To start with, the quantities seemed very high, so I thought I'd make two smaller ones, after all, I'm not feeding a cowboy and who knows how many ranch hands. I also didn't precook my lasagna noodles. And they were perfectly al dente. I also substituted tarragon for the dried parsley, but only used half the amount. I was going to buy dried parsley, but DP told me not to - apparently the back yard is teeming with it. He said he'd pick me some, but I have yet to see any myself, outside or inside. I substituted grated parmesan for the powdered stuff, and full fat cottage cheese. Next time I think I'd make bechamel sauce, it's really not that hard, and add fresh parmesan to that, as it gave slight flavour to the white which is normally quite bland. I didn't dislike the cottage cheese, but it didn't do anything spectacular for the flavour either.

I almost followed the recipe for assembly, I placed a layer of noodles, then the cottage cheese mixture, then grated mozzarella (because I've never seen mozzarella slices here), but then I placed a layer of noodles in between the cheese and meat, because the two shouldn't meet in a lasagna - well, that's just the way my mum did it. I prefer nice thick layers too, so I only attempted one layer each of meat and cheese, especially as I was splitting the lot between two pans. The one we had tonight also got a layer of baby spinach inbetween the cottage cheese mix and the mozzarella, just because I thought it would be nice. I didn't put it in the other pan though, because I didn't think it would freeze well. Pity, because it cut through the richness a little.
On top of the meat, I used the rest of the mozzarella, plus what was left over of a bag of grated tasty I had in the fridge, and a few handfuls of the grated parmesan for good measure.

This was incredibly tasty, but mostly because of the mozzarella and parmesan. I think in future I'd make a bechamel sauce, and use my usual pasta sauce recipe for the meat part, perhaps with some basil (now that I have it in the house) and some tarragon... have I mentioned this week yet how much I'm loving that herb at the moment? lol

Before baking

Cook's Club Challenge - Lasagna

My last challenge food for this fortnight is... lasagna! Here is the recipe pcmitcho posted for us to try:

Lasagna
Oil and butter (enough to cover the base of the pan you are using)
1 med to large carrot diced
1 med to large onion diced
Couple of sticks of celery diced
500gms beef mince
2 to 3 anchovy fillets (don’t mention these to anyone)
½ a 700gm bottle of cooking sauce (whatever flavour....I use Leggo’s)
Couple of tablespoons each of chopped fresh parsley and sweet basil
Fresh lasagne sheets
50/50 mix of grated whatever cheese you have and parmesan cheese (grate enough to generously cover the top of the dish to your liking)

Bechamel Sauce
60gms butter
1/3 cup plain flour
2 ¼ cups milk
½ teaspoon nutmeg (I grate it fresh)
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 180°c
Heat the pan and melt the butter and oil. Add the vege’s and cook until softened. Add the mince in batches and brown breaking up the lumps. Sneak in the anchovies and break up. They will dissolve.
Mix in the cooking sauce, herbs and season to your liking. Cook simmering for about 20 to 30 minutes and then set aside off the heat.
To make the sauce. Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat until foaming. Add the flour and stir constantly for 2 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and gradually stir in the milk. I use a whisk from here on. Return to the heat and bring to the boil stirring constantly until it is thick enough that when you stir it you can see the bottom of the pan. (I can’t explain it any better than that. I hope you know what I mean.) Season well with nutmeg and salt and pepper.
Brush a dish with oil and spread a thin layer of the meat mix, then a thin layer of sauce and then cover with the lasagne sheets. Repeat this a couple of times. Continue the layers finishing with lasagne sheets topped only with sauce and the cheese.
I use a glass dish which is about 27 x 18cm and about 40cm deep and I get 3 layers of meat.
Bake for about 35 – 40mins or until golden brown on top.

Layers!

I'd never made lasagna before, so I couldn't say how much nicer it is with fresh sheets. I didn't use the anchovies, because we don't have any in the house, since no one eats them. I was willing to give it a try, but I couldn't see the point in having the leftovers hang around until I clean out the fridge next. I also used basil from a tube, the pre-chopped kind, because I couldn't find any fresh (not suprising at this time of year) but I didn't bother with the parsley, unless you count the bits from the butcher display that got stuck in the mince.

I served this with store bought garlic bread, which I jazzed up with the leftover shaved parmesan. The kids liked this, but didn't seem to eat much of it. All the grownups in the house agreed that regardless of what the recipe said, and the packet instructions said, the pasta should have been soaked. Or else I shouldn't have put lasagna sheets on the bottom of the pan to try and make it easier to serve. Now I think maybe my sauce could have had a touch more moisture, and let the whole thing cook for longer, even though I cooked it for over 40mins as is. I got two layers of meat, in a large square tin.