No explanation needed Thursday.
Boots from the last century. :(
New Boots! :)
Sunday!
The recipe for fake lasagne...
Boil some pasta. I use rotini because we like the little corkscrew ones. I boiled it for the time listed on the box for al dente pasta. While the pasta is cooking, brown some sausage with diced onion and bell pepper and crushed fresh garlic. Drain the sausage and add a big can of diced tomatoes (drain the can) and two cans of tomato sauce. I used extra thick and zesty this time, because it's extra thick. And Zesty. Who doesn't love Zesty? Add Italian seasoning, maybe some basil, til it tastes like spaghetti sauce. Or lasagne. If I happened to have some fresh basil or thyme or parsley, I would chop that up and add it to the meat sauce too. But I didn't, so I didn't this time. Or thyme.
Next I put a layer of pasta in the bottom of a casserole, spread some ricotta cheese on top, sort of. (When you put the hot sausage sauce on top of this, the ricotta cheese becomes more spreadable.) Next I add a layer of the sausage sauce, spread it and the ricotta cheese around a little, then add some shredded cheese. I used monterey jack this time because it's what I had. Usually I use mozzarella, but didn't have any. The Monterey jack tasted great.
Then I dumped the other half of the pasta on top (I forgot to mention up there that I used half the pasta and half the ricotta cheese for the bottom layer. Two layers. Tastes great, lots less work.)
So the other half of the pasta, the rest of the ricotta cheese, dump the sausage sauce on top, spread it around, toss some shredded cheese on top, bake at 350 until it's bubbly around the edges, probably half hour or forty minutes or so. Let it stand a couple minutes before serving.
I rinsed the pasta in cold water when it finished cooking, because I wasn't done with the meat sauce, because the sausage was frozen when I started cooking. Yes, I have a microwave, and yes, I was incredibly lazy to not defrost the sausage ahead of time. I get sick of doing all that stuff, and the meat thaws as you cook it. So the pasta was cold, the cheese was cold, the sausage sauce was hot. It worked great, except I forgot to tell you I put spices in the meat sauce. ( I will go back up and add them now, so when you read this, the italian seasoning and stuff is there. But when I am writing this, it's not there. )
I also used meat sauce and sausage sauce interchangeably. Because up there somewhere I said "hot meat sauce" and that sounds just wrong. Pornographic and wrong. Not fake lasagne recipe language at all. But then I got sick of typing sausage. Meat has three fewer letters. Again with the lazy, I know.
I hope I didn't leave anything out...what you read there is the way I cook, just boiling things and tossing them together and experimenting and stuff. It's really hard to screw up pasta unless you boil it too long or way too short a time, or if you forget the seasoning, or you use waaaay more pasta than tomato sauce, which I did. I didn't actually use two cans of tomato sauce, I only used one. Use two. Unless of course you don't use a pound and a half of pasta.
I just realized I didn't include any measurements except the cans of tomato products. I used a pound of sausage, a pound and a half of pasta, half an onion, half a pepper, seasoning to taste. But really, this "recipe" is really hard to screw up, I think. Don't boil the pasta to mush, and don't leave it in the oven for hours.
There. I am back on track with my nanoblomogojoetheplumber whatever ya call it.
Boil some pasta. I use rotini because we like the little corkscrew ones. I boiled it for the time listed on the box for al dente pasta. While the pasta is cooking, brown some sausage with diced onion and bell pepper and crushed fresh garlic. Drain the sausage and add a big can of diced tomatoes (drain the can) and two cans of tomato sauce. I used extra thick and zesty this time, because it's extra thick. And Zesty. Who doesn't love Zesty? Add Italian seasoning, maybe some basil, til it tastes like spaghetti sauce. Or lasagne. If I happened to have some fresh basil or thyme or parsley, I would chop that up and add it to the meat sauce too. But I didn't, so I didn't this time. Or thyme.
Next I put a layer of pasta in the bottom of a casserole, spread some ricotta cheese on top, sort of. (When you put the hot sausage sauce on top of this, the ricotta cheese becomes more spreadable.) Next I add a layer of the sausage sauce, spread it and the ricotta cheese around a little, then add some shredded cheese. I used monterey jack this time because it's what I had. Usually I use mozzarella, but didn't have any. The Monterey jack tasted great.
Then I dumped the other half of the pasta on top (I forgot to mention up there that I used half the pasta and half the ricotta cheese for the bottom layer. Two layers. Tastes great, lots less work.)
So the other half of the pasta, the rest of the ricotta cheese, dump the sausage sauce on top, spread it around, toss some shredded cheese on top, bake at 350 until it's bubbly around the edges, probably half hour or forty minutes or so. Let it stand a couple minutes before serving.
I rinsed the pasta in cold water when it finished cooking, because I wasn't done with the meat sauce, because the sausage was frozen when I started cooking. Yes, I have a microwave, and yes, I was incredibly lazy to not defrost the sausage ahead of time. I get sick of doing all that stuff, and the meat thaws as you cook it. So the pasta was cold, the cheese was cold, the sausage sauce was hot. It worked great, except I forgot to tell you I put spices in the meat sauce. ( I will go back up and add them now, so when you read this, the italian seasoning and stuff is there. But when I am writing this, it's not there. )
I also used meat sauce and sausage sauce interchangeably. Because up there somewhere I said "hot meat sauce" and that sounds just wrong. Pornographic and wrong. Not fake lasagne recipe language at all. But then I got sick of typing sausage. Meat has three fewer letters. Again with the lazy, I know.
I hope I didn't leave anything out...what you read there is the way I cook, just boiling things and tossing them together and experimenting and stuff. It's really hard to screw up pasta unless you boil it too long or way too short a time, or if you forget the seasoning, or you use waaaay more pasta than tomato sauce, which I did. I didn't actually use two cans of tomato sauce, I only used one. Use two. Unless of course you don't use a pound and a half of pasta.
I just realized I didn't include any measurements except the cans of tomato products. I used a pound of sausage, a pound and a half of pasta, half an onion, half a pepper, seasoning to taste. But really, this "recipe" is really hard to screw up, I think. Don't boil the pasta to mush, and don't leave it in the oven for hours.
There. I am back on track with my nanoblomogojoetheplumber whatever ya call it.
I think I could get by with this lasagne especially since it is zesty, we'd call it spicy, here at my house and maybe I would throw in a little chili powder and leave out the basil and I no longer have lasagne I have a Mexican casserole --- go figure. Hubby would eat it though. Thanks Julie. Now if I only cooked.
ReplyDeleteHot meat sauce. Mmmmmmm tasty! But salty. This sounds great! Will have to try it. I cook the same way, never measuring or following recipes exactly. I just take the baking/temperature principals and make the rest up. So much more fun that way. Also why I can't bake worth a damn, you kinda have to measure that stuff.
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