Lasagna, step by step.

The other day I decided to make something I haven't cooked in ages. Why? I need variety. In an effort to be super careful about what I eat and lose a few extra pounds, I've been making the same healthy stuff over and over again. It's easy, but getting mundane.  So I decided to drag something out of my repertoire and find a way to make it a bit healthier.  I found some good fresh lasagna noodles at the grocery store, so that's what I decided to make. 

Step 1, make the sauce. It's totally easy to buy a jar of sauce, and definitely quicker, but I'm a bit of a control freak, and I like knowing exactly what goes into my sauce. Plus, I can keep it healthy that way. . . I  wanted a substantial, filling sauce so I went with turkey sausage and mushrooms. Filling and delicious, with lots of good stuff inside.

So there we have it. Ingredients in my sauce before and after I decimated them with my awesome knife skills.  The herbs and spices are fennel seeds, pepper flakes, salt, black pepper, basil, and oregano.  I've had a couple of people ask me to be more specific on my measurements, and I'm going to work on that, but I don't really measure things when I cook.  I know what I love, and I taste as I go.   But like I said, this is supposed to be all instructional, so I'll work on measuring.  But generally, if you don't like something I use, leave it out. If I use too much salt (and chances are, I do) cut it back.

Back to the sauce. . . Once I had all my pretty pretty ingredients sliced, diced, and ready to go, it was cooking time.  First in the pot were the turkey sausage (remove the casings) and the onions. I kinda let the fat render out of the turkey sausage and used that fat, plus a scant drizzle of olive oil to cook everything else. It worked pretty well. 

After the sausage and onions were cooked, I added the mushrooms, spices, and garlic, then cooked them  till everything in the pot (including the bottom of the pot) was golden brown and magical.  Once everything hits that point, it's time to start the deglazing process.   For those who don't know, deglazing involves adding liquid to a pan to help scrape the flavorful golden brown stuff off the bottom of the pan.  In this case, I added tomato paste first--and had a little fun with it while  I was at it--tomato sauce looks like blood. Ha ha. then some red wine vinegar, and the 2 cans of good quality tomatoes I had.

I broke up the tomatoes and left them to simmer for a while. . . because a good tomato sauce just can't be rushed, and you need time to let all the flavors work in the pot.   I probably gave it about half an hour, mostly because I was doing other things, like folding the epic amounts of laundry I have, and washing dishes so I wouldn't have to do it later.   Once the sauce was cooked down to my liking (How can you tell if it's to your liking?  You taste it. I'm constantly tasting, every step of the way.)   Once the sauce was thickened, flavorful, and bubbling (See?) I added some fresh parsley and blended the whole thing with a stick blender. If you don't have a stick blender, you can pour the sauce into a blender or food processor, or even mash it all with a potato masher. I use a stick blender because it's easy, but that doesn't mean there aren't other less technologically advanced ways to do things.

The final sauce--Meaty, thick, and flavorful.  So once the sauce was done, it was time to move on to the other parts of the lasagna. It's a multi step process.  For a lot of my life I didn't do lasagna--I have this thing about cheese-- but I found that a mixture of good low fat ricotta, eggs, and a bit of Parmesan, and lots of yummy seasonings. In this case, I used salt, pepper, and a bunch of nutmeg.  There are a few different ways to do the filling. I went with your basic dump and stir- threw all the ingredients into a bowl and stirred them together. Very simple

Of course, I tasted it after seasoning, and seasoned again.  It is important to remember that seasoning comes through better when hot than cold, so if things taste almost perfect, you're probably there.  With filling and sauce done, it was time to move on to the next step. I'm a huge eggplant fan, so I opted to use eggplant in with the pasta. Sliced super thin and seared, it does a good job adding flavor and working as a pasta substitute.  I used the eggplant instead of about half of my pasta.  It cut the calories for sure, but it was more about the flavor.

So for eggplant prep.  I slice them thin, salted them liberally, then weighted stuff down to draw out the moisture.  Eggplant browns up better if there isn't as much moisture in it, plus it tastes better. Wipe off the salt before cooking or you'll have some damn salty eggplant though. It makes sense to do the eggplant in small batches, and not overcrowd the pan.  I used a little bit of olive oil to lube up the pan.

With the eggplant done and hanging out on paper towels, I parcooked the pasta.  This way it didn't absorb too much moisture when cooking in the lasagna. That just gets messy.   To parcook, I cooked the sheets in small batches for 1-2 minutes, then rinsed each one under cold water, and laid them on towels to dry.  Totally time consuming, but an important step when using fresh pasta.  An alternative is using that no-cook dried lasagna pasta they sell.  That works too. I like the texture of fresh. It's a personal thing.

With all the ingredients cooked and ready to go it was time to assemble the lasagna. Ok, first preheat the oven to 350, then assemble the lasagna.  I lightly oiled a baking dish I used foil here. There's no culinary reason for this whatsoever. My good pan was dirty.   Assembly is all about layering.  I put just a teeny tiny bit of sauce in the bottom of the pan (The pasta will absorb most of it), then pasta, then a layer of cheese, then eggplant.  For the next layer I added more sauce, then rinsed and repeated--Pasta, cheese, eggplant, and more sauce. 

I topped it off with a mixture of Parmesan and mozzarella, covered the whole thing in foil,  cooked for 30 minutes, pulled the foil off and cooked an additional 20-30 minutes until the cheese looked magically delicious.   Y voila! Lasagna. I let it sit for about 20 minutes before cutting it. Why? I'm kinda operating on the same principles I do when cooking meat--letting it rest helps the juices to reabsorb.  And the lasagna was beautiful when finally cut into. 

What does a single girl do with a big ass tray of lasagna like that? Well, I shared some with friends, but the rest got portioned out and refrigerated or frozen. Lasagna is one of those foods that, like fine wine seems to get better with age.  I've been enjoying reheated lasagna, topped with a little extra sauce  all week. There's still one slice left. YUMMMMMMM.  I particularly enjoy the crunchy little end bits, and have been selfishly keeping the corner pieces for myself, even when sharing the rest with friends.