Cooking Up a Storm

My Lasagna

March 21, 2020

Today we broke the rules and had our son & his wife over for dinner. I know, I know, we weren't supposed to do that. But, I also know that life is short and anyone of us can go at anytime whether it's this virus that gets us, a bolt of lightening or we get hit by a bus crossing the street and we wanted to see our son, just because. Because we care about him and his wife and we love them and because our daughter who we also loved (and still do) is no longer with us and in these days of COVID 19 we just never know, so I'd rather "live dangerously" (if seeing your son & his wife is considered living dangerously), or not at all. We've been confined to the house pretty much the entire time since Legault issued directives for the seniors to stay home, except one day when I had to get prescriptions filled and some food. Otherwise we haven't even gone to our mailbox to see what bills await us there yet. So, I made a lasagna, with things we had on hand. Mostly canned goods used in the sauce, 3 cheeses and noodles. Since it uses mostly canned goods and boxed lasagna noodles, it may be of benefit to those who wish to stretch their fresh vegetables and use some of the canned goods now, rather than getting stuck eating only canned goods later on.

Sauce Ingredients:

2 lbs fried ground beef (and drained)

1 onion coarsely chopped

1 green pepper coarsely chopped

1 can of mushrooms (drained)

3 cloves of garlic finely minced

1 large can whole tomatoes (drained)

1 large can chopped tomatoes (drained)

1 large can crushed tomatoes

1 large can tomato sauce

1 small can tomato paste

1 Tbs dried oregano

1/2 Tbs powdered garlic

For Assembly

1 kg. grated mozzarella

1 500 mg container cottage cheese

Parmesan cheese

12-13 lasagna noodles

Instructions:

Combine all ingredients for the sauce in a large dutch oven on high heat and stir to prevent sticking, until it starts to gently boil, then turn it down to medium low and simmer, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking and burning, for 1.5 hours to 2 hours. Meanwhile in another large dutch oven fill 2/3rds full with water and bring to a boil. When the water is boiling add noodles one at a time and stir constantly until the water comes back to boiling again, then turn it down to medium high and continue cooking for 20 minutes or until the noodles are done (they'll turn white when they're done). Remove the noodles from the heat and immediately drain into a collender, and run cold water over them. Put them back into the dutch oven with cold water to keep them from drying out and sticking together. When the sauce is cooked remove that from the heat and start assembling the lasagna in a lasagna pan, by slathering the bottom of the pan with sauce and then lay a layer of noodles (to completely cover the pan) followed by spreading some of the cottage cheese on the noodles (use judiciously as the cottage cheese probably won't be enough to completely cover the noodles on all the layers, so a little on the noodles on the bottom layer, a little on the middle layer which will leave you with a little for the top layer). Followed by mozzarella - be as generous as you like, because 2 kgs of shredded mozzarella is a lot so you should have enough and still have left overs, and then sprinkle some parmesan cheese over the layer. Repeat starting with the sauce, followed by the noodles and then the cheeses, until you either run out of pan space or ingredients. Then bake for 45 minutes at 350 in the oven.  When done remove from oven and let sit 5 minutes before serving.

Adding a 1/2 cup heavy cooking cream & 1 Tbsp butter to every 2 cups of this sauce makes a deliciously smooth and creamy pasta sauce suitable for use on everything from ravioli to spaghetti.

I'm sorry I don't know the exact measurements of the cans used in this because once I opened them I tossed them in the blue box. But I'm sure most Canadians who's ever been in a grocery store in Canada will know what size I'm talking about as they'll have seen them many a time on shelves in the stores themselves.

Because I love cooking and working with food, just for the fun of it, after our son left tonight I went to Allrecipes.com and I was going to look for Asian Food recipes but when I got there I was stunned to find a section just for Quarantine cooking. They have recipes on how to make your own (like basic goods like bisquick, and other ingredients you may need but don't have on hand), recipes made entirely from canned goods, or frozen vegetables and the like.  For more quarantine cooking help and recipes (oh yeah talking about help - they also show how to do various cooking techniques etc as well so that if you've never really spent a lot of time in the kitchen before now, you'll at least get an idea on how to do certain things). Anyhow, this is the link to that page of that site: All Recipes Quarantine Cooking Page