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Prep Time: 60 Minutes Cook Time: 30 Minutes |
Ready In: 90 Minutes Servings: 4 |
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I came up with this recipe because I like a nice cheesy and hearty lasagna. I got tired of other recipes leaving me with so little of either the tomato sauce or especially the cottage cheese sauce that I felt like I was barely buttering it on there and I was afraid of running out before my last layer was done. Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil (the more expensive the better, i prefer never to skimp on olive oil) |
1/2 cup water |
2 teaspoons salt |
1/4 teaspoon pepper |
1/2 teaspoon basil |
1 tablespoon parsley, chopped |
2 garlic cloves, crushed |
1/2 lb mushroom, thinly sliced |
1 onion, chopped |
1 lb mozzarella cheese, shredded |
1 cup parmesan cheese, grated |
16 ounces cottage cheese |
12 ounces tomato paste (11 oz is fine if you can only find 5 1/2 oz cans) |
2 cups canned tomatoes |
4 slices bacon, chopped |
1/2 lb salami, chopped |
3 eggs, beaten |
1 1/2 lbs ground beef |
1/2 lb lasagna noodle, cooked (12 of the 12x3 inch lasagna noodles is perfect) |
Directions:
1. Saute bacon, onion, and garlic in hot oil for 5 minutes in a large frying pan.
2. Add ground beef, salami, parsley, and basil and brown well.
3. If you have enough room in your pan, add mushrooms, tomato paste, tomatoes, and water. I generally move the whole batch over to a stock pan at this point just because I don't have a frying pan big enough to hold all this.
4. Simmer uncovered for 1 hour or until very thick.
5. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
6. If you're preparing this for an immediate meal, now is a good time to preheat the oven to 375°F Otherwise, it is very easy to make this in advance and refrigerate it until 30 minutes before you're ready to eat it.
7. Butter/grease a 12x9 inch lasagna or casserole dish.
8. Combine cottage cheese, parmesan cheese, and egg in separate bowl and mix well.
9. You're now ready to layer it all in there. It's going to go as shown below:.
10. On the bottom, put a good layer of the tomato/meat sauce - not too thin, but not more than a third of the total amount of the sauce you have. I generally do a little less than a third of the total sauce.
11. Put on a layer of pasta - generally, I get 12 inch long lasagna noodles that are 3 inches wide, so 3 of the noodles placed side by side is a perfect layer.
12. Add a layer of the cottage cheese mixture - there are only going to be two layers of this stuff total, so put half of what you have in this layer.
13. Put 1/4 pound of mozzarella cheese evenly over the previous layer. You should have 1 lb of shredded mozzarella cheese to start with, so you can just eyeball this layer as a quarter of the total amount of cheese you have.
14. Add another pasta layer.
15. Add another tomato/meat layer - there will one more layer of this mixture after this, so put half of what you have left in this layer.
16. Put another layer of pasta down.
17. Put remaining cottage cheese mixture down evenly - this will be the final layer of this stuff, so use it up.
18. Add another 1/4 pound of the mozzarella cheese.
19. Put down yet another layer of pasta.
20. Layer on the remaining tomato/meat sauce - this will be the last layer of this stuff, so use it up.
21. Finally, cover the previous layer with an even blanket of all of the 1/2 pound of mozzarella cheese you have left.
22. (In a nutshell, the layers go like this - bottom to top: 1/3 of your tomato sauce (or a little less), pasta, 1/2 of your cheese sauce, 1/4 of your mozz. cheese, pasta, 1/2 of remaining tomato sauce, pasta, remainder of cheese sauce, another 1/4 of your original amount of mozz. cheese, pasta, remainder of tomato sauce, remainder of mozz. cheese.).
23. Bake for 30 minutes at 375°F.
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