One month and Meat Lasagna

 Monday was mine and hubby’s 1 month anniversary of being married. We don’t plan to celebrate monthly like you do when you start dating but I thought it would be fun to surprise him with one of his all time favorite meals, lasagna. He loves his mom’s lasagna, which is awesome, and he loves my meat sauce, so I put my sauce with her cheese mixture and made a great combo!

   My sauce is something that my mom has made for as long as I can remember and I can do most of it by memory now. I always thought it was just a sauce she knew forever and made it, when I asked her to write it down one day she told me which cook book to get it from. We do leave a few things out though and add a few things in.

Zesty Marinara Sauce ( from the American Heart Association 1994 cook book)

1 tbsp olive oil (grease from sausage)

2 large garlic cloves, chopped

1 large onion, chopped

1 6 oz can tomato paste

2 tbsp parsley

1 ¼ tsp Italian herb seasoning

½ tsp dried basil

1/8 tsp salt

Fresh ground black pepper

2 tsp sugar

1/8 tsp pepper flakes

1 cup water

¼ cup red wine

1 bay leaf

1 8oz can tomato sauce

1 16oz tomatoes crushed with liquid

1lb sausage

Get a pan that doesn’t have non stick on it and heat, add sausage. Let the sausage cook and get brown and have some stuck goodness on the bottom of the pan. This is a tip from my mother in law and really makes a difference.

see how brown and icky it looks. Yumm!!

1.  When it’s done remove sausage and set aside, dump all but a tablespoon of oil out, add onions and garlic and sauté until limp.

2.  stir in tomato paste, parsley, herbs, salt, black pepper, sugar and pepper flakes. Cook  3 to 4 minutes, stirring often.

3.  add water, wine, bay leaf, tomato sauce, tomatoes and liquid from tomatoes to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 1 to 11/2 hours. Remove bay leaf. When it is just about finished add the sausage back in and let it finish cooking with it.

Cheese filling

1 ½ cup ricotta

1 ½ cup cottage cheese

2 tbsp parsley flakes

2 beaten eggs

Salt and pepper

Mix them all together to get a nice mixture that is easy to spread.

Doesn't that look good! Ricotta, Cottage Cheese and seasoning!

Cook 10oz lasagna noodles as directed

Put a little sauce on bottom of pan then put down noodles. Layer cheese, noodle, meat sauce, noodle, cheese, noodle, meat sauce, slice fresh mozzarella and put on top.

Bake at 375° 30 min and let stand for 20 min

I forgot to take a picture after baking because we were starving and ready to eat it as soon as it was ready. But it looks a lot like it did before it baked, but with the cheese melted and even more delicious looking.

My Notes:

    On the sauce I do not add the red wine, and I seem to forget to add water a lot of the time. It doesn’t make a huge difference other then it not being so liquidy to cook down, it does save a little bit of time though. An important step is letting the tomato paste cook with the seasonings, stir it around and don’t let it burn but let it stick a little to the stick pan just to develop a deeper flavor. I made this sauce in a culinary class final in 45 minutes and everyone was so impressed by the richness and depth of the flavor and I credit it all to properly done tomato paste, it really makes this sauce.

    Also Hubby is a tad picky on textures of the sauces he likes so before adding the meat I pour it into the blender and make it nice and smooth. Instead of crushed tomatoes I use Italian spiced stewed tomatoes, because they are my favorite.  It doesn’t matter what type you use if you decide to use the blender, just make sure you blend them before you add them to the tomato paste.

blend it up nice and good!

   On the cheese filling I didn’t have parsley, we haven’t had a chance to stock up our seasonings fully yet, so I used Italian seasoning. If you’ve read most of my other recipes then you can see a common theme, I love Italian seasoning, if I don’t know what to do I typically add some to whatever I’m making and make it work from there.  That is the only adjustment I made to the filling and it was delicious.

I really hope you try this recipe or the sauce on any pasta, and if you don't like meat sauce then just leave out the sausage. Let me know if you have any suggestions or problems, lasagna is a little time consuming and a tad more expensive but it is so so worth it. Especially when your husband tells you that it is one of the best lasagnas hes had. Have I mentioned lately that I love being married. Bye for now please give it a shot!