Eric's Lasagna

Someone ask for a Lasagna Recipe ???? Just so happens I made some Tuesday night!

3-4 Cups Homemade Meat Sauce (tomato sauce, ground hamburg, sausage, peppers,
onions, mushrooms, and favorite spices) 

best if left to sit a day or two in fridge to develop better flavor
Please don't substitute Ragu or *anything* like it ;-)


1 box Lasagna pasta
1 quart ricotta cheese
1 or 2 eggs (depends on your diet I guess ;-)
1 pkg Fresh spinach - washed and stems removed
2-4 cloves garlic
2 Tbl butter
@ 1 cup freshly grated parmesan or romano cheese 
1 lb mozzarella grated or in small thin chunks

sweet sliced sausage (cooked) and/or sliced eggplant (raw or slightly sauteed) 

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Boil lasagna until done, rinse and set aside. 

Saute the crushed garlic cloves in the butter in a saucepan, add the spinach and
let cook down. In a bowl mix the ricotta cheese, egg(s) and parmessan/romano
cheese together. Add in the spinach after it's cooked down, and mix well.

Cover bottom of large rectangular cooking dish (I use corningware @ 16 x 8, I 
think ?) with a thin layer of the meat sauce, add a layer of pasta (3 wide or 
so), another layer of meat sauce and then top it with either slices of sausage 
or eggplant, then another layer of pasta, smooth out half of the ricotta 
mixture and top with some of the mozzarella, another layer of pasta, meat sauce,
sausage/eggplant, ricotta, last layer of pasta, meat sauce and mozzarella.

You can layer it anyway you like, it always tastes the same to me no matter 
what I put where. I've used sausages, veal cutlets (real good), and eggplant
(breaded and fried) in lasagna as fillers besides cheese and meat sauce.

The "batch" I made the other night took almost 1 1/2 hours to heat (cook) 
through @ 350. The more you pile into your pan the longer it takes to cook,
for medium sized lasagna I'd suggest 45 minutes to an hour @ 350 F.

Oh and don't forget to tuck in or cover any exposed pieces of pasta as they 
tend to dry up and get hard if not buried in the sauce.

enjoy!

Erik "Cooking is *my* therapy, what's yours" ?


Source:

rec.food.cooking