My friend asked for a lasagna recipe so here we go. I don't have amounts because I usually eyeball everything while making the dish. Sorry! Basically look at the dish your intending to fill and think that about half will be cheese and half will be sauce. One box of pasta usually does the trick. If you make too much pasta and cheese you can make small, individual lasagnas. Or use the cheese mixture in pasta shells with the red sauce over it and then bake it like the lasagna. Take notes as you make and tweak to your liking over time is my best advice. Cooking is about basic principles with infinite possibilities. Pasta sauce: Your favorite red pasta sauce, whatever you like, with or without meat, simmered all day from scratch or simmered from a bottle. Totally up to you. The tip here is to keep or get the sauce nice and thick without becoming cement. To thicken add tomato paste. To thin add water while checking your seasoning to ensure you don't thin out the flavor. Cheese mixture: Equal parts of your favorite cheeses. The two required are -mozzarella -ricotta plus a few eggs to bind it all together. Start with two, add more if mixture needs more binding. Not so many that mixture turns yellow from the egg yolk. Cheese mixture should be like play-dough. Pasta: Lasagna pasta is flat and broad. Purchase or make your favorite. There are so many types out there - whole wheat, gluten free, veggie, that it depends on what you like. In the end, traditional white flour pasta will hold up best; not break apart after cooking. Also note, some store bought pastas needs to be pre-cooked and some are already partially cooked, or par-boiled. For dried pasta that isn't par-boiled you will need to cook it before adding to the lasagna. For par-boiled, it can go in to the lasagna dry straight from the box. Read the directions of the box.
For fresh pasta, I dunno. Never used. Give it a go and let me know! Layering: Begin with a couple of spoonfuls of sauce on the bottom of the dish. Just enough to make a thin layer. Layer pasta, enough sheets to cover bottom without overlapping. Layer cheese. This will take some finagling as you put the cheese on the pasta. Get a good thick layer, one half of your bowl. The trick is to use the two spoon method with small scoops of cheese mixture to spread it all out. Layer sauce: nice thick layer, half your bowl. Repeat the pasta, cheese, sauce layering
There are two potential finishes:
a) Finish with pasta and some sauce on top (which will help the pasta cook and prevent a dry, crunchy bite). Then the shredded cheese topping.
or
b) Finish with a shredded cheese topping.
Your fave mix of shredded cheese with the essential being mozzarella. Or just mozzarella. No ricotta or other wet cheeses this time. You want it to melt and brown.
(The type of finish I use depends on how much pasta I have left over from the layering) Bake: The baking is to melt the cheeses, cook the eggs, and cook the pasta. So 375F at 30 mins should do the trick. To check if it's done:
1. ensure that the pasta is well cooked
2. the sides are bubbling
3. the cheese on top is brown. If cheeses on top are browning before the rest of the dish is done cooking then top it with tin foil to stop/prevent browning. Remove foil when you want to resume browning of cheese. Finally - eat with gusto!!! A garden salad with
vinaigrette and garlic butter bread are my go to sides.