Flashback Friday - Sausage and Peppers Lasagna

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on April 11, 2014.

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Have you ever gone to the grocery store, seen a random ingredient, and then come up with a completely weird dish in which to put it? For instance, have you picked up a bulb of fennel and thought, "I'm going to make lasagna?"

I have. Yeah, it didn't make sense to me either. Fennel isn't exactly a typical lasagna filling. And of course fennel alone might be a bit strange, so I decided it needed to be combined with sweet Italian sausage (which is flavored with fennel) and roasted red peppers. Why not? Why does lasagna have to be made with the same traditional ingredients every time? Ok, because it is delicious that way, but it can be delicious with other ingredients, too. Like sausage and peppers and fennel. (Oh my!)

I picked up a package of Giovanni Rana brand fresh pasta sheets on that same grocery store excursion. The fresh stuff cuts out the whole messy step of precooking dry pasta and carefully separating out the individual noodles so they won't stick together when they cool. I won't use the no-boil kind; they require far too much sauce and make for a lasagna that seems drowned. And while a besciamella (béchamel sauce) may be more traditional, I like to use ricotta cheese mixed with a bit of Parmesan to make my lasagna nice and creamy.

Really, I think anything goes in a lasagna, as long as there's plenty of cheese.

The result of my madness was actually pretty great. The fennel married nicely with the sausage, and even though the ingredients were non-traditional, it still tasted like lasagna.

This recipe makes a ton. Enough for 10 normal people.

Sausage, Pepper, and Fennel Lasagna

1 lb mild Italian sausage
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium bulb fennel, sliced thinly
1 12-oz jar roasted red peppers, chopped
3-5 cloves of garlic, depending on their size and how much you like garlic, crushed
24 ounces of your favorite marinara, homemade or jarred, 1 cup reserved
generous pinch red pepper flakes
generous pinch of fennel seeds, crushed lightly
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup ricotta cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
16 ounces fresh lasagna noodles (NOT the dry "oven-ready" noodles)
2 cups grated mozzarella cheese

Put a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Remove the sausage meat from its casings and add to the pan, breaking it up into smaller pieces with the end of a spatula. When the sausage starts to let off some of its fat, add the onion. Stir occasionally, continuing to break up the sausage into smaller pieces, until the onion is translucent and sausage is mostly cooked through and browned. Add the fennel, roasted peppers, and garlic, stirring to combine. Pour in the sauce (except the reserved cupful) and add the red pepper flakes and fennel seeds. Bring to a simmer, then turn heat down to low. Cover pan. Cook until meat is tender and sauce is somewhat reduced, about 1 hour. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat and allow to come to room temperature.

Combine ricotta and Parmesan in a small bowl and set aside.

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Lightly grease a 9 x 13-inch baking pan. Put a few spoonfuls of the reserved sauce on the bottom of the pan, then cover with a layer of pasta. Spread half of the ricotta mixture over the pasta. Use a slotted spoon to scoop out chunky bits of sausage and vegetables from the sauce and layer these on top of the ricotta. Lightly sprinkle with some of the mozzarella cheese. Top with another layer of pasta, the remaining ricotta cheese, more chunky bits, and a bit more mozzarella. Add the final layer of pasta, a layer of sauce, and the rest of the mozzarella.

Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 20 minutes until bubbling and browned.

While the lasagna is baking, reheat the rest of the reserved sauce (combined with any leftover sausage/fennel sauce) to use at the table if the lasagna seems dry.

Allow the lasagna to rest about 10 minutes before cutting into servings.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Lasagna with Celery Root and Mushrooms

While flipping through the November issue of Martha Stewart Living magazine, I was struck by the recipe for celery root and mushroom bread pudding. I love savory bread pudding but don't make it very often because it seems a lot of work for what is essentially a side dish. But I thought the combination of mushrooms and celery root could be interesting in a main dish like lasagna.

I love love love the idea of using a celery root puree as a substitute for béchamel. I love love love celery root, period, which is odd, since I'm not a big fan of regular celery. A rich root vegetable puree + mushrooms seems so fallcozy, but maybe too rich, so I added some chard and leeks, just so there was a green vegetable present. I found spinach lasagna noodles to add even more green. The end result was very rustic and pretty darn tasty. But highly non-photogenic. :(

It might seem like this dish has lots of steps, but no more so than regular lasagna (assuming you don't just use sauce from a jar!) I like to make something like this on a weekend and spread out the various tasks during the day. When dinnertime comes, I just pop the pan into the oven and wait for the delicious smells to come wafting out.

Fall Lasagna

1 celery root
2 cups light cream
Pinch nutmeg
Pinch cayenne
1 lb mushrooms (I used cremini and oyster)
Olive oil
1 medium leek
1 bunch rainbow or Swiss chard
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 package no boil lasagna noodles
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese or Italian cheese blend
Salt and pepper

Peel the celery root and cut into medium dice. Place it and the cream into a 2 quart saucepan and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes, until celery root is tender. Season with nutmeg, cayenne, and salt and pepper to taste. Allow to cool to room temperature, then puree in a blender. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Clean, slice, and finely chop the mushrooms. Saute in a bit of olive oil and a pinch of salt until they have released all of their liquid and have begun to brown, 8-10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Remove to a bowl, cover, and refrigerate until ready to use.

Slice the leek in half lengthwise and cut each half crosswise into thin slices. Rinse well in cold water to remove any grit.

Wash chard very well to remove any grit. Cut off the stems and chop finely. Remove the center rib and slice leaves into thin ribbons.

Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large skillet. Add the leek and the chard stems. Cook until the stems are tender, 8-10 minutes. Add the greens and the garlic and stir to combine. Cover the pan and cook, stirring regularly, until greens are completely wilted, 5-8 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Place leek and chard mixture in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

To assemble lasagna: Spoon some of the celery root puree onto the bottom of an 8" or 9" square baking dish. Cover with lasagna noodles. Spread another layer of celery root puree onto the noodles. Top puree with 1/3 of the chard and 1/3 of the mushrooms. Add another layer of sauce, more noodles, and more sauce. Repeat chard/mushroom and sauce/noodle/sauce layers, until all of the chard and mushrooms are used up. Finish with a sauce/noodle/sauce layer. Cover pan with foil and refrigerate until ready to bake.

To bake: Preheat oven to 350°F. Place covered baking dish into the oven and heat for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and test doneness of noodles by poking a sharp knife into the center. If there's still some resistance, put the pan back into the oven for another 10 minutes or so. If the knife slides through easily, remove the foil and sprinkle on the 1/2 cup of cheese. Return to oven and bake an additional 10 minutes, or until cheese and top layer of sauce browns.

Remove from oven and allow to rest for a few minutes before cutting and serving.

Serves 4.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Sausage and Peppers Lasagna

Have you ever gone to the grocery store, seen a random ingredient, and then come up with a completely weird dish in which to put it? For instance, have you picked up a bulb of fennel and thought, "I'm going to make lasagna?"

I have. Yeah, it didn't make sense to me either. Fennel isn't exactly a typical lasagna filling. And of course fennel alone might be a bit strange, so I decided it needed to be combined with sweet Italian sausage (which is flavored with fennel) and roasted red peppers. Why not? Why does lasagna have to be made with the same traditional ingredients every time? Ok, because it is delicious that way, but it can be delicious with other ingredients, too. Like sausage and peppers and fennel. (Oh my!)

I picked up a package of Giovanni Rana brand fresh pasta sheets on that same grocery store excursion. The fresh stuff cuts out the whole messy step of precooking dry pasta and carefully separating out the individual noodles so they won't stick together when they cool. I won't use the no-boil kind; they require far too much sauce and make for a lasagna that seems drowned. And while a besciamella (béchamel sauce) may be more traditional, I like to use ricotta cheese mixed with a bit of Parmesan to make my lasagna nice and creamy.

Really, I think anything goes in a lasagna, as long as there's plenty of cheese.

The result of my madness was actually pretty great. The fennel married nicely with the sausage, and even though the ingredients were non-traditional, it still tasted like lasagna.

This recipe makes a ton. Enough for 10 normal people.

Sausage, Pepper, and Fennel Lasagna

1 lb mild Italian sausage
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium bulb fennel, sliced thinly
1 12-oz jar roasted red peppers, chopped
3-5 cloves of garlic, depending on their size and how much you like garlic, crushed
24 ounces of your favorite marinara, homemade or jarred, 1 cup reserved
generous pinch red pepper flakes
generous pinch of fennel seeds, crushed lightly
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup ricotta cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
16 ounces fresh lasagna noodles (NOT the dry "oven-ready" noodles)
2 cups grated mozzarella cheese

Put a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Remove the sausage meat from its casings and add to the pan, breaking it up into smaller pieces with the end of a spatula. When the sausage starts to let off some of its fat, add the onion. Stir occasionally, continuing to break up the sausage into smaller pieces, until the onion is translucent and sausage is mostly cooked through and browned. Add the fennel, roasted peppers, and garlic, stirring to combine. Pour in the sauce (except the reserved cupful) and add the red pepper flakes and fennel seeds. Bring to a simmer, then turn heat down to low. Cover pan. Cook until meat is tender and sauce is somewhat reduced, about 1 hour. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat and allow to come to room temperature.

Combine ricotta and Parmesan in a small bowl and set aside.

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Lightly grease a 9 x 13-inch baking pan. Put a few spoonfuls of the reserved sauce on the bottom of the pan, then cover with a layer of pasta. Spread half of the ricotta mixture over the pasta. Use a slotted spoon to scoop out chunky bits of sausage and vegetables from the sauce and layer these on top of the ricotta. Lightly sprinkle with some of the mozzarella cheese. Top with another layer of pasta, the remaining ricotta cheese, more chunky bits, and a bit more mozzarella. Add the final layer of pasta, a layer of sauce, and the rest of the mozzarella.

Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 20 minutes until bubbling and browned.

While the lasagna is baking, reheat the rest of the reserved sauce (combined with any leftover sausage/fennel sauce) to use at the table if the lasagna seems dry.

Allow the lasagna to rest about 10 minutes before cutting into servings.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

"Healthy" Lasagna

Mr Minx and I recently spent a long weekend in Ocean City, Maryland. If you've ever been there, you know it's not exactly a gourmet haven, what with the preponderance of pizza joints and bars, many of which were closed in the off-season. We didn't want to cook our dinners on the two-burner cooktop in our room (I don't know how anyone can stand to cook with electric on a regular basis) or eat only salads when we went out, so we didn't end up consuming a whole lot of vegetables. Unless, of course, you consider french fries a vegetable. Or salsa.

Back in Baltimore, I went a little crazy in Wegman's produce department. And the fresh whole wheat pasta sheets called to me - veggie lasagna seemed like a good way to have a nice dinner and get our greens, too. Rather than going whole-hog with cheese and cream and all that good stuff, I made a very low-fat bechamel and used part-skim cheese. Honestly, we didn't miss the fat at all.

"Healthy" Spinach Lasagna

Spinach Filling
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 leek, rinsed well and chopped
1/2 lb mushrooms, roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 lbs frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
salt, pepper, and nutmeg

Heat olive oil in a large skillet. Add leek and mushrooms and a pinch of salt and sauté until leeks are tender and mushrooms have given up all of their liquid, about 15 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook an additional 2-3 minutes. Add spinach, and season with salt, pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg to taste.

Bechamel
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
1.5 cups 1% milk
salt, pepper, and nutmeg
2 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese

In a saucepan over medium heat, melt butter and add flour, stirring well, until flour is completely incorporated. Cook, stirring constantly, for about 2-3 minutes, to cook flour. Slowly whisk in milk. Turn up the heat and bring to a boil. Once sauce has thickened, stir in salt, pepper, nutmeg, and grated cheese. Set aside.

To assemble lasagna:
1 12.5 oz package fresh whole wheat lasagna sheets, cooked according to package directions and drained
1 cup part-skim shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts

Preheat oven to 400F.

Spread 2 tablespoons of bechamel on the bottom of a 9" square baking dish. Top with a lasagna sheet, trimming excess from long end and adding it to fill the gap on the short side. Spread on more bechamel, then add several tablespoons of spinach filling and a sprinkling of both mozzarella cheese and walnuts. Continue layering in this manner until all of the spinach filling is used up. Top with a final layer of pasta, bechamel, and mozzarella.

Bake until top is bubbly and brown, 20-30 minutes. Let rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

Note: I think this dish could go Greek very nicely if some fresh mint is added to the spinach filling and feta cheese is used in place of most or all of the mozzarella.

Posted by theminx on Minxeats.com.

Lasagna for Mother's Day

Years ago we stopped trying to fight the crowds to take Minx Mother-in-Law out for dinner on Mother's Day. Too many people jostling for reservations all at the same time, as if this one day out of the year is the only time Mom deserves to put her apron down and have someone else cook for her. Heaven forbid that the children that she fed every day for years dirty their hands in the kitchen though - it's gotta be a restaurant!

It didn't take too many years to figure out that we were doing it wrong, so now we cook for Mom and eat at her house. However, as I hate cooking in her puny, counterless, one-butt kitchen, I prefer that we prepare as much of the dinner at Casa Minx as possible and then take it to her place either ready-to-eat or requiring only a few minutes in the microwave or oven to re-heat.

The flatbread lasagna that Mr Minx made a few weeks ago was such a success, I thought we'd make it for Mother's Day. In the fridge we had a ton of home-made sauce, spicy and chock-full of meatballs, mild Italian sausage, and pork chops, a "Sunday Gravy" despite the fact we had made it on a Thursday, that was perfect for layering with naan-style flatbreads and cheese. And this time we remembered the ricotta layer, which really made a difference. The lasagna tasted more like lasagna, rather than an extremely deep-dish pizza.

I put it together Sunday morning, baked it at home, and by the time we got to Mom's it was still warm. I popped it in a slow oven (200F) to keep it warm and when we were ready to eat a few hours later, it was perfect.

In addition to adding more-lasagna-ness to the dish, the ricotta also prevented it from slicing as neatly as last time, so we had to sacrifice presentation for flavor. But my plating leaves a lot to be desired most of the time anyway. :)

What did you do for your Mom on Mother's Day?

Flatbread Lasagna

The April issue of Food & Wine magazine has an intriguing recipe for lasagna made with flatbreads instead of pasta. I love lasagna, but seldom want to deal with cooking and untangling lasagna noodles. And forget the no-cook variety - they require far too much sauce and often end up a soupy mess.

We had a bunch of leftover sauce, meatballs, and Italian sausages in the fridge so I figured now was a good time to try out this flatbread thing. Mr Minx prepared the dish for Wednesday's dinner, and I couldn't wait to get home from work to try it.

This is what greeted me when I walked into the kitchen:

Hello, handsome!

And this is what it looked like cut into portions:

As you could probably guess, this "lasagna" was more like a deep dish pizza than anything. Nothing wrong with that - I love a good pizza, and they are oh-so-rare in this neck of the woods. The sauce and meatballs were home-made, and the sausage had been grilled, so this dish was packed with flavor. But...there seemed to be something missing.

Me: The ricotta cheese must have become one with the middle layer of naan, because I am not tasting it.

Mr Minx: Ricotta? Damn, I knew I forgot something.

No worries. We'll find another use for the ricotta. I can eat that stuff with a spoon directly out of the container and be satisfied, but I may mix it with vanilla, sugar, and cinnamon and call it cannoli filling. But back to the lasagna....

Although it's not the real deal, neither pizza nor lasagna, it's an interesting hybrid of both, and I can imagine adapting the recipe by using different meats (or no meat), mushrooms, spinach, maybe a bechamel instead of ricotta and/or the tomato sauce. The magazine also gives recipes for using naans or Greek pitas in pizza (obvious - and we've done that already), burritos (what? too thick!), and the Web exclusive dessert panini (maybe a use for my ricotta). Personally, I like naans for soaking up the sauce of Indian food, and Greek pitas slathered with tzatziki and maybe some grilled lamb. How about you?