I also made lasagna for a dinner last night to celebrate my DIL. I put it together on Monday, baked it for 20-25 minutes and then let it cool and refrigerated. Yesterday I took it out and cut it into pieces before the final bake. It did help to sort of keep “pieces” intact. I did not have ricotta but put an egg, cottage cheese, parm, salt, pepper and some basil and parsley into a blender and blended it smooth and put that in the layers along with mozzarella, provolone and shaved parm. I used a blend of ground beef and ground pork.
Just put my traditional Christmas Eve lasagna in the oven. H is napping, and I’m listening to Christmas music while enjoying a well earned glass of wine. I cleaned & prepped all day. I’m happy, but this old lady is tired!
I assembled a lasagna, baked ziti and baked ravioli today for tomorrow’s festivities. I made the ziti and lasagna with a combination of ground beef and Italian sausage and the ravioli without meat.
I decided instead of a lasagna (because we can never a big tray to cook in time!), I would make a baked rigatoni (based on a lasagna recipe I have), so if I needed to, and I did need to, I could stir it part way through cooking. We made two super full, super heavy 9 x 13 pans! I think next time, I will not put cheese on top but stir part way thru and then sprinkle the cheese on top and finish baking.
Ricotta is preferable because the curd is much, much smaller; it has less liquid; and it’s easier to spread and fluffier than cottage cheese. It’s a turn-off to see those relatively large cottage cheese boulders rather than the fluffy ricotta. But obviously it comes down to personal taste. These are just likely the main reasons that ricotta is preferred among (US) purists.
This is why I blend my cottage cheese in a blender adding egg, parm, salt, pepper and any herbs just like I would with a ricotta mixture. Blended the cottage cheese becomes smooth.
I did find a brand of cottage cheese that looked just like ricotta in its consistency this time around. Maybe it’s been put in a blender prior to packagaing.
I did a google search on ricotta vs cottage cheese, and that’s where I found that the calories are 1/2 and the fat content 1/4 of lasagna using ricotta. On this particular date, I was trying to respect that it was right before Thanksgiving and people were anticipating lots of splurging ahead.
LOL - cottage cheese in lasagna never bothers me because it’s what my mother used. I actually do find it a little easier to spread the cottage cheese than ricotta. But my husband and most people prefer ricotta, so that’s what I typically use.
A long time ago, Barilla made an Italian baking sauce, which was absolutely amazing for lasagna. They discontinued it, but I believe it was a touch sweeter and probably had a bit more sugar than their regular marinara sauce. I did recently find a Private Selection (Kroger brand) Imported Marinara that was pretty good. I do miss that Barilla sauce, though!
My lasagna sauce is basically the marcella hazan bolognese, which is close to how our family-friend nonna makes it in Modena (half an hour from Bologna…).
Dice half a large onion, a rib of celery, and a carrot — mince the carrot because it takes longer to soften.
Cook the veg in a large skillet, in a pat of butter or tablespoon of olive oil, seasoned with S&P.
Add a pound of ground beef or 3/4 pound ground beef and 1/4 pound ground pork.
Cook the meat and spoon out the fat.
Season the meat and veg with nutmeg (hazan) and garlic (me).
Add a cup of beef broth or stock. Stir well and occasionally, med-low heat, and simmer 30 minutes.
Add a cup of dry white wine, like pinot grigio or chardonnay. not red (red is a southern italian application, and this is a northern italian sauce. the tannins are too strong and ruin the balance.) Another 30 minutes on a low simmer.
Add a can of san marzano tomatoes or plum tomatoes if you don’t want to spend $5 on the SMs. Put heat to low and let it get happy for a couple hours. Stir between drinks of wine.
Add a cup of whole milk or cream. Stir well and let that go another 20ish minutes.
this sauce should be pretty thick, resembling an orange sloppy joe. That’s proper. Taste and re-season… you can add italian seasoning,but that’s not ragu bolognese. But do as you please.
Cook your favorite pasta. Penne and rigatoni work great if you want to hammer your plate, but if you want long noodles you want tagliatelle. If you cannot find that, use fettuccine or linguine.
Combine the sauce with the pasta. Season with parm. (my add…)
Let it sit and then use that as your lasagna sauce.
