We are past the Thanksgiving and Christmas food indulgence and heading on toward New Year. That also means I am heading on toward going back to work the first part of January and starting to think ahead to having some easy freezer meals on hand.
Clayton made these lasagnas on Christmas. The intention was to have lasagna on Christmas and then finish off the leftovers the day after, which worked out really well. It also gave me a nice break from the whirlwind of cooking I’ve been doing. So far the list of winter break cooking has been chicken tikka masala, garlic naan (twice), marshmallows, biscotti, chocolate croissants, almond paste, almond croissants, French dip (including homemade Hoagie rolls), Meyer lemon jam, and fruit salad. (I’ll post a full list of what I was up to for the two weeks of break and links to recipes after the New Year). This might be why lasagna for two nights suddenly sounded really good when we were doing our menu planning.
I used to not be a lasagna fan. However, the combination of home canned tomatoes, roasted garlic and Italian sausage in this won me over. The fact this makes two generous pans of lasagna, which freezes well is another plus.
The recipe takes a bit of prep time, but is fairly simple to assemble. I usually roast the garlic the day before, which give the garlic plenty of time to cool and makes it easy to pop out of the garlic peels. The photos are from the second night of the lasagna, thus the slightly crispy edges. I also decided to serve it tonight with a bit of garlic bread (using leftover Hoagie rolls) and some salad greens with a few sprinkled hazelnuts. All and all, with a bit of fruitcake for dessert, this is a great post-indulgence meal.
Clayton’s Box-Top Roasted Garlic Lasagna
Serves 8
1 box dried lasagna noodles
½ package of a ball of mozzarella cheese, sliced into thin slices
½ cup parmesan cheese
Meat and Sauce Layer
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, diced
1 garlic head, roasted*
1 pound of Italian sausage (frozen works fine in this recipe)
2 cans of diced tomatoes (I used 2 16 ounce jars from my canning stash)
2 tablespoons dried Italian seasoning
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup red wine
2 tablespoons cornstarch
Cheese Layer
1 15 ounce tub of ricotta cheese
½ cup parmesan cheese
¼ cup grated mozzarella cheese
1 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
A few grinds of black pepper
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
Preparing the Parts
Start by making the sauce. In a saucepan, sauté the diced onions in the olive oil and butter until they are slightly browned. Add in the diced tomatoes, roasted garlic, sausage, Italian seasonings, red wine and salt and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and simmer for an hour. At the end of an hour, if the sausage is still very chunky, you can use an immersion blender to break up the sausage into smaller pieces. Add the cornstarch to thicken the sauce and stir thoroughly.
About 50 minutes into the sauce simmering, boil water for the lasagna noodles in a large pot. When the water boils, add the lasagna noodles and cook for 6 minutes. The noodles will be al dente, but will cook more while the lasagna bakes. Drain the noodles.
Prepare the cheese layer by combining the ricotta cheese, ½ cup of the parmesan cheese, ¼ cup of grated mozzarella, Italian seasonings and black pepper in a bowl.
Assembling the Lasagna
I used two 9 x 7 inch glass pans for the lasagnas. These have the advantage of having lids, so they are great for freezing leftovers.
Prepare the first pan. Ladle about a ½ cup of sauce as the base. This will help prevent the noodles from sticking during baking. Layer a single layer of noodles next. Ladle another ½ cup of sauce. Layer another single layer of noodles. Dollops half the cheese mixture next and then spread it gently over the noodles. Layer another single layer of noodles. Ladle another ½ cup of sauce, and then another single layer of noodles and then a final ½ cup of sauce. Finish by layer half of the sliced mozzarella cheese over the top and sprinkle ¼ cup of the remaining parmesan cheese on top of that.
Use the remaining ingredients to assemble the second lasagna.
If you are baking one or more of the lasagnas right away, bake at 350 degrees for thirty minutes.
Frozen lasagnas will take closer to an hour at 350 degrees. If the cheese or noodles start to brown, cover with foil and finish baking.
*To roast garlic, cut the top 1/8th or so off a head of garlic, exposing the garlic cloves. Drizzle a bit of olive oil over the garlic and wrap it up in foil. Bake for about an hour at 350 degrees. Let cool – this can be refrigerated overnight for easy peeling the next day.