Lasagne

I grew up calling this dish lasagna, spelling it with a final "a." In French it's spelled lasagne. Both words are Italian. The former is singular, the latter is plural. Since the word refers to the broad flat noodle used to make the dish, it makes sense that it should be plural; most lasagne dishes contain more than one lasagna noodle. Maybe we spelled it with a final "a" because both words are essentially pronounced alike, and the final bit sounds like an "a?"

Assembled, ready for the oven.

Whatever the spelling, I love lasagne and we make it several times a year. It's pretty easy and it freezes very well. There are so many ways to make a lasagne dish, including using a béchamel sauce in the place of tomato. It all depends what you've got on hand and what you feel like eating.

I started out on Saturday by making a tomato sauce that included sautéed onion, shallot, garlic, carrot, and bell pepper. I added a can of roma tomatoes, some leftover tomato juice from the freezer, and some wine, salt, pepper, bay leaf, thyme, celery seed, and smoked paprika. Then I ground up some bourguignon that we also had in the freezer and sautéed it with s & p, smoked paprika, and cayenne. This got mixed into the sauce and simmered for a couple hours.

Baked lasagne, ready to eat!

In the meantime, I cooked some frozen spinach and cleaned, sliced, and sautéed some mushrooms. The spinach and mushrooms and sauce were all layered into the pan with the noodles and both mozzarella and ricotta cheese. Then it went into the oven and baked for about forty-five minutes.

What a great lunch! And I froze most of it in two packages that will feed Ken and me for two meals in the month ahead.