In preparation for Valentine’s Day dinner (we decided to eat at home this year), I’m trying to make a yummy lasagna for Al. My brother loves lasagna but my mom never makes it at home. The only time we get it is when we have dinner at my Aunt Kit’s place because it’s always part of the Christmas menu. Last year, however, we didn’t go to her place for Christmas dinner so Dave was starved of his favourite pasta dish.
Anyways, I didn’t expect to get the barista job so quickly so instead of having all day today to make the sauce, I had to go in for training. Thank god lasagna is a lovely make ahead dish, so I did all the work for it on Saturday night. The basic idea of making lasagna is pretty simple, here’s the “formula”:
(layer of sauce, noodle, cheese) x 3 + 40-50 minutes baking time = lasagna
Easy right?! I had learned how to make an easy tomato beef sauce before so I made that first. While the sauce is cooking, I grated this block of mozzarella cheese. I had a hard time grating it because it was too soft so I ended up slicing it. Once the sauce is done, I cooked the noodles and then it’s off to the easy assemble part. Aside from using mozzarella cheese, I also added spoonfuls of ricotta cheese in between for more flavor. After it’s all done, I sprinkle the grated cheese on top (I placed the sliced cheese in the layers) and wrapped it up with plastic wrap and foil before sticking it in the fridge. All this took about 2 hours.
Today after I came home from standing 7 hours at the mall, I heat up the over, popped the dish (plastic wrap removed!) into the oven for 40 mins. Then I took out the foil and boiled the lasagna for 3 mins to melt the cheese on top. It turned out quite nicely except that since I used sliced cheese, there are “holes” where there were no cheese in between the layers. If I’ve added more cheese it would’ve tasted better. The sauce was really good and it’s just the right amount. I don’t like too much sauce (it looks like soup…) with my pastas.
Recipe will follow in up coming posts! For now enjoy the photos.
