Making Italian Lasagna

Lisa Horton said:

Hi. I want to cook/bake a Lasagna for the first time. Will I need to
buy fresh pasta, or can I use the dry in the box? They also sell the
dry kind that you don't need to boil; is that any good? Should I make
my own meat sauce, or is there a decent kind of meat sauce that comes
in a jar or can? What types of cheese do I need, ricotta and
mozzerella, thats all?

Any advice would be a big help. Recipes would be even bigger.

Thanks!

A Newlywed

The OP may be serious and made a mistake, or could be an
attempt to flood off topic.
**********

I use provolone when making lasagne. Here is a recipe which
I have found to be quite good, you can experiment with
additions or substitutions to a degree. For instance instead
of mozzarella, I use provolone.

CookWare(tm) from Cooking Light(r)

Classic Lasagna Plus 2

SOURCE: Yankee Main Dish Church Supper Cookbook (excerpts)
PAGE:
20

INGREDIENTS FOR 6 SERVINGS:
1 pound ground beef (or turkey/chicken)
3/4 cup onions, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 28-oz. can Italian tomatoes
2 6-oz. cans tomato paste
2 cubes water
4 tablespoons parsley, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon pepper, black
1/2 teaspoon oregano leaves
8 ounces lasagna
1 pound ricotta cheese
8 ounces mozzarella cheese, shredded
1 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
3 whole hardboiled eggs, sliced
2 cups zucchini, thinly sliced

INSTRUCTIONS:
The eggs and zucchini are the two pluses - make the "Total"
difference!

In large heavy pan, lightly brown beef and onion in oil.
Then
add next 8 items and simmer uncovered about 30 minutes.
Meanwhile cook lasagna as directed. In 9"x13" baking pan
spread
about 1 cup of sauce. then alternate layers of Lasagna,
sauce,
cottage cheese, mozzarella, Parmesan, hard-boiled eggs, and
zucchini, ending with sauce, mozzarella, and Parmesan.

Bake at 350°F. for 40-50 minutes until lightly browned and
bubling.

NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION:

You can use any of the three, though dry in a box whose lable says it has to
be boiled really does have to be boiled. The up side is that it has a better
consistency, at least for me, than the kind that comes dry in a box and you
can put directly into your lasagna pan. The downside for the kind you have
to boil is that it takes longer and is more involved. The choice is up to
you. If you do decide to go with the no-boil kind, remember to make the
sauces more liquid than you might otherwise (not soupy, but more liquid)
because the pasta will absorb moisture as it cooks.

As for taking stuff out of a can, your lasagna will taste, well, like
something out of a can. It's not that much harder to start from scratch, and
if you make a larger batch of the meat sauce (or whatever) you can freeze
half for another time. Also, if you start from scratch you aren't beholden
to the tastes of the people who put out the jars.

You'll find lots of ideas on the baked pasta page of my site, at
http://italianfood.about.com/library/weekly/aa102298.htm

Kyle
http://italianfood.about.com

"Lisa Horton" <[email hidden]> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hi. I want to cook/bake a Lasagna for the first time. Will I need to
buy fresh pasta, or can I use the dry in the box? They also sell the
dry kind that you don't need to boil; is that any good? Should I make
my own meat sauce, or is there a decent kind of meat sauce that comes
in a jar or can? What types of cheese do I need, ricotta and
mozzerella, thats all?

Any advice would be a big help. Recipes would be even bigger.

Thanks!

A Newlywed

Kyle Phillips said:

You can use any of the three, though dry in a box whose lable says it has to
be boiled really does have to be boiled. The up side is that it has a better
consistency, at least for me, than the kind that comes dry in a box and you
can put directly into your lasagna pan. The downside for the kind you have
to boil is that it takes longer and is more involved

I've given up boiling lasagna before baking. It
doesn't require a special box of noodles, but as
you mention, thinning the sauce is a must, as well
as adding more sauce than you think you need. It
works great to make ahead even, baking later.
I've done my manicotti this way also.
Baked initially covered, then uncovered the last
20 min or so.
Goomba

"A. H. Carter" <[email hidden]> wrote in message

Quoted message said:

The OP may be serious and made a mistake, or could be an
attempt to flood off topic.
**********

This is becoming a favorite way to start internal wars on groups about OT
postings and cross posting.

TOliver said:

"Lisa Horton" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hi. I want to cook/bake a Lasagna for the first time. Will I need to
buy fresh pasta, or can I use the dry in the box? They also sell the
dry kind that you don't need to boil; is that any good? Should I make
my own meat sauce, or is there a decent kind of meat sauce that comes
in a jar or can? What types of cheese do I need, ricotta and
mozzerella, thats all?

Any advice would be a big help. Recipes would be even bigger.

Thanks!

A Newlywed

Unless your capabilities between the sheets are greater than the culinary
skills demonstrated in your post.....

First, find a recipe, online or even in a most basic sort of cookbook....

Second, for most occasions and most of us, the "dry in the box" pasta works
fine and serves adequately. The precooked stuff is a demonic product of
subversive forces bent on destruction of Italo-Merkin traditions. "Fresh"
lasagna pasta is for cooks who have alreadfy proven themselves capable of
assembling and combining the other components with flair and skill. You're
simply not ready for that step up.

Most lasagna - except in American resaurants - does not come with meat
sauce, and Italian traditionalists (and lasagna seems - at least to
travelers not able to dine in homes - far more popular in the US than in
Italy) are largely unfamiliar with "meaty" lasagna. A decent pasta sauce,
even some of the bottled "premium" brands,
over-priced and often over-aggrandized and promoted, works fine, the
"chunky" sort
being preferable to my palate. Within its layers, lasagna may contain
little or much, from greens to artichokes to hard boiled eggs and even
beyond in one little
restaurant I recall.

...But by Golly, you sweet young thang, you must learn to make tomato sauce,
an accomplishment far more significant than you might imagine, right up
there with skilled frottage.

<LOL> Wonderful pragmatism...

Post left intact in case missed the first time around.

A veritable life-manual.

Pastorio

Quoted message said:

Try skipping lasagna for a simpler dish, pasta
"a la puttanesca", "[censored] Style", a very simple sauce legendarily whipped up
by the prostitutes of Naples to satisfy the late night appetities and
restore the vigor of clients.

Cheeses? Lasagna in the US generally comes with mozzarella, ricotta and the
sawdust, "Parmesan" which passes for the real stuff. At my house we use
pecorino (aged) for grating, but after having a friend demand cheese to
grate atop his bowl of pasta with clams, I hide even that. In Italy, the
types and manner of employment of cheeses may vary widely, with some
areas,especially in Eastern Sicily and the Adriatic littoral, where cream
sauces, most "cheese-fortified", are used instead of ricotta, as in some
Greek dishes.

I gather your mother, while she may not have skimped on the birds and the
bees part, short changed you when it came to cooking education, in the long
run vastly more important that sex for which the permutations and positions
remain pretty limited compared to those available in the kitchen (although
an occasional bit of preprandial over-the-counter hankypanky is exhilarating
if you remember to move the knives and the grater).

Not too old for good lasagna or the other stuff either.....

TOliver said:

"Lisa Horton" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hi. I want to cook/bake a Lasagna for the first time. Will I need to
buy fresh pasta, or can I use the dry in the box? They also sell the
dry kind that you don't need to boil; is that any good? Should I make
my own meat sauce, or is there a decent kind of meat sauce that comes
in a jar or can? What types of cheese do I need, ricotta and
mozzerella, thats all?

Any advice would be a big help. Recipes would be even bigger.

Thanks!

A Newlywed

Unless your capabilities between the sheets are greater than the culinary
skills demonstrated in your post.....

First, find a recipe, online or even in a most basic sort of cookbook....

Second, for most occasions and most of us, the "dry in the box" pasta works
fine and serves adequately. The precooked stuff is a demonic product of
subversive forces bent on destruction of Italo-Merkin traditions. "Fresh"
lasagna pasta is for cooks who have alreadfy proven themselves capable of
assembling and combining the other components with flair and skill. You're
simply not ready for that step up.

Most lasagna - except in American resaurants - does not come with meat
sauce, and Italian traditionalists (and lasagna seems - at least to
travelers not able to dine in homes - far more popular in the US than in
Italy) are largely unfamiliar with "meaty" lasagna. A decent pasta sauce,
even some of the bottled "premium" brands,
over-priced and often over-aggrandized and promoted, works fine, the
"chunky" sort
being preferable to my palate. Within its layers, lasagna may contain
little or much, from greens to artichokes to hard boiled eggs and even
beyond in one little
restaurant I recall.

...But by Golly, you sweet young thang, you must learn to make tomato sauce,
an accomplishment far more significant than you might imagine, right up
there with skilled frottage.

<LOL> Wonderful pragmatism...

Post left intact in case missed the first time around.

A veritable life-manual.

Pastorio

Quoted message said:

Try skipping lasagna for a simpler dish, pasta
"a la puttanesca", "[censored] Style", a very simple sauce legendarily whipped up
by the prostitutes of Naples to satisfy the late night appetities and
restore the vigor of clients.

Cheeses? Lasagna in the US generally comes with mozzarella, ricotta and the
sawdust, "Parmesan" which passes for the real stuff. At my house we use
pecorino (aged) for grating, but after having a friend demand cheese to
grate atop his bowl of pasta with clams, I hide even that. In Italy, the
types and manner of employment of cheeses may vary widely, with some
areas,especially in Eastern Sicily and the Adriatic littoral, where cream
sauces, most "cheese-fortified", are used instead of ricotta, as in some
Greek dishes.

I gather your mother, while she may not have skimped on the birds and the
bees part, short changed you when it came to cooking education, in the long
run vastly more important that sex for which the permutations and positions
remain pretty limited compared to those available in the kitchen (although
an occasional bit of preprandial over-the-counter hankypanky is exhilarating
if you remember to move the knives and the grater).

Not too old for good lasagna or the other stuff either.....

"TOliver" <[email hidden]> ha scritto nel messaggio

Quoted message said:

Most lasagna - except in American resaurants - does not come with meat
sauce, and Italian traditionalists (and lasagna seems - at least to
travelers not able to dine in homes - far more popular in the US than in
Italy) are largely unfamiliar with "meaty" lasagna....

Um, this may be true in some parts of Italy, but not all. In Emilia Romagan
and Tuscany, for example, the standard winter lasagna is made with a meat
sauce made with ground beef (sugo alla Bolognese), bechamel sauce, and
grated cheese. It's a Sunday and special occasion dish, which is why one
doesn't encounter it that often in Italian (in Italy) homes (you've got to
remember that until after WWII much of the Italian population was too poor
to eat meat of any kind more than a couple of times a week, and some dishes,
for example Neapolitan Lasagne di Carnevale, which are very rich, required
weeks of saving).

If you set a lasagna made with a red sauce in front of my Florentine
father-in-law he might eat it, but he also might not. If the lasagna laso
had ricotta, or meatballs (or both) he definitely wouldn't, because he's
traditional in his prefarences and neither are part of the Tuscan tradition
when it comes to lasagna. Both are more southern. Nobody (well, hardly
anyone) in Italy would eat a heavy meaty or tomato and cheese lasagna in
summer, except perhaps on Ferragosto (Aug 15), when people often cook up
very rich fare.

What you do get, if you're within the Ligurian sphere, is lasagne al pesto
in the summer, made with the standard basil and pine nut pesto sauce and
(usually) a white sauce, and they're quite nice.

Kyle
http://italianfood.about.com

TOliver said:

First, find a recipe, online or even in a most basic sort of cookbook...

Like this one:
Lasagna Cristofalo (original version) from the kitchen of Nick Cramer, who
expresses his gratitude to his daughter, Janet Lynn Trenier, née Cramer,
for providing him with the only extant copy of the vegetarian version
after his computer crashed. The uncooked lasagna version (great!) is new;
more time, less work.

Ingredients revised by Doug Weller
Sauce
2 lbs. ground or chunked meat (beef, veal, lamb, pork, chicken, sausage,
roadkill or any mixture thereof, I do not recommend chorizo unless you
are feeling adventurous) (I, Doug Weller, used beef and some Sicilian
sausage)
¼ cup olive oil
6 to 60 cloves garlic
1 onion
12 mushroom caps
celery
green pepper
1 tsp. paprika
¼ tsp. turmeric
1/4 tsp. saffron (optional)
1 pinch cayenne, or more to taste
4 lbs or 2 large cans tomatoes (if using uncooked lasagna, make it 6 lbs.
9 oz. or 3 cans)
1 can tomato paste
1 cup dry red wine, 2 to 3 cups if making the uncooked lasagna version
(HIGHLY recommended, optional, but don't worry, the alcohol will boil off
and only the flavor will be left)

½ tsp. marjoram
½ tsp. thyme
½ tsp. rosemary
½ tsp. to 1 tbs. oregano
½ tsp. to 1 tbs. basil
¼ tsp. black pepper, ground
¼ tsp. nutmeg

¼ tsp. Worcestershire sauce (optional - try it)
¼ tsp. tarragon
1 tsp. mustard
¼ tsp. salt (if you must)
3 bay leaves

Pasta:
1 lb. Lasagna

Ricotta mixture:
1 egg
¼ cup bread crumbs
1 tsp. to 1 tbs. oregano
12 mushroom stems
½ lb. each of Ricotta and Mascarpone up to one cup wine or water or to
the consistency you like

Final assembly:
1 lb. Mozzarella cheese or ½ lb. each of mozzarella and provolone.
½ cup each grated Parmesan cheese and grated Romano cheese, mixed
½ tsp. to 1 tbs. sweet basil
¼ tsp. tarragon
up to 6 tbs. butter (optional)

Preparation of Lasagna Cristofalo:
Sauce:

Heat oil in large saucepan. If making the meat version, simmer
meat until almost done, seasoning it to your taste. Crush or finely
dice garlic, add (to meat) and brown lightly. Chop onion, add and brown
lightly. Stem mushrooms, setting stems aside. Quarter or slice mushroom
caps and add them, paprika, turmeric, (saffron) and cayenne. Mix, cover
and simmer. Chop or crush tomatoes, then add them, tomato paste, (wine)
and remaining sauce spices to (meat), garlic, onion, mushroom mixture.
Mix, cover and simmer up to 3 hours.

Ricotta mixture:

Beat egg, combine with bread crumbs and oregano and set aside.
Finely chop mushroom stems and mix them with egg, breadcrumb mixture,
wine or water and ricotta or ricotta and mascarpone cheese. Separate into
thirds, cover and set aside.

Final assembly:

Thin slice Mozzarella or mozzarella and provolone and divide stack into
thirds.

When cooked, drain lasagna and rinse in cold water to stop cooking.
Divide stack in fourths and leave in cold water. (if making uncooked
lasagne version, obviously skip this step, too)

Prepare 9" x 13" x 3" casserole pan with several spoonfuls (if lasagne
uncooked, make it ½ " thick) of sauce on the bottom, then add layers from
the bottom up, as follows (NOTE: if lasagna uncooked, put a thin layer of
sauce between the lasagna, grated cheese and ricotta, too):

Bottom: lasagna, [see NOTE above] ricotta, mozzarella, sauce, grated
cheese, [see NOTE above]

Thenlasagna, [see NOTE above] ricotta, mozzarella, sauce, grated cheese,
[see NOTE above]

Again lasagna, [see NOTE above] ricotta, mozzarella, sauce, grated
cheese, [see NOTE above]

Top lasagna (if uncooked lasagna, make sure you leave enough sauce to
COMPLETELY cover the lasagna), sauce, grated cheese.

Sprinkle with basil and tarragon, put butter on top if you want it
crunchy on top, cover with foil and bake 20 minutes in a moderate (375
F.) [1 ½ hours at 325 if lasagna not pre-cooked] oven. Uncover and bake
five [to 20] minutes more or until golden-brown on top. Allow to set up
to 20 minutes (if you can wait that long) before serving. Serves 6.

Doug

--
Doug Weller -- exorcise the demon to reply
Doug & Helen's Dogs http://www.dougandhelen.com
A Director and Moderator of The Hall of Ma'at http://www.hallofmaat.com
Doug's Archaeology Site: http://www.ramtops.co.uk

In article <[email hidden]>, Doug Weller

Quoted message said:

Ingredients revised by Doug Weller
Sauce
2 lbs. ground or chunked meat (beef, veal, lamb, pork, chicken, sausage,
roadkill or any mixture thereof, I do not recommend chorizo unless you
are feeling adventurous) (I, Doug Weller, used beef and some Sicilian
sausage)
¼ cup olive oil
6 to 60 cloves garlic
1 onion
12 mushroom caps
celery
green pepper
1 tsp. paprika
¼ tsp. turmeric
1/4 tsp. saffron (optional)
1 pinch cayenne, or more to taste
4 lbs or 2 large cans tomatoes (if using uncooked lasagna, make it 6 lbs.
9 oz. or 3 cans)
1 can tomato paste
1 cup dry red wine, 2 to 3 cups if making the uncooked lasagna version
(HIGHLY recommended, optional, but don't worry, the alcohol will boil off
and only the flavor will be left)

½ tsp. marjoram
½ tsp. thyme
½ tsp. rosemary
½ tsp. to 1 tbs. oregano
½ tsp. to 1 tbs. basil
¼ tsp. black pepper, ground
¼ tsp. nutmeg

¼ tsp. Worcestershire sauce (optional - try it)
¼ tsp. tarragon
1 tsp. mustard
¼ tsp. salt (if you must)
3 bay leaves

This may make a lasagne, but not an Italian one (as specified in the
subject). A dish containing celery, green pepper, turmeric, paprika,
cayenne, marjoram, rosemary , thyme, oregano, basil, worcestershire
sauce, bay leaves, and mustard is about as good a definition there is
of what Italian cookery is *not* about.

Less is more. To make a dish taste Italian, you might use oregano OR
sage OR rosemary OR basil, and you should know which. I can't say
you'll never, but you'll very rarely use this sort of combination.

The great thing about good italian cooking is its careful, elegant
simplicity.

Lazarus

--
Remover the rock from the email address