Lasagna must be one of the most-decadent of all heavy comfort foods, and everyone has their favorite recipe. Before you trade out your comfort-food recipes for the lighter fare of spring, consider lasagna. It must be one of the most-decadent of all heavy comfort foods, and everyone has their favorite recipe.
There are recipes that call for using unbaked lasagna noodles, allowing them to bake in the oven with the juices from the tomatoes. It’s OK, but nothing special. Then there are the recipes that call for pre-made spaghetti sauce. Forget those. You might as well settle for a pan of frozen, store-bought lasagna. Same goes for those recipes calling for store-bought marinara sauce.
Lasagna lends itself to endless ingredients. Call it a tasty catch-all for leftover meat, seafood, vegetables and cheeses ranging from blue and goat to cheddar and Monterey Jack.
But too often, a slice of home-cooked lasagna lands on your plate as a soupy mess of sauce, cheese and pasta still quite pleasing to the palate but not to the eye. That’s what happened to me all too often.
Never one to call it quits, I decided to try again. My motto when trying to get a recipe right: Nothing ventured, nothing gained. In the case of lasagna, gaining weight is another issue. Lasagna isn’t diet food, so I don’t try different lasagna recipes every month. More like every few years.