Cooking with Amy: Lasagna

Ricotta cheese has always been on my "dislike with a passion" food list.

Yes, I have one of those. It's completely internal and I could give you several reasons why each food enters the list. It's not just taste, sometimes it's texture, sometimes it's the way it looks, sometimes it's just because.

While I wouldn't go so far as to say that ricotta has been removed from this list of foods, it has at least moved to a different section of said list. Yes, there are sections.

This whole list thing is very complicated.

After I wouldn't eat my Mom's lasagna, she substituted a different cheese for the ricotta.

So when Amy wanted to make lasagna, I was willing to try it, but I didn't think I would like it. But it tasted pretty darn good!

What you'll need:

3/4 lb ground beef

1/4 lb ground Italian sausage

1 package lasagna noodles

3 cups tomato sauce

16 oz ricotta cheese*

1 egg

1/2 cup parmesan cheese

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

16 oz fresh mozzarella

Tin foil

How you do it:

Preheat oven to 35o degrees.

Cook lasagna noodles according to the directions on the box.

Combine the beef and the Italian sausage and cook until completely done. Add the combined meat to the sauce.

Mix the ricotta in a bowl with the egg, parmesan and Italian seasoning.

Spread about a tablespoon of plain tomato sauce on the bottom of a casserole dish. This keeps the noodles from sticking after it's been baked. Lay one layer of cooked lasagna noodles along the bottom of the pan, usually 3 noodles.

Spread a thin layer of ricotta mixture on each noodle, then add the tomato-meat sauce and sprinkle a layer of mozzarella on top. Top each layer with a layer of noodles and repeat.

After you have three layers, or the top of the pan has been reached, spread the additional tomato sauce and cheese.

Tent the tinfoil over the pan. (Tenting the tinfoil keeps it from sticking to the cheese.) And cook for 40 minutes. Remove the tinfoil and cook for an additional 15 minutes.

Add some garlic bread, a glass of wine and fresh parmesan! And then, of course...Enjoy.

*As a long-time non-ricotta eater, you can replace the ricotta with pretty much any kind of cheese. Cheddar is pretty much amazing, as is swiss!