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Have you ever bitten into a slab of oozing, Italian lasagna
and found that, despite all of the calories you know are in there, it is
really not all that tasty? Yeah, us too. That’s just not right.
First of all, one of the major flavoring and texturing
ingredients, ricotta cheese, really has very little taste. It has a nice
texture, all right, but what are we going to use for flavor?
Well, a lot of recipes we’ve seen, call for a “bottled”,
“store-bought” tomato sauce. We’re not saying that there are no reasonably
good store-line tomato sauces out there. We’ve tried some that are not all
that bad. But, they are, for the most part, infused with salt to help
kick up what might otherwise be a relatively “uninteresting” taste. Is that
what you want to serve your family? Or your dinner party guests?
Of course not, and neither do we. Therefore, we’ve developed
what we feel is a really “tasty” recipe, you’ll find below as “Our Homemade
Lasagna”. In this one, we make our own tomato sauce, using ingredients and a
gourmet cooking technique that greatly enhances the flavor. We add a
generous portion of sun-dried tomatoes, because their “concentrated” flavor
also intensifies the taste.
We have also included here some other lasagna variations,
plus a dish we call pasta moussaka, that is an Italian version of the
wonderful Greek lamb dish.
Keep in mind, that for any meat-based lasagna, you can use
ground beef, pork, lamb, veal, turkey, buffalo, game or any combination. You
can spice up a normally semi-interesting lasagna, with Italian or kielbasa
sausage. The sausage can be mixed in with the ground meat easily.
As for the pasta noodles, by far the most desirable method
is to make your own. This is a good
pasta maker that does it all and will hold up as long as most of us
will. We’ve tried the no-boil pasta, and we don’t particularly like it,
though it does save some time. If you don’t have a pasta maker, it is really
not that much of a hassle to boil the curly noodles that are common on every
grocery shelf.
Techniques for making lasagna are the type of articles
carried in some of our favorite cooking magazines, such as
Fine Cooking (May 2001 issue) and other instructional mags like
Cuisine At Home
and Intermezzo. As we uncover other lasagna variations we feel are
worthy of you, we will pass those along, of course. In the mean time, if you
really like to make lasagna, we’ve come across a really good
non-stick lasagna pan. So, check out some of these lasagna dishes and
start baking!
Buon appetito always!
Brought to you with love from
Aunt Aletha and Dear Old Dave
Meatball Lasagna Recipe (Our Homemade Lasagna)
New Italian Recipes Chicken Lasagna Alfredo
Pasta Moussaka Recipe
Other Pasta Recipes
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