So….I think I’ve figured out a new way of doing my farmers market posts. A “round-up” photo of everything I got at the market on Thursday and a farmers market recipe using some of the produce on Saturday. I’m thinking this will give a more concrete idea of specific ways to use the produce…and it will give me a break from feeling like I have to come up with an elaborate meal plan for the entire week. Sometimes I just want to pull out the soup I stuck in the freezer back in March and not feel like I have to come up with a “pretend” meal plan for the blog.
As I mentioned in my recent black beans and rice post, we cut our ties with DirecTV recently and I have discovered how much I love America’s Test Kitchen. The test cooks at ATK test and retest recipes until they come up with the perfect way to make this dish or that dish. Perfect. They give great explanations, and they also do taste tests and product recommendations. Über love.
I’ve made veggie lasagnas in the past, but let’s just be honest here….vegetables have a lot of water in them. Lots of water = runny lasagna. You’ve got to find the way to cut down the amount of water. In the past, my vegetable lasagnas also contained jarred alfredo sauce-the horror! I always made it to imitate a vegetable lasagna that used to be served at dinner before my Monday night sorority meetings in college. I’m pretty sure it was Stouffer’s frozen lasagna. I rarely cook lasagna…it’s just too much for two people. So, instead of putting the lasagna in a rectangular pan like you would normally see, I make it in two square pans, one lined with aluminum foil that goes straight into the freezer. The other gets baked and we get at least two meals from it.
There’s nothing frozen here (unless you count the straight-into-the-freezer pan). It has tomato sauce, and it also has a creamy ricotta based sauce. I’m not going to lie…I did have a little (tiny!) bit of water in the bottom of my pan, but it wasn’t enough to make a difference. And it was delicious. My recipe is not exactly like America’s Test Kitchen’s…I added a little, took a little away, changed an ingredient here and there….but they set the foundation for the idea of this lasagna. I hope you enjoy.
By the way, it’s kind of an involved recipe. Not difficult….just a lot of steps. Read the recipe thoroughly and get organized ahead of time…this will cut down on the insanity. I tried to simplify my directions for assembly as much as possible, but if it sounds confusing, please let me know so that I can edit my instructions! I made my own ricotta using this recipe from Ricki Carroll. If you are interested, it’s super-easy. Here’s another recipe that I’ve used from Local Milk that’s also extremely easy.
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