Sharing a secret

Our family loves my lasagna! My Mom loves my lasagna! Our old neighbour Brian loves my lasagna!  Initially I was going to bake a few lasagna's for the rehearsal dinner but then covid interfered and it was not going to work to make.

I first started making lasagna after I had received the church cookbook from the church I attended as a kid, for a bridal shower gift.  In the book someone had posted a recipe which over the years I have perfected.

Often I would have left over spaghetti sauce from when I made it for the family.  I would freeze it and when I figured I had enough to make a batch of lasagna, I'd make it.  In my spaghetti sauce I would

• Brown 1 lb extra lean ground beef
• add 1 T minced garlic
• 1/2 finely diced onion
• salt
• pepper
• some sort of Catelli Pasta sauce (don't judge me, I was a busy mom of young kids so I used sauce from a jar rather than make my own)

Once that was cooked I prepare my "filling".  Mix these all together in a bowl

• 500ml 2% cottage cheese
• 1 pkg frozen spinach
• 1 egg
• 1 cup parm. cheese

Now you are ready to construct.  You take out your rectangle cake pan, like the one in the picture.  You take a scoop of the sauce and put it on the bottom of the baking dish. It does not need to be thick, it just needs to sort of sparingly cover the bottom.  Next put down 3 raw lasagna noodles, now another layer of meat sauce, this one a little thicker to cover all the noodles.  Next put down another 3 more lasagna noodles.  Now is the time for the cottage cheese/spinach mixture.  Layer that on those noodles.  One last layer of noodles and now the remaining sauce.  Now top your lasagna with shredded Motza cheese.  

Tent your lasagna with foil.  Try hard not to have the foil touching the lasagna. (Spraying it with pam helps it from sticking. ) Put it into a preheated oven of 375.  Bake for 50 minutes, remove it from the oven, take off the foil tent and put the lasagna back into the oven for 10 more minutes.

The trick to being able to cut your lasagna is letting it rest before you cut it.  I let mine rest for about 10 minutes.  During this time I put garlic bread into the oven and prepare a salad.  

And voila: