Friday, October 31, 2008

Four Foods On Friday 53

This weeks’ meme is all about carbs. Thank goodness I’m not (re)starting South Beach until next week! Here are this week’s four questions.

1. What kind of pretzels are your favorite?
Although Hubby adores them, I’m not much of a pretzel girl. That said; I do occasionally enjoy a nice bag of Rolled Gold pretzels with spicy mustard for dipping.

2. What’s your favorite way to eat pancakes?
I’m Canadian, which means that I only use pancakes as a socially acceptable vehicle through which I can consume copious amounts of real maple syrup.

3. Do you make garlic bread from scratch or buy frozen?
My mother makes incredibly tasty garlic bread but I’m lazy so either I go to her house for homemade (which isn’t really feasible since we live on different continents) or I buy it.

4. Share a recipe that calls for mozzarella cheese.
I like this lasagna recipe, which I based off of one of Giada De Laurentiis’s. I have all her cookbooks but can’t remember which one this was in.

Ingredients
1½ cup béchamel sauce
1½ cups tomato sauce
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1lb ground beef or veal (a combination always works nicely)
8oz ricotta cheese
3 large eggs
1 box of precooked lasagna sheets (ready to use)
3 cups shredded mozzarella
¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Make your béchamel and tomato sauces. Combine them together to make a smooth pink sauce. Set aside.

3. In a sauté pan, heat the olive oil. Add the ground beef and season generously to taste. Meat is one of the most important flavours in a good lasagna so when it comes to seasoning your meat, go big or go to Olive Garden. Brown meat, breaking any large lumps, until it is no longer pink. Remove from heat and drain any excess fat. Set aside and allow to cool completely.

4. In a medium sized bowl, thoroughly mix the ricotta and eggs. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

5. Into the bottom of a 13x9 baking dish, spread 1/3 of the béchamel sauce. Arrange the pasta sheets side by side, covering the bottom of the baking dish. Evenly spread a layer of all the ricotta mixture and 1/3 of the mozzarella. Arrange another layer of pasta sheets and spread all the ground beef on top. Sprinkle 1/3 the mozzarella cheese on top of the beef. Spread another 1/3 of the béchamel sauce. Arrange the final layer of pasta sheets and top with remaining béchamel, mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses.

6. Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil in case of spillage. Place lasagna dish on top, and put it on the middle rack of the oven. Bake until the top is bubbling, about 30-40 minutes.

As good as this recipe is fresh from the oven, I found it even better the next day!

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Someone after my own heart, I love lasagne. I'll be making it for lunch next week, requested by my kids.

Connie said...

I love pretzels and mustard! Melted cheese only works on the soft bread pretzels - otherwise it has to be mustard.

Gutsy Living said...

Can you get ricotta cheese in Egypt?
So happy you're going to enter the writing contest. Just wanted to say, I've changed it to 500 words max, instead of 400 words.

Keys to the Magic Travel said...

Love lasagna. I haven't made it in a while. But my family prefers white lasagna with lots of chicken and garlic.

I am so with you on the pretzels. We had some chex mix the other day...and I eat around the pretzels. Now...there are some really good honey mustard pretzels. But I can't buy them because I'll eat the whole bag and my fingers turn yellow so I can't plead ignorance :-)

Anonymous said...

That post made me hungry!
OK, this is my other blog, but it's super obnoxious! I'm an anti-Obama person, and on that blog I just spew spew spew. Much of it is hyper emotional after I watch the news hahahaha. fallthenfly.blogspot.com

Anele said...

Mmm pretzels and mustard!

Anonymous said...

I love Rold Gold, too. My favorite dip for them is ranch dressing.

Anonymous said...

Can you believe I've never had real maple syrup!

Anonymous said...

A friend gets his own syrup straight from the tree and makes maple syrup. Yummmm.

Anonymous said...

What is béchamel sauce? I'm probably the only one who doesn't know. :)
I think a lot of us like lasagna!!