‘Lasagna’ Articles at Sweetnicks

When it comes to cold weather months, days when daylight hours are getting short, times when to-do lists are longer than the hours we have … when you just need a break, we turn to comfort food.

I craved comfort food particularly after Hurricane Sandy. And then to combat the “comfort food diet,” I turned to plates and plates of roasted vegetables and fresh fruit.

There is something about Italian food, paticularly pasta, that always, without fail, screams comfort. It just wraps you up in a big warm blanket.

Of marinara sauce.

And ricotta.

And pasta. Oh pasta.

Especially lasagna. Or as Barilla spells it, lasagne.

It doesn’t get more comfort food than that, does it?

I usually keep a box of their oven-ready noodles on hand, for those weeknights when I don’t have the time to make a full-blown, from scratch, lasagna dish, but when the comfort food cravings are just too loud to bear.

With these noodles and a jar of sauce on hand, lasagna during the week becomes a possibility. A reality.

And the kids? As long as I include garlic bread, they can’t get enough of it. Using this recipe, you can be eating lasagna in an hour. No joke.

Hungry for more comfort food inspiration?
Barilla is having a #gno Twitter party on Wednesday, December 19 from 9-10 pm EST. Follow hashtag #BarillaLasagne to join in.
More Barilla lasagne recipes, including several with vegetables!, can be found here.
You can also follow Barilla on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest for more pasta inspiration.

Barilla Oven-Ready Lasagne

Ingredients
1 box Barilla Oven-Ready Lasagne
1 jar Barilla Marinara Sauce
1 quart milk
7 tablespoons butter
5 tablespoons flour
Salt to taste
Black pepper to taste
1 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese grated and divided
1 pound ground beef

Directions
PRE-HEAT oven to 400°F. HEAT milk in a medium sized pot. At the same time, in another similar sized pot, MELT the butter and whisk in the flour and cook for 1-2 minutes. Slowly WHISK the warm milk into the roux, bring to a simmer and season with salt and pepper. REMOVE from heat and stir in 3/4 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Meanwhile, COOK the beef until slightly brown, add the marinara sauce and 1/2 jar of water, season with salt and black pepper and simmer until it is reduced in a large nonstick skillet. SPRAY a 13 x 9 inch glass baking pan with cooking spray. On the bottom of the pan, PLACE 1/6 of the béchamel sauce and cover with 3 sheets of no-boil lasagne. TOP with 1/6 of the béchamel and 1/5 of the meat sauce and continue alternating with the lasagne sheets for 4 more layers. The final layer should be béchamel topped with sauce and the remaining 1/4 cup of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. BAKE for 20 minutes covered with foil, then uncovered for five more minutes or until the corners are brown and bubbling.

*Thanks to Mom It Forward and Barilla for sponsoring this post.
*Photo courtesy of Barilla.

I love a good splatter on a casserole dish. It’s when you know that good comfort food awaits.

Sometimes I feel like I’m not a very good Italian. I need to represent my heritage a little better, because truth be told, I don’t cook a lot of Italian food. Sure, nearly every holiday starts with our traditional Antipasto, and we have pasta a couple times a month, but platters of ziti, stuffed shells and lasagna are not always simmering from my stove-top. Nor is cook-all-day sauce. I should work on that. So many dishes, so little time.

Last Friday night, Nick and I had some one on one time, and a friend was kind enough to stay at the house to watch Madeline. In exchange, I offered to make them whatever she wanted for dinner, and lasagna was requested first. And then stuffed shells. And then my friend couldn’t decide. I said I would surprise her and ended up going with lasagna. I can’t remember the last time I made it, or even had it. Nick went through a phase a few years ago when he wanted it every time I turned around. And then he wanted nothing more to do with it.

In the grand scheme of things, lasagna has always seemed like one of those things that you don’t really need a recipe for. Layer noodles, sauce, meat, cheese, repeat. The recipe below is how I usually make our lasagna, but think of it as a guideline. Sometimes I add sausage to the meat portion of it. Sometimes I add different kinds of cheese. But the recipe remains the constant framework for how the dish comes together. I always add the spinach in with the cheese. The kids can see it (I am SO not a fan of disguising vegetables) and will eat it just fine. I get a little more green vegetables in their little bellies and it’s such a small dose of it, they don’t complain. Winner, winner, lasagna dinner.

Now to catch up on a few programming notes. If you’re looking for more recipes, do pop on over to Betty Crocker’s web site and check out my newest additions over there:

Banana Walnut Pancakes, one of Nick’s favorites. Gosh, I do love that photo. Nothing like a little dripping maple syrup to start your day off right.
Three-Cheese Vegetable Quiche. I lived on this for a week – best lunch ever. I wanted to make something quiche-like, but more vegetables and less egg. This was the result.
Carmelized Shallot Sausage Con Queso. You think the picture looks good? Wait ’till you taste the queso. Melted cheese is a weakness for me, and after a few bites of this queso, I had to give the rest of it away. Pronto. The temptation was far too great.
Double Cheese Chicken Fingers. Baked. Not fried. Love that.

And lastly, a few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be a co-host for a Virtual Cooking Class sponsored by The Motherhood and Con Agra. If you missed the class, you might want to check out the transcript from it. The one hour went by crazyfast, but it was packed with all sorts of excellent ideas for desserts, sinful and otherwise.

Project 365
March 22, 2011, Photo #79
Three compliments today on the maiden voyage of this new necklace I bought recently. From an online store. Owned and run by a 15-year-old. Totally feeling like an underachiever now, but still loving the necklace.
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Comfort Food is King {Barilla Lasagne}

Recipe: Hearty and Easy Lasagna