Kitchen Confessional

I know, what’s with a couple of kitchen posts in a row, right?  I’ll get back to the horses in a day or two.  Actually, I had two good rides today and I want to make sure they weren’t flukes before I get too braggy about them.  Braggy?  Real word or made up word, what do you think?

Anyhow, back to the kitchen.  Can you believe as many times as I have celebrated my 29th Birthday I had never made lasagna before?  I am 110% serious about this.  There is no reason for it.  Well, maybe I was intimidated by having to cook the noodles and deal with them in all their noodliness.  (Another one, real or made up word?)

Yesterday I found gluten free lasagna noodles and decided to buy them.  I love those spur of the moment dinner plans that happen in the grocery store.  The ones that help me do three extra laps around the store as I think of yet one more thing that I may not have that I will probably need to pull off this dish depending on what recipe I find.  Amazingly enough, I came away with all the ingredients I needed to fill in for what wasn’t already in my fridge and pantry.

Here’s what I found out.  Lasagna is still really, really good.  It’s also really easy to make.  A little messy, but all in all not so bad.

Another thing I learned.  It is best not to fill the casserole dish too full with the lasagna components.  They will overflow when baking, causing copious amounts of smoke.  This in turn will make my guy wonder what the heck I am ruining in the stove.  It also makes the kitchen and house stink.  Thankfully it was a nice day so I opened up all the windows and had a couple of fans going.  No problem.  I didn’t even make the smoke detector go off.  Unlike someone else we know.

So when I say it was a little messy, mostly I’m ignoring the burnt on bits I now have to clean off the pan I was smart enough to place under the casserole dish to catch drips.  Also, the casserole dish will most likely need to soak in one of the water troughs for a day or two, once all the lasagna is out of there.  I’m thinking I’ll put in the big trough that has seven Koi-size goldfish in it.  They’ll eat that stuck on stuff off of there.

Now, about the noodly noodles.  I found DeBoles Rice Lasagna Noodles.  Aside from being gluten free, they do not need to be cooked before hand.  One less step, always a good thing.  I did make sure to surround them in sauce so they would have liquid to absorb while the dish was baking.  No complaints from me on how they turned out.

My only complaint about making this in general (aside from what took me so freaking long to do it?!) is that all that cheese is expensive.  I used two packages of Mozzarella, two smallish containers of Ricotta and almost an entire container of Parmesan.  However, I know we can eat on it for a few days plus stick some in the freezer for easy-speedy dinners.

A much less messy dish of lasagna, but looks every bit as good as what I made today. (image: mum’s lasagne by jules:stonesoup, on Flickr)