Boring Lasagna? No way!

Ok I just have to throw out there, that I am a terribly picky eater. I seriously have an issue with textures, and if something feels weird in my mouth, I just can't eat it. I find that my cooking is generally not filled with tons of different or exotic things, but rather filled with flavor through the spices I put in. My husband has some similar dislikes as I do concerning food, so he appreciates the way I cook.

Most of the cooking I do is a trial and error deal. I say "Hey Heather, what are you going to cook tonight? How about *insert any dish here*? Well I don't know how to make it really, but I'll just wing it!". And then I do. And I am more often than not pleasantly surprised.

I never learned how to cook lasagna really. My amazing step mother made it, and I loved it, but the picky eater in me didn't fully appreciate a lot of the things that was cooked into it. So when I grew up and decided I wanted to make it, I pretty much just dumbed it down a whole lot.

I don't know if I mentioned this in my enchilada post, but here in Iceland it's difficult to find a lot of ingredients, like ricotta cheese. I know that this is commonly used in lasagna, but I have never actually used it. And if it is sold here in Iceland, I haven't seen it. So I had to adjust accordingly. Here is my simple easy peasy lasagna that takes less than an hour, and it's going in your mouth.


Ingredients:
2 cans of tomato sauce
1-2 bags of mozzarella cheese
2 eggs (or 1 if you only have 1 small container of cottage cheese)
2 small containers of cottage cheese, small curds (or 1 larger one) (I forgot to buy 2)
package of lasagna noodles (I used spinach ones this time, and the ones that don't need to be precooked!)
italian spices (and a few of your other favorite spices)




Preparation:

Preheat your oven to 200 (what, is that 425 for you in the US?)

First I start by taking the egg(s) and cottage cheese and putting it in to a food processor or blender or whatever you have on hand, and puree it to pretty much a liquid. I also add a ton of my seasonings into this.





Then I take my cheese, noodles, sauce, and cottage cheese puree and prepare to do the layering. This is the order I layer in:

Noodles - Puree - Sauce - Cheese - Noodles

Until I get around 5 layers. In this evenings dinner, I only had 3, since I didn't buy enough cottage cheese, but it's so much yummier with more. I end by after putting cheese on, I add some more sauce all over, and cover that again with cheese, and a dash of black pepper.



Place it in the oven for 20-30 minutes, depending on if you like your cheese crispy (we do!) and let set for a short while before serving. Yummy.




As you can see, this is a simple plain ol' cheese lasagna, but we absolutely love it. We usually have a cottage cheese at the shop with garlic in it, which is the best, but we didn't find it this time. If you are looking for something quick and yummy, this is great.

I realize that both of my recipes involve a lot of tomato sauce and cheese. I don't always just cook with those, but for some reason we find ourselves eating a lot of them anyways. So yummy, I guess. I have to also send a shout-out to my friend Stephanie from over at Healthy and Homemade for inspiring to pay more attention to what I am making. She's got some really great (much better than mine) recipes you should check out.