Oven-Baked Lasagna Recipe
Home for the holidays means more than just trekking through busy airports and cuddling up to your childhood cat. Between nights spent in your once-a-bedroom-now-a-office, and arguing with siblings over who gets the TV remote, being home for the holidays also calls for home-made meals, and we have the perfect oven-baked lasagna to serve this holiday season.
Layered goodness
At my house in particular, this means Mom's Lasagna, an oven-baked béchamel lasagna that never disappoints. Five layers of cheesy goodness, surprising spoonfuls of cherry tomatoes, zucchini, sausage, and of course, more cheese. My mom has made this lasagna year after year. No matter what hour we arrive from the airport, we know the oven will be turned on, slowly spreading the smell of home-made goodness into every room of the house. She's made it gluten free, vegetarian, and every fad-diet in between upon our requests, however the same touch of love is present in each bite.
A Saving Grace
During the long stretches of lockdown in California due to the pandemic, this lasagna became our saving grace. We served it when we were feeling down, anxious, or just down-right hungry for some good food. It became our Lockdown Lasagna, as my mom called it, and soon the ingredients were a regular on our grocery list. Our oven-baked lasagna was now not only our Mom's recipe, but one that we all crafted together around the kitchen table after taste-testing copious amounts of cheesy spoonfuls. We decided to share this goodness with the Spoon community---now you too can enjoy a taste of home no matter where you are, or where you spend your holidays.
RECIPE: Oven-Baked Lockdown Lasagna
Ingredients
-12 lasagne noodle sheets, cooked al-dente
-1lb of ground chicken
-2 large handfuls of fresh baby arugula
- 1 small can of diced tomatoes, drained and halved
-Lemon zest from 1-2 lemons
-1 large bunch of kale or spinach, or both!
-1 large yellow onion
-4-5 cloves of garlic
-1 large handful of fresh basil leaves
-1 cup of mushrooms, sliced (any kind- mixed is fine)
-1 cup of white wine
-Olive oil
-Salt and pepper to taste
-Dried oregano or thyme
-3 eggs
-1 cup or so of Ricotta cheese or cottage cheese if you don’t have
-Grated parmesan
-2 cups of bechamel sauce (4 Tbsp of butter, 4 Tbsp of flour, 1-¼ cup of heated full fat milk or cream, salt & pepper)
Directions
-To make bechamel sauce: melt butter in a pot on medium heat. Whisk in flour, making a paste. Slowly add in warmed milk, whisking away. Sauce will thicken as it gets hotter. Add salt and pepper..continue whisking to boiling point and remove from heat.
-Preheat oven to Bake: 375
-Add a olive oil to a large skillet and on medium heat, cook up the ground chicken with the tomatoes and arugula and lemon zest. Add a little S+P. remove from heat and put in a bowl. (about 10 minutes)
-Add sliced onion, garlic, basil, mushrooms, to the large skillet with some olive oil to coat all the veggies and saute till onions are translucent and shrooms are soft. Then, add chopped up kale and white wine. Mix and cover skillet until kale (or spinach) has cooked. Add S+P and whatever dried herbs you like.
-beat 3 eggs and the ricotta together in a bowl.
-In a rectangular baking vessel: coat the bottom and sides with olive oil
-Put down 3-4 cooked lasagne noodles to cover bottom of pan
-First layer: cooked ground chicken mixture (the one set aside in the bowl)
Cover with bechamel sauce and sprinkle with your parmesan cheese
-2nd layer: put down another 3-4 cooked lasagne noodles ( on top of chicken mixture)
Add all of the veggie mixture that is in the large skillet (or as much as can fit)
Pour ricotta and egg mixture over veggies. Sprinkle with cheese
-3rd layer: put down last of the lasagne noodles (to cover veggie layer)
-Cover with bechamel sauce and generously top with cheese and perhaps some sliced tomatoes. Cover with foil and put in hot oven
Cook time: 30 minutes-after 20 minutes, remove foil to encourage browning.
Remove from oven and let sit for 10 minutes
