It may not look like much but this was tonight's dinner: baked lasagna with garlic baguette. The topmost photo is my effort at making baked lasagna. I found oven-ready lasagna in Cold Storage last Saturday and couldn't wait to use them so tonight, I did lasagna.
It's not as lazy as some of my other recipes as this involves using at 2 pots and the oven but sometimes, you are willing to exert more effort than usual.
What You're Going To Need:
To cook: 1 small sauce pan, 1 medium sauce pan, 1 baking dish, 1 grill pan
Heat Source: stove and oven
Ingredients:
Bechamel Sauce
2 1/2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
2 cups milk
salt and pepper to flavor
Sauce
1/2k ground meat (pork/beef)
1 bottle traditional tomato sauce (I used Prego's tonight)
1 beef cube
olive oil (not virgin but if there's no olive, any other oil in your kitchen)
pepper
sugar
dried basil
dried herbs
soy sauce
1pc sliced cheese
Pasta
Oven ready lasagna strips
Topping:
shredded mild cheddar cheese
Garlic Bread:
baguette cut into slices
butter
garlic, minced
dried basil
Procedure:
Bechamel Sauce
- In the small sauce pan, melt the butter over low-medium fire. Slowly add the flour. Whisk to ensure that the flour/butter mixture is smooth.
- In the meantime, heat the milk to get warmer (but not quite boiling). Slowly add the milk to the flour/butter mixture while continuing to whisk.
- Bring to a simmer until it reaches the desired thickness. Set aside.
Sauce
- Put the olive oil in the medium sauce pan. Saute garlic.
- Once garlic is brown, put in the ground meat. Saute. Add salt, pepper, basil, other dried herbs and the beef cube. Continue saute-ing.
- Add 2-3tbsp soy sauce and 3-4 tbsp sugar.
- Add in the tomato sauce. At this point, you can check the taste and add some more of the earlier mentioned ingredients if you find the taste lacking.
- Optional: drop a slice of cheese to melt in the sauce.
Baking
- Pre-heat the oven to 250deg Celsius. Line the baking dish with tin foil to make cleaning up easier afterwards.
- Line the lasagna on the bottom of the pan, followed by the meat sauce, then top with the bechamel sauce. Repeat this until you reach the number of layers you like (or you reach the top of the dish).
- Once you reach the last layer, put in a last layer of bechamel sauce and then cover with the mild cheddar cheese.
- Put into the oven and bake for around 30-40mins.
Garlic Bread
- Melt the butter. Once melted, add minced garlic and dried basil.
- Spread the butter mixture on both sides of the bread.
- Grill bread until toasted.
I think the next time I serve this, it would be better if I serve it in personal size ramekins. That would be so cute!
Ok, I have gone past my bedtime. Good night, everyone!
February 17, 2010 at 6:07 AM
Jing,
My lasagna has cottage cheese or kesong puti in the middle of the slabs (in absence of a mozzarela). Try it din.
- Darwin