Weekend Eats: Four Cheese Lasagna

I've cooked Lasagna a dozen times before, but it was just last December that I finally perfected it. It's a well known fact that my hubby and my kids loves pasta and cheese, so just imagine how happy their tummies are whenever I cook Lasagna for them.

Everytime I try to cook something, I always always make it a point that I search for recipes. I look for it on food magazines, food blogs or just simply search the internet. I would usually pick 3-4 recipes and combine them all together so I could have everything that I want summed up in one yummy recipe. This recipe is a product of that, so I hope you would try it.

Four Cheese Lasagna

For the red sauce:

1 pound ground beef
1/2 cup chopped onions
2 cloves of garlic chopped

1 can of crushed tomatoes

2 cans spaghetti sauce
1/2 cup of water

2 tablespoons  brown sugar
1 teaspoons dried Basil leaves
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Italian Seasoning
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper

• Brown the ground beef, onions and garlic in a pot until they start to cook. It takes about 6 to 9 minutes to brown the meat.I use a medium low temperature to brown the meat.
• Add the crushed tomatoes, spaghetti sauce  and water. stir and simmer for 10 minutes.
• Add the rest of the red sauce ingredients, then cover and simmer in low heat for 30- 45 minutes.

Bechamel Sauce:

5 cups whole milk

¾ stick unsalted butter
1/3 cup all-purpose flour salt, to taste
ground white pepper, to taste
pinch of ground nutmeg

• In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt the butter over a medium heat until it becomes frothy. Don't let it turn brown, it will affect the flavor.
• With a wooden spoon, stir the flour into the melted butter a little bit at a time, until it is fully incorporated into the butter, giving you a pale-yellow-colored paste. This paste is called a roux. Heat the roux for another minute or so to cook off the taste of raw flour.
• Using a wire whisk, slowly add the milk to the roux, whisking vigorously to make sure it's free of lumps.
• The resulting sauce should be smooth and velvety. If it's too thick, whisk in a bit more milk until it's just thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
• Remove the sauce from the heat. Season the sauce very lightly with salt and white pepper. Be particularly careful with the white pepper — and the nutmeg, if you're using it. A little bit goes a long way! Keep the béchamel covered until you're ready to use it.

Assembling the lasagna:

1 box lasagna noodles, cooked al dente

• 1 small container cottage cheese
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
• 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 
  

• Preheat oven to 190 degrees C.
• Ladle enough red sauce to cover the bottom of a 3-qt ovenproof baking dish.
• Arrange a layer of noodles atop the sauce, then add another layer of red sauce. Drizzle roughly one-third of the béchamel sauce evenly atop the red sauce.
• Spread 1/3 of shredded mozarella, cheddar, parmesan and cottage cheese
• Repeat the previous step two more times until you have three layers in place.
• On top would be the remaining mozzarella, cheddar, parmesan and cottage cheese.
• Cover the dish tightly with foil and bake for 40 minutes.
• Remove foil and bake for about 10 more minutes, or until the cheese on top has browned slightly.
• Remove lasagna from oven and cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Cheese really stars in this lasagna, it can be prepared ahead of time and baked later. I sometimes make up a couple batches and freeze them. I just take it out from the freezer and pop it in the oven whenever the fam bam gets hungry.

I have tried many different Lasagna recipes over the years. This is the culmination of all the trial and error, a recipe that needs to be shared with the world.

Have a Happy and Blessed Weekend Everyone!