Simple Lasagna with Rosemary Garlic Toast
Autumn is the perfect time for comfort food, a time when you just want to curl up with something that makes you feel warm and cozy. When I think of Autumn comfort food, casseroles immediately spring to mind, as does lasagna, and it's weird, but it only recently occurred to me that lasagna is a casserole. I'm not sure how I failed to make that connection before.
I remember my first experience with real lasagna, the homemade, not the frozen kind. I don't remember my exact age, but I think I was somewhere around 10. My mother had a friend called Sharon, and I slept over at her house one night. I remember that she was cooking something that made the house smell amazing, and when I went into the kitchen, I saw her pulling a rectangular dish out of the oven.
As the lasagna sat cooling on the kitchen table, she told me that she made it often. I was super impressed, since I had no idea that anybody made lasagna at home. And when she cut into it, I was fascinated to see that she used cottage cheese in place of the usual ricotta. Of course, at that age, I had no idea what ricotta was, but I knew that frozen lasagna used something besides just cottage cheese.
I imagine that Sharon opted for cottage cheese, because she lived in the country, and ricotta was probably hard to come by back then. As it turned out, I preferred the looser, lighter texture created by replacing all of the ricotta with cottage cheese. It makes a somewhat heavy dish feel less heavy. Less authentic, too, but I cook to please myself. :)
In my memory, Sharon's lasagna was so good. And ever since then, lasagna made with cottage cheese has been a comfort food for me. I think of it as American Lasagna. I experiment with a lot of lasagna recipes--it's a perfect dish for experimentation--but I like this particular recipe a lot. It's very simple, but happily, comfort food doesn't need to be fancy.
(For the gluten free out there, I used Tinkyada brown rice lasagna noodles, and they were excellent. I cut two minutes off the boiling time, since I was going to bake them, too, and next time I'd cut even more time off so they're a little more firm. Obviously, the garlic toast was for Shane only. I could have subbed gluten free bread for myself, but I really didn't need the extra carbs anyway.)
casseroles, gluten free, italian food, lasagna | in Recipe Review Posted on Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 03:11PM
Reader Comments (5)
Yumm, I'm craving garlic toast now.
My family recipe uses cottage cheese, and, as many different versions of lasagna as I've had over the years, nothing has ever topped it. One tweak my family has made over the years is that we don't bother boiling the lasagna noodles. The sauce cooks them during the baking process. Saves one dish, and gets the lasagna into my mouth a little faster! :-)
I agree! I think cottage cheese beats out all the rest, both for texture and flavor. I've tried not baking the noodles, and that works great with flour based pasta. I'm worried about how it would work with gluten free pasta, but you know me, any excuse to experiment. I'm a mad scientist in the kitchen. Thanks for the idea!
I was just thinking about making lasagna! Yum, thanks for this recipe. You know, one of the first fancy things I tried to make as a kid was lasagna with cottage cheese. These days I use just a tad of ricotta, but I'll try the cottage cheese again! I make mine without meat and use spinach mixed with scallions and ricotta instead.
Honestly, I don't think lasagna needs meat at all. If I had my way, I'd replace the meat with mushrooms. But, you know, I don't always have my way. :)