Lasagna Rolls

One of the things I've never been able to do with my spaz-tastic nature is serve lasagna. I end up with a deconstructed mess of noodles and cheese. So, I came up with this recipe to try & remedy that and it works like a charm, and it makes me look like a dynamo when I entertain. Double score.

8 dry lasagna noodles
16 oz ricotta cheese
1/2 c mozzarella cheese, plus 1/2c for toppings
2 tbsp grated hard stinky cheese (romano, parmesan, asiago, etc)
1 tbsp dried oregano
1/2 tbsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried red pepper flake or a few drops of tabasco
1 garlic clove, finely minced
salt & pepper to taste
~2c marinara sauce

Start by soaking the noodles in very hot tap water. Depending on your noodles and the temperature of your tap, this can take as little as 20 mins or as long as an hour or two. You can also boil the noodles, but this will make them scalding hot (duh) and as a result more difficult to work with. I generally start soaking them, mix up my filling & go watch TV or something for the rest of the time. You want them to be floppy but not falling apart. After you make this a few times you'll know how you like them.

Mix together everything else but the marinara in a large bowl. You can also add other fillings... the easiest fillings are very bendable, like spinach. Dactyl likes ground turkey sausage when I let him get away with it. I'm also a fan of mushrooms, and sometimes I swap the minced garlic for a few cloves of roasted. The one rule of thumb is that you should cook all your non-melty fillings (ie, don't try and put your cheese in a saute pan) first and then drain out either the water (in the case of most veggies) or grease (in the case of most meats). Either too greasy or too watery will make the filling get sloppy and fall out. You can also swap your filling out for a different lasagna recipe. You may want to prepare extra noodles, too, if you add a lot of extras to your filling. If you want a bit of insurance against filling fallout, feel free to add an egg to the mixture.

To assemble, take a noodle and pat it slightly dry. For the barebones recipe, I put a heaping spoonful of the filling mixture, another 1/3 of the way up, and then roll it toward the end, adding more filling if I run out. Don't roll too tightly, or you'll end up with just noodle. If you add a hunkier filling, you'll need to spread it down the length of almost the entire noodle before you roll it up, and then roll very gently. Try to leave a little bit of empty space at the end with no filling. Place your roll seam side down and repeat.

It's just Dactyl and myself, so 8 rolls is slightly excessive. Here, I prepare half the rolls to eat, and put the other half on a cookie sheet. I freeze them for about an hour, then put them in a plastic baggie. Another fringe benefit... your lasagna pan isn't in the freezer until you decide to use them, and you can bake off a couple for a lunch or something if you'd like without preparing an entire pan of lasagna.

To prepare the rolls, put 1c of sauce on the bottom on your pan, then put the rolls on top of the sauce, seam side down. Ideally the rolls shouldn't touch. Once you put them down, try to not rearrange them... this will make them more liable to stick. For smaller batches, use less sauce... it should coat the bottom of your dish to ~ 1/4". For a twist, you can also use alfredo sauce or (my personal favorite) marinara on the bottom and alfredo on top. When you have all the rolls down, cover each with a few additional spoonfuls of sauce, then add cheese on top. Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil, then bake for 1/2hr at 400 degrees on a middle or lower rack. Uncover and let bake another 15-20 minutes until the cheese starts to brown. When baking from frozen, let bake covered at least 15-20 minutes longer.

Picky Husband Substitutions: I use part skim mozz and ricotta. I make sure I'm getting high quality ricotta too, because the cheaper stuff tastes 'gritty' to him.

The Verdict: two noms up.