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One of my favorite "everyday" lasagne...

QUICK ZUCCHINI AND EGGPLANT LASAGNA
Serves 6-8

2 pounds zucchini and/or eggplant, diced into ½” cubes
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
olive oil
salt and pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium garlic cloves, minced
1 (28-ounce) can crushed tomatoes
2 tablespoons fresh basil, chopped
salt and pepper

1 box dried no-boil lasagna noodles
16 ounces mozzarella, grated
⅔ cups (~5 ounces) parmesan, grated

In a large bowl, toss the onions, zucchini and/or eggplant with enough olive oil to coat. Spread the vegetables on one or two (two will make it cook faster) half-sheet pans and bake in a 400 degree oven until the zucchini/eggplant are soft and the onions are soft and browned, ~40 minutes. Season the vegetables to taste with salt and pepper and set them aside until ready to assemble the lasagna.

While the vegetables are baking, heat the 2 tablespoons of oil over medium heat in a frying pan or saucepan and add the garlic. Cook the garlic until fragrant but not browned and then stir in the tomatoes. Simmer until the mixture is slightly thickened, ~15 minutes, stir in the basil, and season to taste with salt and pepper. Pour the sauce into a 4-cup measuring cup and add enough water to make 3½ cups total volume.

Spray with nonstick cooking spray or oil a 9” x13” baking pan and spread ½ cup of the tomato sauce evenly over the bottom. Lay three (uncooked, dry) noodles crosswise over the sauce, making sure they do not touch each other or the sides of the pan. Spread ¾ cup of the vegetables over the noodles, then ½ cup of the sauce, ¾ cup of the mozzarella and 2 tablespoons of the parmesan. Repeat the layering of the noodles, vegetables, sauce, mozzarella and parmesan three more times. For the fifth and final layer, lay four noodles crosswise over the previous layer (you may have to break the ends off a couple of the noodles to make them fit without overlapping) and top with remaining 1 cup sauce, 1 cup mozzarella and 2 tablespoons parmesan.

Place an oven rack in the middle position and turn the oven down to 375 degrees. Cover the pan tightly with a piece of aluminum foil sprayed with nonstick cooking spray and bake the lasagna for 25 minutes. Remove the foil and continue baking, until the top turns golden brown in spots, ~15 additional minutes. Remove the lasagna from the oven and let it sit for 5 minutes. Cut and serve immediately.

Based on recipe from Cook’s Illustrated

Had I known you'd be so kind, I would have saved you some lasagna.

The above recipe uses bechamel rather than ricotta and/or mozzarella, and it's seriously delicious. I added about 1/2 pound of assorted sauteed fresh mushrooms to the tomato sauce rather than using only the 1 oz of dried porcinis the recipe calls for (for which the recipe calls?). This may be my "go to" lasagna recipe from now on.

Anyone else want to share recipes?

I tried out fresh pasta sheets recently. From Costco. Guess what? They were great! Three packages containing 3-4? (sorry, it's been a few weeks) sheets are not exactly soft, but pliable. I was able to make an extra layer in my lasagna pan because they are far thinner than the boxed dry kind (not no boil, I've never had luck there).
I used a bit more sauce, thinned just a tad with water for baking it. It was perfect when done and I appreciated not having to cook the pasta and clean the pot. It seemed to make everything go much faster. Plus, the result was much like when I make fresh pasta.
I used more sheets later within the week. I cut them into fettucine with a pizza wheel, and made a nice bolognese sauce to go with it. Worked very well. I retrieved the last package from the fridge about 2 weeks after purchase, and the pasta had turned into a pennicilin farm. Oh well. The whole package is in Italian, so I could only guess at the expiration.
eta: It's in the refrigerated section, in the bin near the cheeses and cured meats.

Whenever I think of lasagne, I think of the line in the movie Big Night, where Tony Shalhoub is talking about a lasagne made with bolognese that is so good "you have to kill yourself after eating it." Great food movie by the way.

We may need a discussion about no-boil vs regular dried pasta. I've never used the no-boil-- seems very suspect to me.

I don't have my "fancy" lasagna recipes in electronic form at present, but here is another for when I don't want to make noodles... (And I am sort of partial to this recipe for sentimental reasons because my mom's lasagna recipe also called for cottage cheese. A necessary substitution, way back when, when ricotta was not easily obtainable.)

SPINACH LASAGNA
Serves 6-8

Caution: This one is rather rich and decadent. Using the more coarse, curly spinach is vital because regular or baby spinach will break-down too much during baking. Also, because the lasagna is broiled at the end of cooking to brown the cheese, make sure to use a baking dish that is safe to use under the broiler (such as a metal dish, not glass or ceramic!).

1 tablespoon salt
2 (10-ounce) bags curly spinach, stemmed and rinsed

5 tablespoons unsalted butter
5 large shallots, minced
4 medium cloves garlic, minced
¼ cup flour
3½ cups whole milk

2 bay leaves
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ cup (~1 ounce) parmesan, grated

8 ounces whole milk cottage cheese
1 large egg
¼ teaspoon salt
12 no-boil lasagna noodles (from 1 box)
1 cup (~2 ounces) parmesan, grated
2 cups (~8 ounces) Italian fontina, grated

Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Fill a large bowl with ice water. Bring ~4 quarts of water to a boil in large pot over high heat, add the 1 tablespoon salt and the spinach, and cook, stirring, until spinach is just wilted, ~5 seconds. Using a skimmer or a fine-mesh strainer, transfer the spinach to the ice water bath and let it sit until completely cool, ~1 minute, then drain the spinach and transfer it to a clean kitchen towel. Wrap the towel tightly around the spinach to form ball and wring the spinach until it is dry as you can get it. Chop the spinach into medium sized pieces and set aside.

Melt the 5 tablespoons of butter until foaming in a medium saucepan over medium heat, add the shallots and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until they are translucent, ~4 minutes. Add the flour and cook, stirring constantly, for ~1 minute, but do not brown the flour/butter mixture. Whisk in the milk and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring frequently. Stir in the bay leaves, nutmeg, salt, and pepper, reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the pan from the heat, stir in the parmesan, and remove and discard the bay leaves. Taste the sauce and add more salt if necessary. Cover and set the sauce aside.

Blend the cottage cheese, egg, and salt in a food processor or blender until very smooth, ~30 seconds. Set aside.

Place the noodles in 9”x13” broiler-safe baking dish, cover them with hot tap water and let them soak for 5 minutes, agitating the noodles occasionally to prevent them from sticking together. Remove the noodles from the water and place in a single layer on a kitchen towel. Wipe the baking dish dry and lightly grease or spray it with non-stick spray.

Spread ½ cup of the white sauce in the bottom of the baking dish and position 3 noodles on top of sauce. Stir the reserved spinach into the remaining white sauce, mixing it well to break up clumps of spinach (you should have ~4 cups spinach/white sauce mixture). Spread 1 cup of the spinach mixture evenly over noodles, sprinkle evenly with the parmesan, and top with 3 more noodles. Spread 1 cup of the spinach mixture evenly over noodles, sprinkle evenly with 1 cup of the fontina, and top with 3 more noodles. Spread 1 cup of the spinach mixture evenly over noodles, followed by the cottage cheese mixture. Finish with 3 noodles, the remaining spinach mixture, and the remaining 1 cup fontina.

Lightly spray a large sheet of foil with nonstick cooking spray and cover the lasagna. Bake the lasagna until bubbling, ~20 minutes, then remove the pan from the oven and remove the foil. Adjust the oven rack to the uppermost position (~6” from the heating element) and heat the broiler. Broil the lasagna until the cheese is spotty brown, 4 to 6 minutes. Cool 10 minutes, then serve.

This recipe also is based on one from Cook’s Illustrated.

I had my doubts too, until I started using then.

If I am not going to make fresh pasta (which I rarely do for just the two of us), I'll usually use the no-boil noodles because they are thinner than the traditional dried noodles. Something to keep in mind is that you'll need to use a much more liquid sauce (as in the zucchini/eggplant recipe) or partially cook them (as in the spinach recipe).

That said, if I am making lasgana for company, I nearly always use fresh noodles. I think they have a better texture and taste and are very thin (which, to my tastes, is preferable).

FWIW: I've only used the Barilla no-boil lasagna noodles.

I have not done this myself yet but am rarin' to try the Thousand Layer Lasagne after seeing the pix at Smitten Kitchen. Gurgle.

I agree. The soundtrack is worth buying too-- excellent cooking music.

Thinking of this movie reminds me of the Timpano (which I suppose is a sort of lasagna). I made one once, and I'm not sure I'll ever go through the trouble again.

Timpano

A few weeks ago I made the wild mushroom lasagna from the Sept(?) CI. Great mushroom flavor (loaded up with dried porcinis, portabellos, some plain ole' button), INCREDIBLY rich. I made fresh noodles instead of using the kind they called for (don't remember now...)., It was a yummy recipe, but a fair piece of work (of course, I've got a freezer full of individual servings of lasagna now).

And as for Big Night, yeah, that's one really good cooking/food movie.

recently i've been using the barilla no-boil noodles for lasagna. but i have a question. i remember reading somewhere (or perhaps seeing it on tv - i can't remember) that you can actually use regular-cook lasagna noodles, w/o boiling them at all, i.e. prepare the lasagna as if you were using the no-boil noodles, but use the regular noodles instead. of course you would need to use more sauce (as the no-boil also requires), and it would take a bit longer to cook.

i guess the advantage is that you don't have to shell out the couple of bucks for the no-boil, yet you don't have to cook the noodles before you assemble the lasagna.

does anyone know if there is any truth to this?

I have actually wondered the same thing and it would make sense if there was a lot of sauce/liquid. Anyone want to try it?

Does anyone remember what brand of pasta sauce was used to cook with dry uncooked noodles?

I used it several times a few years ago, but can't remember the name. Essentially, you put a box of ziti or penne or.... into a pan/dish and add a whole jar of the sauce. Fill the jar with water and add it as well. Stir, cover and bake. Came out perfect each time.
Then I added a cheese topper and melted it over the top. It was easy and I thought pretty good for jarred sauce and raw pasta.

"Monavano" sounds vaguely Italian. If so, you should be ashamed of this travesty!

Lasagna is a "food of love" if I may lift that phrase from Emeril. No shortcuts allowed!

An entire cup of porcini sounds really, really good! I'm with Al Dente re bechamel, too.

Not an everyday thing, but I really like simple traditional lasagne w sheets of fresh egg pasta, white sauce, Parmesan, Bolognese and dots of butter. Last one I made, however, was a deliberate attempt to try something different: Lasagne Duchi di Ferrara with an unusual ragu, prosciutto and golden raisins. (Scroll up to look an an exquisite photograph of lasagne made with spinach dough in Post #60, unless you're hungry.)

The Ragu de Nobili features diced boneless chicken thighs that one sautés with minced pancetta, Italian sausage, giblets, a little ground beef and the customary battuto (mirepoix). White wine, a pinch of cloves, bay leaf, crushed garlic and a generous dab of tomato paste are gradually added with small amounts of stock. Once everything is incorporated, including more stock, the ragu simmers for less than an hour since small, browned bits of chicken dominate the mixture. Instead of adding milk early in the procedure, a little heavy cream finishes the sauce. That last step is the sweep of the Fairy Godmother's wand: the giblets are transformed from something funky to an assertive, sweet element.

Oh, I do the "fake out" from time to time. All the ingredients of lasagna: ziti, ricotta, mozzarella and parm reg., combined with browned ground, onions and garlic. Throw over some tomato sauce, top with cheese and brown.
In my defense, I nearly never buy pasta sauce from a jar anymore. Using crushed tomatoes and my own seasoning is more to my taste and much cheaper.
I do enjoy making a proper lasagna, trying various permutations from time to time. I need to branch out more often though. So, this thread will come in handy.
And, yes, the "vano" from monavano comes from my last name which I took when marrying my Italian husband.
My meatballs are now on par or better than grandmavano, and my FIL raves over my minestrone soup. It's already been passed along to many of thier friends.
I did make my lasagna for my husbands' family two holidays seasons ago. Didn't get any ooohs or ahhs.......or requests for the recipe.
I definitely need coaching here.
OK, here's something else I've tried, and actually found it to add a bit of tang to the dish: cream cheese. I saw Paula Deen do this and just tried it once. Wasn't bad......please, hold those tomatoes and use them for the sauce!!

A bit off the course of this conversation but is there anything that evokes the memory of happy, stoned college students on a cold night in a big group house, like the smell of lasagna coming out of the oven? Al tossed a big salad and Anna made the garlic bread, MK used her grandmother's recipe and somebody brought some extra chairs. Who knows how to use a corkscrew? The heck with the Budweiser; we're drinking chianti tonight.

Using fresh, home-made pasta in lasagne instead of dried from a box can take a very nice dish into the regions of the sublime. Of course it also takes the dish from laborious to slavery-intensive, but it's worth it once in a while.

...sounds fantastic!

I used to think I liked lasagna a lot, but then I had Fabio Trabocchi's simplified [b]vincisgrassi[/i] (recipe is in his book), which absolutely blew me away. Twelve layers, so he uses fresh pasta rolled very thinly. I haven't attempted it myself yet.

My friend and I considered that lasagna for our New Year's Eve 2000 feast. But we decided to go with a tortellini pie (Pasticcio di Tortellini con Crema di Cannella) that uses the same ragu (plus a cinnamon custard, little chicken/pancetta/beef meatballs and tiny meat-filled tortellini cooked in stock, all layered with parmersan inside a sweet crust and baked). It ended up being the highlight of the six-course (all recipes from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper) and multiple-hour dinner.

However, I've been meaning to go back and make that lasagna ever since because that ragu was so delicious. Thanks for the reminder!

This recipe for Sausage and Wild Mushroom Lasagne with Red Pepper Tomato Sauce was the first "serious" recipe I ever attempted. ("Serious" cooking, to the extent it has arrived at all in my life, arrived late.)

Our kitchen was an utter war zone when it was done. I mean, it demolished me, my facilities, and my faculties (as well as the better part of a day).

It was really, really good though. A few months ago, during a freezer clean-out, I fished out a forgotten foil-wrapped slice of it. I didn't have the courage to eat it, but I shed a (figurative) tear as I threw it away.

I've successfully done this - I make a sauce with canned crushed tomatoes as the base, so it turns out relatively thin (and thickens some during the cooking process) and use lots of it (in particular, I make sure that the top layer of pasta is thorougly covered in sauce) as well as adding some extra water (maybe a cup, less if there isn't enough room) to the dish before putting it in the oven. It probably takes longer to cook, but the results are good.

Yep, it works.
My Italian godmother is going to disown me for admitting this in public, but I make lasagna all the time with "regular" uncooked lasagna noodles (not freshly made!) Just add a bit of water (1/2 to 3/4 cup) to the marinara sauce. The texture's perfect. But I prefer my lasagna to be a bit crisp on the outer edges, creamy on the inner - actually similar to what godmother makes with her freshly made noodles, just a tad crispier around the edges.

Pictures of that labor-intensive dish are gorgeous--I am duly impressed! I found the task of simply making tortellini and broth taxing enough, I could not imagine preparing anything other than a green salad and opened bottle of wine after such a production!

* * *
FYI: One thing I was surprised to learn is that Italian-Americans did not "invent" the kind of lasagne most of us grew up eating, i.e., one that includes ricotta. It's a Neopolitan tradition. I could be utterly wrong, but I think American manufacturers might be responsible for our time-saving dried sheets of noodles that are made without eggs. At least, authoritative recipes for Neopolitan lasagne I've seen require fresh noodles despite the fact that dried pasta prevails in Southern Italy.

What about dried noodles that are made with eggs? I ask because recently I've bought (at Trader Joe's) dried papardelle made with flour and eggs that cook up remarkably like fresh pasta (they take a little longer). I'd have to say they're considerably better than the ready-made "fresh" pasta that you can buy refrigerated at Whole Foods and elsewhere. If I could get this same stuff in sheets, I might make lasagne a little more often. Does such a thing exist? Or is there a reason it wouldn't work?

Eccole!

Purists may poo-poo such a big manufacturer's wares, but I buy their fettuccine nests quite often and think they're swell. Lasagne alla gorgonzola on a blustery weekday laundry night! It's enough to make you want to help Porcupine shovel her driveway all over again!

P.S. Thanks for the TJ tip.

Every now and then, Cook's Illustrated comes up with a really good trick. To boost the flavor of their mushroom lasagna a few issues ago, instead of using straight bechamel, they made a mushroom bechamel (using part-milk, part porcini rehydrating liquid, and part finely chopped mushroom). I thought the resulting lasagna was amazingly mushroom-y and good. This was made by someone else (txaggie), not me, and looked pretty labor intensive judging by the frown on her face.

And thanks for the De Cecco tip. De Cecco products are carried all over the place, but I don't remember seeing their lasagne. Where do you buy it? I must say, though, that this snippet on their website threw me for a loop:
I guess they really meant 0,78 mm thick. Otherwise you'd have to boil those suckers for a long time.

As reported on the dinner thread, I made two lasagnas last night, one with bolognese and the other was mushroom, for my vegetarian daughter and her friend who came over for dinner. I did not make bechamel--not willing to invest that much time on a Thursday night dinner, but for the mushroom lasagna, I added chopped, sauteed portobellos to a marinara sauce, and---here's the secret ingredient that made it taste wonderfuly 'shroomy--porcini powder. I get it from Surfas in L.A. Haven't seen it anywhere locally, but it can be gotten via their website. I suppose one could grind up dried porcini, but the powder is quite inexpensive, and a small amount, like a heaping teaspoon in a small pot of sauce, or a T. in a braise pot is undetectable texturally, but adds wonderful depth of flavor.

I used LaPasta fresh sheets (local company that makes the fresh pasta sold at Whole Foods and Balducci's) and did not pre-cook the noodles. I added a little bit of water to the sauce, and they came out perfectly.

Brilliant! I'm thinking of making the same lasagna I posted about above for a party tomorrow night. I'll just grind the dried porcinis and add them to the sauce rather than reconstituting, chopping, and sauteing. You've saved me a step! Thanks.

As a side note, porcini powder is great on a steak. Season a raw steak as you normally would, then sprinkle the powder on as you did with the salt and pepper. Grill.