Friday Lasagna

Pasta is a frequent meal for us on days when we get home from work tired and hungry, and didn't manage to prepare anything for dinner before we left in the morning.  This particular day, though, I had planned ahead to make a fancier pasta dish than the typical spaghetti-and-marinara:  I had the box of lasagna set out next to the stove, the spinach thawed and squeezed dry, and a container of Matt's home-made tomato sauce thawing in the refrigerator.  All I had to do when we got home was throw everything in a pan, put it in the oven for an hour or so, and we would have dinner.

Except, nothing is that easy.  Our recipe called for one box of frozen chopped spinach, and I'd purchased the only size of box that our grocery store carries.  Apparently the person who wrote the original recipe shops at a store where they sell monster boxes of frozen chopped spinach: my little pile of spinach was nowhere near enough greenery for a 13x9 pan of lasagna.

Fortunately, we had just visited my parents the evening before, and been sent home with a small crown of fresh broccoli from their garden.  I chopped it up and threw it in a skillet with some garlic to soften up, adding the spinach for the last few minutes to let the flavors merge before adding the mixture to the rest of the lasagna.

 
It turned out pretty well, and we enjoyed leftovers for the next few lunches.  The broccoli added interest and texture to the lasagna, which otherwise would have been very uniform: cheese, lasagna noodles and spinach are all smooth, thin and stretchy.  I definitely plan on trying out vegetable lasagnas with other atypical veggies in the future!


Broccoli Spinach Lasagna
9 uncooked lasagna noodles
2 T olive oil
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 c spinach, chopped
1 c broccoli, chopped
3 - 3.5 c ricotta
2.5 c mozzarella
2 qt pasta sauce
2 T Parmesan, grated

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Heat oil in medium skillet.  Add garlic; saute 1 min.  Add spinach and broccoli; cook, stirring, 3 min.  Season with salt and pepper if desired.  Combine 1/2 c mozzarella with ricotta; mix well.  Lightly cover bottom of 13x9 pan with pasta sauce.  Layer 3 noodles, sauce, 1/2 of the ricotta mixture, 1/2 of the spinach mixture, 1/2 c mozzarella.  Repeat.  Top with remaining 3 noodles, remaining sauce, and 1 c mozzarella, making sure noodles are submerged in sauce.  Cover with foil and bake for 1 hour 15 minutes or until noodles are cooked.  Remove foil and grate Parmesan onto top.  May add more mozzarella if desired, or if all your original mozzarella stuck to the foil when you took it off.  Bake 15-20 min uncovered until cheese is browned and excess moisture cooks off.