Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Recipe: Turkey/Vegetable Lasagna

Ok, so I don't have amounts really squared away, but here is the lasagna I made, which actually was enough ingredients for 2 giant pans of lasagna with lots of sauce leftover.

Ingredients
2-1/2 pounds lean ground turkey
2 large yellow onions - diced
2 large green bell peppers - chopped well
2 bags packaged pre-sliced, washed white button mushrooms - chopped coarsely
6 small/medium zucchini, chopped coarsely into bite-size pieces
2 jars plain marinara sauce
4 cans diced tomatoes in juice (regular sized cans, not jumbo or mini)
8-10 cups chopped (about 1/2 of a jumbo box) fresh baby spinach
4-5 cloves crushed garlic
10-15 large fresh leaves diced/chopped basil
2 Large containers Reduced Fat Ricotta
4 Eggs (or egg substitute)
2 boxes Whole Wheat Lasagna noodles
Parmesan Cheese
Italian seasoning
Salt
Black pepper

Directions
1. In the largest saucepan/frying pan you have, sautee the onions, green bell peppers, zucchini, mushrooms and garlic until almost done.
2. Transfer to a big stockpot on the stove and add the diced canned tomatoes (with juice) and the marinara. Stir well and turn heat to low.
3. Back in the pan, brown and break apart the ground turkey until well done. Drain off the fat then add to the sauce stockpot. Stir well.
4. Add the chopped spinach and a generous amount of italian seasoning, salt and ground black pepper. Stir well and keep heat on low or low-medium.
5. While the turkey/veggie sauce simmers, prepare the Ricotta mixture by beating the four eggs together and them mixing them with the two containers of ricotta. Add the chopped basil and some salt and pepper. Mix well.
6. To assemble the lasagna, ladle a small amount of the liquid from the sauce into the bottom of each pan. You want to cover the bottom of the pan in a thin layer of the tomato liquid. Then, add layers of the following, one after another: Uncooked lasagna noodles (cover the entire surface, but try not to overlap), then a thin layer of the ricotta mixture, then a layer of the sauce, then the noodles, ricotta, sauce.
7. For the top layer, finish with noodles then sauce. So, in a deep pan it might be:
sauce (liquid only)
noodles
ricotta
sauce
noodles
ricotta
sauce
noodles
sauce
8. Cover with aluminum foil and bake on the middle rack at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes to an hour. Uncover after 45 minutes and use a fork to stab through and see if the noodles are cooked. There should be no resistance.
9. Sprinkle on the parmesan cheese (whatever amount you want), leave the lasagna uncovered and bake another 10-15 minutes.

2 comments:

  1. thank you ellen! you are the best. I'll try it out over the holiday break, when I have no excuse to not cook :)

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  2. Sure thing! Also, you should DEFINITELY halve or third the recipe the first time you try it and do a small pan. Seriously, it was sheer luck that we liked it. Sometimes I make big pans of new things and end up going, "gross."

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