Friday, December 27, 2013

Beef and Spinach Lasagna


I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas celebration with family and friends and in a few days it will be the end of 2013. I hope year 2014 will be a better year for us. We won’t be doing much for the New Year as Diana won’t be home. I miss that girl. I wish she live nearer to us :( It will be a low key affair for us except I am looking forward to indulge myself with some Caviar that I ordered online.

I will be flying back to Malaysia in January and looking forward to spend some time with my family and I too hope to meet up with my blogging friends when I am home. Enough of my ranting and let’s get on to this awesome pasta.

I made this with Diana when she was home. I am not a big fan of lasagnas that are loaded with too much meat or cheese so I decided to add some spinach to it. It has a good balance of cheese, meat and veggie in it. I cheated a bit and used a good quality store bought marinara sauce as a base. You can always use homemade one if you have it.

 


Ingredients:

15-18 pieces of Lasagna noodles– cook according to the package instruction
1 pound of lean ground beef
1 small onion – chopped
2 cloves garlic
3 cups marinara sauce
1 packet of frozen chopped spinach – thaw and squeezed out the water
2 cups partly skim ricotta cheese
2 eggs
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp red pepper flakes
Salt and pepper to taste
1 ½ cups shredded mozzarella cheese


1. Heat a large sauté pan over medium heat, add olive oil and sauté onions for 2-3 minutes, until just beginning to soften. Add in the garlic, red pepper flakes, oregano and cook for a minute, add ground beef and cook just until meat is no longer pink, breaking it up with a spatula as it cooks. Add marinara sauce, turn heat to medium-low, and simmer for about 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.
2. While the sauce simmers, combine spinach, ricotta and eggs in a large bowl and mix well. Add in some salt and pepper to taste.
3. Take a 9×13-inch baking dish. Cover the bottom with about 1/2 cups marinara sauce. Spread it out evenly. Place 3 pieces of the lasagna noodles on top of the sauce layer. Top noodles with 1/3 of the spinach mixture, spreading it into an even layer.
4. Top with about 1/2 cup of the sauce. Top this sauce layer with 3 more noodles, followed by the ricotta spinach mixture, followed by then noodles. Do the same to the rest of the sauce and noodles. 5. Pour all of the remaining sauce over the noodles and sprinkle with mozzarella cheese. Cover loosely with a piece of aluminum foil. Bake in a pre-heated 375 degree F oven for 30 minutes (you may want to put your baking dish on a baking sheet to catch any drips), then uncover the lasagna and bake for an additional 10 minutes, or until sauce is slightly bubbly.
6. Allow to cool for about 15 minutes before slicing into it.

3 comments:

lena said...

dropping by to wish you a wonderful new year ahead and all the best!

Unknown said...

Hello,

Can I have your email? I cant get it from your profile.

I;m Malaysian too living in Los Angeles.

Happy New Year from us The Kongs family.

ICook4Fun said...

Thank you Lena. Happy New Year to you and your family too.

Anon, go to my profile page, right under 'contact me' click on the word email and you will find my email there. Happy New Year to you and your family too.