Making Lasagna

By now I've accumulated my staple dishes, those things that I make once and serve multiple meals, usually with the help of a freezer.  Macaroni & Cheese in the style of Horny Hardart, crock pot stew, chicken cacciatore, often a turkey, and lasagna in the style of Artscroll.  Most have multiple ingredients, are made in large cooking utensils, require measuring devices, and have multiple ingredients that need to be set out and often mixed in an appliance.  Every one of them worth the effort with enjoyable products that repeat over several dinners.  Every one of them requires several sessions at my sink to wash all the equipment used, then was all the dinner dishes used to consume them along with the rest of those meals.

So it went with my most recent lasagna.  Not a lot of ingredients.  Some oregano and black pepper.  No measuring spoons, just a palm estimate. Spinach.  I used to drain in a colander.  With experience I just squeeze out handfuls from the thawed bag and dump into the bowl as I go until there is no more.  Pour out the residual water and place the plastic packaging into the kitchen garbage container.  Rinse my hands. An egg.  Crack into the bowl, mix gently with a fork that will be a multipurpose utensil.  Three types of cheese.  Cottage cheese just gets dumped into the mixing bowl with the spinach, egg, and spices.  The tub and its lid need washing before either recycling or repurposing.  I used a blend of mozzarella and cheddar this time.  A pound of mozzarella.  Get out a plate, a knife, the food processor with its shredding disc.  With a sharp knife, bisect the square of cheese so it fits in the processor's feed tube.  Shred each half, transfer to mixing bowl.  Moist mozzarella does not shred cleanly.  It made a sticky mess with strands adhering to each other, which is why I shredded it before the cheddar.  Using mostly my fingers, transfer that blob to a stainless steel mixing bowl.  Then clean off residual mozzarella from the processor and its disc, putting that into the mixing bowl.  Shredding cheddar goes more easily.  It comes as a rectangle that fits into the processor's feeding tube.  On same plate, with same knife, cut about two thirds of it and shred.  That cleans the disc somewhat.  Leave the shredded cheese in the processor bowl.  Then separately, with my hands, move about half the mozzarella and half the cheddar into the mixing bowl with the cottage cheese.  Normally I blend all the ingredients, which becomes the filling, with a fork and some effort.  No go with the sticky mozzarella.  My right hand and its fingers made a much better blending too.  Squish a few minutes and I had a reasonably uniformly distributed mixture of cottage cheese, mozzarella, cheddar, and spinach with the egg, oregano, and black pepper along for the ride.

Lasagna needs a lasagna pan.  I have two.  Picked the older uncoated one.  Spray with generic Pam.  Now some sauce.  I had one partially open.  Usually I use a new jar, sometimes run a little over, so the extra is always good to have.  A layer of sauce on the bottom of the lasagna pan.  Arrange noodles, it takes five to cover the pan.   Then half the cheese-spinach mixture over that.  When less experienced, I used to spoon it out.  Now I take about half out of the bowl with my hands and spread it evenly by punching it down with my fist, much like I often do with an olive oil quiche crust that does not roll well but comes out as a blob.   Then some more sauce.  This I spread with a fork.  Another layer of noodles, rest of cheese-spinach mixture, punch down.  Then about half the remaining sauce spread with a fork.  Then another layer of noodles.  Then another layer of sauce, which used up the jar, forcing me into the reserved partially used other jar.  The top with rest of mozzarella.  By now, sitting in the steel bowl, it was no longer shredded in an easy to distribute way.  I made little balls of about three quarters of it, patterned it evenly over the sauce surface, then distributed the rest of the cheddar whose strands did not adhere to each other.  Then the remaining mozzarella into little balls, distributed in any gaps.  Since the noodles are not precooked, it needs some liquid.  The now empty sauce jar got about a third filled with water, then poured over the now assembled lasagna.  Cover with foil, bake at 350F for 80 minutes, remove foil halfway.   It was good.  Always a little different each time I make it, as I vary the types of cheeses, their proportions, and the flavor of jarred sauce with each preparation.

With experience, I was able to minimize dishwashing.  No measuring devices.  Not a lot of forks and spoons.  One sharp knife to cut the cheese.  Food processor did not use the chopping blade.  The disc was a sticky mess with mozzarella residual in the cutting grates.  It emulsifies easily with dishwashing liquid and washes away with rather hot water.  A sink spray works well.  The clear plastic fitted feed tube pusher had ridges on its surface that coated with mozzarella.  Little scrub, hot rinse.  Processor bowl housed mainly shredded cheddar.  Not hard to wash.  Processor top posed the biggest challenge.  Its injector molding gave it different areas with narrow plastic channels where both types of cheese accumulated.  I had to dislodge some of these with a sharp knife, then wedge the kitchen cleaning pad into small surfaces pretreated with detergent, then was away with hot water by sink spray.  The cheese got dislodged adequately this way.  The steel bowl had only mozzarella which did not stick tenaciously to it.  Simple wash with detergent and rinse.  Plate on which cheese was cut, just ordinary dishwashing.  And glass bowl that house the mixed filling took some effort.  The cottage cheese and spinach particles dried.  Before it could be scrubbed clean it had to be soaked.  While it had only broad, round surfaces, no channels like the processor top, getting it fully cleaned took a few steps.  And a quick wash of the cottage cheese container and sauce jar before they go into the next recycling pickup.  But all done.

Much of this effort has gotten easier over time with experience and with some experimentation.  I probably will not use more than half mozzarella again.  It's just much harder to incorporate than is shredded cheddar, and harder to clean up.  No colander, no measuring cups and spoons. Always have some spare sauce available.  Maybe a little less water at the end.

My wife and I eat about 25% per meal.  From the pan the first night.  Second night, take another quarter, put in second small frying pan and heat in oven.  At same time divide the remaining half into two rectangles.  Wrap each with foil, label, and freeze for the following week.  Then wash the lasagna pan.  We have four very good meals.  Some cleanup required, but with experience and planning it has become less excessive.