It's not something to cook at launch break but to prepare at home.
It's been a while since my last post, so I wanted to restart with something special. Inspired by the scandals about horse meet in lasagna I've decided to make one by myself. This is how I did it.
Actually I have no idea if this is somehow traditionally Italian, but the herbs and spices used are very common for the Italian kitchen so the flavour can be seen as Italian.
My Rating
(feel free to add your own in the comments)
- ★★★★★ Taste - This is really awesome! A mix of Italian spices and shrimps. And still no horse involved here. Guaranteed.
- ★★☆☆☆ Price - It may get a bit pricey in total but not per dish. If you're on a budget, just leave the shrimps out or replace them with chicken breast.
- ☆☆☆☆☆ Time - Prepare it the day before. It'll take some time.
- ★★★★☆ Healthiness - Very good, just avoid to use too much cheese and oil.
- ★★☆☆☆ Simplicity - Well, you have to handle several grounds of action at the same time, but everything is all easily doable.
Ingredients
Note: This list is ordered by importance of the ingredients.
- 12 Lasagna plates (4 for each layer in this case. The actual count depends on your baking dish)
- Tomato paste
- Basil
- 250g of small tomatoes (like cherry tomatoes)
- 1 Mozzarella cheese
- Green Pesto
- 50ml of Olive Oil
- 2 Red Bell Peppers
- 2 White Onions
- 2 Zucchinis
- 1/2 Eggplant
- 250g Shrimps
- Rosemary
- 50g of Flower
- 1 Spoon of Sugar
- Lemon Juice
- Garlic (if you like and can)
- 2 Laurel Leafs
- Eruca Sativa (Rucola)
Directions
- We are going to prepare two sauces. A red one with tomatoes and bell pepper and a green sauce with eggplant and zucchini.
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Cooking the Red Sauce with
Tomatoes, Bell Pepper and Basil. |
The Red Sauce: Let's start with the red one. Cut the small tomatoes to four pieces each. Cut the bell pepper and one onion into little squares. Put everything together with olive oil into a medium sized pot and set it to a mid-high temperature.
It is supposed to look like the picture above. When it is boiling a bit, add a bit of the green pesto, some basil leaves and some chopped rosemary leafs to it and stir.
The tomato-pepper sauce will lose some water over time. Once it seems like the sauce is becoming too dry, add some more water. If there is a lot of water then, add salt, pepper, sugar, lemon juice and tomato paste.
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Stir fry the Green Sauces
Ingredients. |
- The Green Sauce: Prepare a second pot. Cut the eggplant, the two zucchinis and the other onion into small pieces. Put everything together with some olive oil into the pot and power your cooker up. Stir everything from time to time. The vegetables are supposed to get a bit darker from frying. After some time, add the laurel leafs.
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| Mix the Topping in a Bowl |
- The Topping: Put the unfrozen shrimps in a bowl. Once again, mince some tomatoes and one half of a bell pepper into little pieces. Add these together with some basil leaves, rucola, olive oil, bell pepper powder, pepper and salt. Add some flower to it and mix everything. The flower will consume some water and make the shrimps soak up more of the sauce. At the same time they will become crispier.
- The Assembly:
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| Start with the Red Sauce |
Distribute a thin layer of the green sauce without any vegetables on the backing dish. This is the basis for the first layer of pasta. In this way, the pasta can consume liquid from the bottom and from the top to get the right consistency. And, most importantly, it won't stick to the bottom and you can get it out easily later.
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| The top-most layer |
One important thing to remember is to cover all of the pasta when constructing a new layer. If you leave out any part it'll burn while baking and can become very hard.
After you have spread out the first level of the lasagna plates, distribute the red sauce equally on top of it, cover it with pasta again and do the same for the green sauce including all the vegetables this time. Remove the laurel leafs from it, if you haven't already.
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| Top-most layer before baking. |
Now this layer also gets a layer of lasagna plates on top. Again, distribute the red sauce on top. Once this is finished, finally add the most yummy layer on top - the one with the shrimps and the Mozzarella cheese. Do not put a pasta layer in between these last two.
- Baking: There is no need to preheat the oven. In fact you can use the not-pre-heating to perform a little trick: If your oven has a grill, set the temperature to 180° and let it up the oven and to grill the surface of the lasagna a bit. Therefore put the lasagna on a lower level, so that it isn't exposed to the heat of the grill too directly. If the temperature has reached 180° or the surface is getting too dark, deactivate the grill and switch to air-circulation-mode instead. Now, wait approximately 35 minutes for your lasagna to finish. If the surface is not getting some color, increase the temperature carefully up to 200°. However if the color becomes too dark, lower the temperature to approx. 170°.
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Dinner is ready :)
Enjoy! |
Make it Special
(these are optional and depend on your personal preference, time or money)
- Olives
- Spring Onions
- Even more Basil! There is no way to put to much on it :)
- Stir fry the scampi separately and add them on top of the lasagna when the cheese has melted a bit.
- More seafood! Squid or mussels are a good addition (or replacement) for the shrimps.
- Spice it up with massive amounts of garlic. Especially the marinade for the shrimps should be enhanced by its original flavour.
- Make it spicy. I'd recommend to add some red hot chili peppers to the red sauce and keep the green sauce well tempered, so that there is a good contrast while eating. If the one sauce is too spicy, you simply mix it with the other.
