#with zucchini noodles because those are easier to deal with than actual lasagna noodles

[hippo-pot]

think i'm gonna make lasagna today

[clatterbane]

Tonight's plan: some basic very American style lasagna! Full of cheesy goodness, and assembled in advance last night.

I had been wanting some for a while, and actually included cheeses and stuff for a nice batch in the last grocery order. But, I finally got around to making a big batch (by recent two-person standards) of meaty pasta sauce yesterday.

We had that with spaghetti for supper, then I did get my ass in gear to use the rest for lasagna. Supplemented with some jarred stuff mixed in, but hey. It's all good.

A couple of foil pans in the freezer (around 1L each?), off my little night shift production line. They're still laid out flat on a cutting board for freezing, but need to be shuffled around to a better temporary home in there.

These are actually made with a mix of ricotta and small curd cottage cheese, because I got an urge for closer to what I grew up with at home. But, access to ricotta is of course much easier these days, and combining the two makes for a great texture balance.

The bigger pan for tonight also got a layer of sliced zucchini worked in, because we had half a big one that needed to be used. Mr. C doesn't much like squash, but he doesn't really object when it's worked into something like this.

One great tentative tip for dealing with the no-boil noodles, btw:

The gluten free varieties I have tried behave particularly unpredictably when used dry as directed, and you never know how they're going to absorb liquid. Either you're left with weird-textured gummy half-cooked noodles glumping around in an overly soupy mess, or ditto but after slurping up all the liquid available. It's not good, and I honestly just thought all the ones I was finding in stores were shit.

But, I am stubborn. In past, I have tried the hot water soak approach to rehydrate the things before cooking, but that is a gigantic PITA. They WILL weld themselves together in a heartbeat if they touch at all. Enter big awkward baking sheets, and pieces of aluminum foil to separate the well spaced-out single layers. Much better (read: pretty normal for fresh or preboiled noodles!) results when cooked. Using them rehydrated, you can also easily cut the noodles up to piece into your pan better. ✂️

But, fuck that noise. At least before cooking, soaking them for a longer time in room temperature water like rice noodles this time did, indeed, seem to get about the same flexible results. With the benefit of just being able to throw them all together in a pot of water without sticking. We'll see after these are cooked! But, AFAICT the trick is to get the dry pasta rehydrated.

I thought I could fit another layer in all of those pans, and even counted out the necessary number of noodles to fit! But, these things do tend to grow out of control, and those are not the deepest pans. I got fed up and just shoved them in the fridge last night. (Actually layered with plastic wrap this time, because I did not trust them not to glue themselves together while sitting.)

So, I guess we have some surplus soaked noodles to use up somehow within the next few days! Either that, or I can concoct another freezer delight with different ingredients. There were more than enough noodles left for that size foil pan, but I actually judged about right on the amount of other lasagna ingredients needed for what's already made.