I thought I'd start a series of 'Easy Cooking' recipes that I come across. As a mom it's virtually impossible to keep your eyes on your kids, and cook/clean at the same time. And to do it all under the pressure cooker of either whining, or crying, makes me think I could actually win an Iron Chef competition hands down.
Well, my sister actually introduced this recipe to me. It's a delicious Spinach Walnut Pesto Lasagna - and *gasp* it's.... vegetarian?!?!??! IMPOSSIBLE!!! You'd think my carnivore son and husband would protest... but Joe actually requested it yesterday, and Colin scarfed it down.... so it's a winner in my books.
I did make a few adjustments... because
1. I don't like to measure things
2. I buy what's cheap/on sale at the store.
3. I like to use the least amount of dishes/preparation possible to limit my cleaning efforts later.
Ingredients:
2 packages of frozen chopped spinach
1 container of cottage cheese
Parmesan cheese (howveer much you want)
grated cheese (one of those packaged ones... I buy 3-4 of them when they're on sale and freeze them for pastas)
1 prepared jar of pesto
1 big (i don't even know the size, it's just the big can on the shelf) can of pasta sauce
12 strips of lasagna (3 layers)
What you do:
1. get a big bowl.
2. put the spinach, pesto, cottage cheese, parmesan and mix.
3. get a casserole dish, and put some pasta sauce on the bottom
4. 1 layer of pasta
5. spinach mixture, then pasta sauce, then grated cheese. repeat.
Now - you can soak the noodles, or cook them raw. (there's enough moisture in the lasagna to cook it all in the oven), but I like to be just on the safe side and I just dump it in hot tap water while I make the mixture so it softens up just a touch.
Cook in a 375 degree oven for about 30-45 minutes.
Seriously, I was so glad I made it the other day... we got back from and outting at 5pm, I got it prepped in about 15 minutes, then while it cooked in the oven we just played with the kids. This, my friends is a family friendly recipe!!
very nice! u should get the grated cheese from Costco in the states. sooo cheap and such a big bag :) we use it all the time for our cooking/baking!
ReplyDeleteso is the walnut part from the pesto? i usually use pesto made of pine nuts or almonds. sounds yummy but i think that might be much in points value for me :)
ReplyDelete@Ghislaine - I think the original recipe is walnuts instead of pine nuts. I've tried it with walnuts and it's delicious, so sometimes I'll jsut add in crush walnuts into the mixture too for the texture. It's quite good. But sometimes I'm too lazy to add them in :)
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