Speedy lasagna

When I was in high school, I had some friends over and made them lasagna. (My first dinner party!) By then, I'd made lasagna a couple of times, and would continue to do so over the years, and for some reason, probably because I was younger and I'm not a natural cook, I struggled with it. It just seemed so labor-intensive--making sauce (although back then I just used jarred stuff), all those ingredients. This was also back before those no-boil lasagna noodles came out. Oh boy are those a savior now.



But I love lasagna, or baked pasta dishes with pasta and cheese and tomato sauce. It has been years since I've made it but I just couldn't take it anymore and really want to try again.


I based it on this "quick weeknight meal" recipe from The Kitchn. It was a simplified lasagna-style meal, except not baked in layers. So I thought, could I use the same ingredients but make it a more traditional layered lasagna?

Yes, yes I can.


I mixed chopped spinach, ricotta, a some pre-shredded "Italian" blend cheese. I used some of my universal tomato sauce and no-boil lasagna sheets, and layered in the standard style of sauce, noodles, cheese and spinach mix, sauce, noodles, etc. I ended up having some ricotta mix leftover, which I think I could have tried to squeeze in. Also, I think I could have easily added more spinach, since it cooks down so much. (I guess I could have cooked the spinach first, or used frozen, but I felt both would have gone against my goal of a "quick" meal.)


I wasn't sure about the timing since I was using no-boil noodles, but the package said 30-40 min covered in foil, so that's what I did, with the last 5 minutes uncovered.



It looked, smelled, and tasted heavenly.


Not only that, it was fast (besides the baking time, but it was the perfect amount of time for me to clean up and start watching "Glee"). And, I managed to use stuff I already had in my fridge and pantry--I only had to buy ricotta and the cheese blend.