Smoked Meat, Bacon ... and Spinach Lasagna Recipe
Difficulty: Easy
Portions: 6
Preparation: 30 min.
Cooking time: 55 min.
Resting time: 15 min.
After finally finding a place to buy a nice good quality piece of smoked meat, we had a smoked meat party here at my place and then was left over with a good amount of smoked meat... a nice problem to have, really! So naturally I opted to use it in a lasagna recipe... Accompanied by a small green salad this lasagna recipe can turn into the perfect evening dish. I personally wouldn't add any extra salt to this recipe as the smoked meat and bacon already have plenty.
Ingredients:
* 2 lb. Piece of Smoked Meat, sliced
* 1 lb. Sliced bacon, cooked and chopped
* 10-12 Lasagna noodles, depending on size of the lasagna pan
* 1 onion
* 1 clove garlic
* 2 cans diced tomatoes,
* 1 Pack of fresh spinach, could also be frozen spinach
* 1 small glass of red wine
* Bechamel sauce, amount as necessary
* Swiss cheese, grated
* 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
* oregano
* paprika
* A bit of olive oil
* Salt and pepper
Instructions
Prepare the spinach:
1) If you chose to use frozen spinach, make them thaw leaving them in a colander for 30 minutes or more; chop up the spinach finely. Reserve;
Make the tomato sauce:
2) Sauté the onion and minced garlic in a little olive oil. Add the canned diced tomatoes and pour the red wine over. Season with some basil, some paprika and oregano and simmer to reduce until the sauce has the desired, thick consistency. Mix the grated parmesan in the tomato sauce...
3) While the tomato sauce is simmering, you have the time to make a bechamel sauce. Follow this procedure for the béchamel sauce recipe, if you do not know this one already...
Preheat the oven to 300 ˚F. Your ingredients are ready so let's start putting the lasagna together.
Putting this lasagna together, and baking it
4) In a deep lasagna baking dish, first spread some bechamel at the bottom of the pan; then a layer of lasagna noodles, then spread some tomato sauce over the noodles; place half the smoked meat slices evenly over the sauce, then another layer of pasta. Over the pasta layer spread all the spinach, and then some béchamel sauce over the spinach. Place a layer of lasagna, then a layer of tomato sauce, followed by a layer of bacon, then smoked meat... by this time now you should be close to the top of the pan; make other layers if you have room left. Sprinkle evenly the swiss cheese on the top layer of this lasagna.
5) Put the lasagna in the oven; bake for about 40 min. or until the top has a nice golden crust. Before cutting this smoked meatlasagna let it sit for about 15 minutes.