The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Imitation, that is. I was in New York for work recently, and had dinner at an Italian restaurant near Lincoln Center. Two of the women in my party ordered an open-faced lasagna. Lasagna always sounds good, and open-faced added a new level of interest.

When it arrived, I think we were all a little taken aback by what it actually looked like – a giant sheet of pasta, with sauce and cheese, topped with a few small meatballs. Basically, it looked like the pizza version of lasagna. I said to myself, “I can do this better.” So tonight I set out to do so.

I started with Barilla no boil lasagna noodles. I took out four, and soaked them in boiling water to re-hydrate them and make them pliable. I made the ricotta mixture per my standard lasagna recipe directions, and added a little spinach for flavor and color. I confess, I used jar sauce (also Barilla). It was in the fridge, I’m going on vacation later this week, and I prefer not to let food go to waste. It needed to be done.

Instead of making one giant lasagna pizza, I opted to make a single serve casserole using my Pfaltzgraff medium-sized au gratin dish. I put a teeny bit of sauce on the bottom, and then layered in two of the lasagna noodles (turns out I only needed two, the spare ones were for insurance… you never know). I added the cheese mixture, sauce, and then the meat. Instead of meatballs, I used some Italian chicken sausage – I de-cased it and cooked it like ground meat and put it right on top of the sauce. Then the mozzarella was layered on, followed by the parmesan cheese. I covered the dish tightly with foil, placed it on a rimmed baking sheet (in case of overflow), and baked at 350 for 45 minutes. When the buzzer went off, I removed the foil and cooked it for another 15 to melt the cheese and get it all bubbly and brown. Just when I thought it was finally ready to eat, I remembered to let it rest for another 15 minutes to set up. (Flashbacks to the Christmas Eve lasagna soup incident of ’99 was all the reminder I needed.)

Finally, it was ready to eat. I took a bite, it was still plenty hot, and it was pretty good. Since I didn’t actually taste the restaurant version, I really can’t compare. But mine was much more manageable in size – it was a generous single serving. The restaurant version was way too big – Margarita, who proclaimed to be so hungry she didn’t need to consider sharing with Catalina, could barely eat 1/8th of the dish. (I appreciate large portions in a restaurant, but there is such a thing as too big and this lasagna was definitely too big.)

I will say, as tasty as my open-faced lasagna was, it was not as good as the standard fare. There is a lot to be said for the role of the noodles in a plate of lasagna. Two on the bottom, serving as a crust, is just not enough noodle for me.

But you know what? It was a lot of fun trying to recreate this dish… and even though it was not quite as good as the real thing, it still made for a pretty good dinner.