Cook's Illustrated Lasagna

N. requested lasagna this week and, since I resolved to make a new recipe from my Cook's Illustrated cookbook this week, I decided to abandon my typical recipe and see what they had to say about the venerable classic. My lasagna usually takes forever because I spend the day before making sauce; browning the meat, simmiering the aromatics, deglazing with wine and cooking for hours. Cook's Illustrated suggested a simple and quick simmered tomato sauce, which I found interesting for a couple of reasons. First, they recommend the more Italian style of cooking pasta, meaning that with sauce, less is more. I am ever so Italian-American in my tendency to drown things in sauce and then douse more sauce on top of the finished product. Second, to cut down on cooking time, the recipe indicated that the tomatoes should be drained on their juices, which are reserved, then sauteeing the onions, garlic and tomatoes until all the moisture evaporates and a brown fond is formed. Then deglaze with wine and add the reserved juices. This worked well because most recipes, including my own, dump the tomatoes with all their juices right into the mix, adding water and reducing by a lengthy cooking period. So I made this sauce in under an hour and it produced probably less than two cups.

To assemble the cheese mixture, Cook's Illustrated stated that ricotta just had too much water and after several test batches, they came up with a mixture of mozzarella and parmesean. Well, I was willing to give this a try but when it came down to it, the mixture looked so very dry. So I added an egg and pureed a cup of cottage cheese that I had on hand. I know, it sounds unorthodox but I was already experimenting so what the heck? I also couldn't bear the thought of unseasoned cheese so in went some parsley and nutmeg. The recipe was very specific about using 12 lasagna noodles. This irked me because it doesn't reach to all sides of a 13 by 9 inch pan. I usually load as much pasta and cheese as I can in there but I thought "Just give it a try and stop being so stubborn!" The final difference was that the last layer of noodles be topped only with cheese, no sauce. Hmmm. Well, the results were quite good, I thought. The mixture oozed out during the baking so you could never even tell that the noodles didn't fit the pan snugly. I really like the cheese-only layer on top; it reminded on me parmesean crisps and provided a nice contrast to the dense, tomato-rich interior.

I'm not including a recipe because, really, you already know. It was more about changing my methods, or at least learning another style and the downfalls of some of the traditional ways. But if you're really dying for the recipe, let me know, I'll send it your way.