Little miss was excited for two reasons. The first is that she could help me actually build the lasagna tonight, a task that, for obvious re
asons, I don't usually let her help me accomplish - I don't want her burning herself on just boiled noodles! The second was that I had promised her that the next time I needed to grate cheese, I would let her try the "circle" (ie: rotary) grater. It was a little tricky for her little hands to get the knack of holding and turning all at the same time, but she did a great job. And while she grated, I mixed an egg into the ricotta and mixed up our sauce.I did the first layer myself, to get a hang of how it would go, and then little miss helped me add each new l
ayer of noodles. The toughest part, to me, was spreading the ricotta onto the dry noodles, as the noodles wanted to shift all over the place, but other than that, this went together exactly like I expected it to.I found it interesting that the cooking time and temperature for this lasagna, according to the package directions, were identical to those of a standard, pre-cooked-noodle lasagna - I had expected it to need a little bit of extra time covered in the oven, but I followed the directions, and the noodles seemed to cook all the way through.
The lasagna tasted delicious - neither daddy nor little miss could taste a difference between this and my regular lasagna. Honestly, tho
ugh, I wouldn't go out of my way to look for these noodles again. I am sure some people like the fact that you save a pot by not boiling the noodles first, but considering the amount of dishes generated by making this dish anyway, one more pot isn't really a big deal. And I found that, despite the fact that this lasagna had exactly the same amount of layers as my regular one, it just felt thinner... flatter... But I am glad I tried them, and it made a yummy dinner tonight.
I've never used the no boil noodles, but I've eaten someone else's lasagna that did use them and I didn't notice a difference either. The concept still kind of seems strange to me since I am used to boiling all types of noodles. My little guy likes to help by doing the noodles and the cheese. I cool them with cold water and he can lay them on. He used to make roads with the noodles on the counter by lining them up one after the other!
ReplyDeleteOn a separate note, we must be on the same wave length or something because I have lasagna ready to post in a few days and we've had a few other recipes that have nothing to do with daring bakers on our food blogs kind of close to each other. Funny!