Day 36 - Lasanga Soup

So I've been talking about making Lasanga Soup since Day 2, with the recipe I found on the Deals to Meals blog.

One of the hang-ups was an unforeseen disaster that destroyed my pre-made chicken broth. I recovered, and a new batch was made. This time I froze it in Muffin Tins so that I could use it incrementally. In retrospect, something like silicone ice cube trays would of worked better, but it all turned out.

Here is the finished product.

Finally, per my usual form, I didn't exactly follow the recipe perfectly. While I think this tendency is result of my generally relaxed approach in life, I also like to think it is a result of my "creativity" in cooking. This is also a great frugal technique, many ingredients are costly and last minute trips to the store to purchase extras can be expensive too.

Here's what went down:

Lasagna Soup	What I did
1 ½ t. olive oil	some olive oil
1 lb. bulk Italian sausage or ground beef	1/2 lb Italian Sausage and leftover cooked sausage
1 ½ onions, finely chopped	1/2 onions
3 t. garlic, minced	at least if not more than this
1 ½ t. oregano	Yes, of course I didn't measure it though
1/2 t. pepper	skipped
Pinch of salt	used onion salt, since we were low on onions elsewhere
¼ t. red pepper flakes	a dash or two of Mrs. Dash
1 small can tomato paste	Half-Jar of leftover Pasta Sauce
3 cans diced tomatoes	1 can whole tomatoes - which I then "diced"
2-3 cans chicken broth	6 -8 frozen pieces of chicken broth
2 bay leaves	nope! - none around
12 oz. corkscrew or shell pasta	I used "wheat" rotini and macaroni (half of each)
3 t. basil	lots of basil
6 oz. ricotta cheese (or cottage cheese blended until smooth)	blended cottage cheese, we used what was left
6 T. parmesan cheese	we are out, so we skipped this too
1 ½ c. shredded mozzarella cheese	indeed!

First, browning the Italian sausage with onions. 

Once complete (or while in process) add in all the seasonings.  Meat is a seasoning absorber, so it's good to get these in at this stage.  Then add all the liquidy and tomatoey elements.

Here's the chicken broth, it melted super quickly.  It was already really small by the time I could take the photo.

Once it's boiling you will want to add the noodles (uncooked).

 Wheat rotini and elbow macaroni

While the noodles are cooking up, make the cheese portion.  The wierdest part of this is blending the cottage cheese.  I used a magic bullet.  You literally just scoop it in and go. 

I thought this was very strange, but tasted fine.

Mixed it with some mozzarella. I sprinkled it with Basil, so it didn't look (too) ugly.

Soup done?

Yes. Noodles should be soft. 

More like a goulash really.  Maybe if I had followed the recipe... hmmm. Nah...

Scoop the soup on top of the cheese, and voila!

Cheesy, Tomatoey goodness. 

Yum.

We ate this with a bottle of Zinfandel from Hendry Vineyard in Napa, CA, which we purchased on our honeymoon. 

Zinfandels are a great with tomatoey and many Italian dishes.  This particular one isn't exactly Five Dollar Day worthy.  However, Huzbun and I have found many wines (Zins included) at our local liqueur store that are quite good and less than $5.  According to Huzbun -drinks don't count anyway.