Spinach Mushroom Lasagna

Thursday, 10 April 2008

Spinach Mushroom Lasagna
///UPDATE/// The leftovers tasted pretty good warmed up with marinara sauce poured over them.
I combined a lasagna recipe from theveggietable.com with my favorite alfredo sauce recipe from allrecipes.com to make this dish. I tripled (as updated below) all the ingredients and had 1/16th of the pan as a serving. I was stuffed and couldn't finish it, but alfredo and portobellos is Damon's favorite sauce. It's too much cheese for me to digest and loaded with calories but definately a heavy comfort food for a man's belly! There was a strange sweet taste to the lasagna that I couldn't place. I don't know if it was my choice of noodles or if it was the carrots.
Alfredo Sauce:
1/2 cup butter
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 cups milk
6 ounces grated italian cheese blend (romano, parmesan, mozarella)
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
Lasagna:
10 oz package of frozen spinach, thawed
1 T olive oil
1-½ c onion, diced
1-½ c carrots, shredded or diced
1-½ c portobella mushrooms, sliced
2 c ricotta cheese
1 c fat free cottage cheese
1 t oregano
salt
1 t pepper
3 c Alfredo sauce (See above recipe)
½ pound oven-ready lasagna noodles
16 oz package mozzarella cheese, grated

Directions

Melt butter in a medium, non-stick saucepan over medium heat. Add cream cheese and garlic powder, stirring with wire whisk until smooth. Add milk, a little at a time, whisking to smooth out lumps. Stir in Parmesan and pepper. Remove from heat when sauce reaches desired consistency. Sauce will thicken rapidly, thin with milk if cooked too long. Toss with hot pasta to serve.

Heat oil, add onion, carrots, and mushrooms, and sauté, stirring frequently, until onions are soft, about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the spinach: if using fresh, wash, pat dry, de-stem (optional), and chop. If using frozen, thaw, drain, and squeeze out excess water.

Combine vegetables, spinach, ricotta cheese, oregano, a dash of salt, and pepper in the bowl. Set aside. In a second bowl, combine cottage cheese and half of mozarella cheese, set aside.

Preheat oven to 350.

Spread about ½ c of sauce in bottom of the baking dish. Line with lasagna noodles, then spread about half of the spinach mixture on the noodles. Add ½ c sauce, then another layer of noodles, then all of the cottage cheese mixture. Repeat with sauce, noodles, and spinach. Top with the rest of the sauce, then sprinkle with mozzarella.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 50 minutes. Turn off oven, remove cover, and leave lasagna in warm oven for another 15 minutes, until brown and bubbly. Let stand for a few minutes, and serve.