PREVIOUS ISSUES : CULTURE : Food Last Updated: April 9, 2008 - 1:25 PM   Total Pig: Lasagna Lessons By Gwyneth Doland Published: March 5, 2008   Email this article   Printer friendly page   So here�s the question I asked myself last weekend while standing in the pasta aisle at Smith�s: Will people notice if I use whole wheat noodles in lasagna? The short answer is no. In fact, you can do whatever you want to lasagna and people will love it. You can�t mess it up. You can even use noodles the color and texture of cardboard. Nobody cares! Everybody loves lasagna, even when it�s made with cardboard-colored noodles. Every Sunday night I have the same group of friends over for dinner, and they�re a pretty forgiving bunch. They�ve endured some colossal mess-ups when I�ve been testing recipes for cookbooks and they�ve smiled bravely through some of my more �creative� combinations (cilantro granita, anyone?). A few weeks ago I put together a pretty ambitious East Indian feast that involved homemade paneer cheese (read: pale white cubes of gummy gunk) and a fragrant spiced dal that cooked for what seemed like a thousand years and was still the delicious texture of pea gravel. And they were soooo nice about it. But even I knew the meal sucked. I wasn�t really worried about impressing them (I know they�ll still love me) but I didn�t want dinner to be bad. So it was a gamble, but after I picked up the whole wheat noodles, I decided to go all the way and try to make a lasagna that was as healthy as possible without anyone noticing the difference.   I�ve tried Barilla Plus multigrain pasta and, yeah, it�s totally fine. But the Ronzoni whole grain lasagna noodles were pretty much the same color as the cardboard box they came in and I was worried the taste would be similar too. Not at all. I actually used a pound of fresh spinach for this recipe, but only because I had it on hand. (If you want to use fresh spinach, put it in a big bowl and pour boiling water over it. Wait five minutes and drain.) I suggest using the turkey green chile sausage from the meat counter at Kaune Food Town, but feel free to substitute any kind of chicken or turkey sausage that doesn�t have a really weird flavor. And of course you can make your own tomato sauce, but why bother? It�s March. The tomatoes are terrible. Save yourself the agony and buy a jar of something. Anything. As for the cheese, you can use regular old shredded mozzarella or get crazy with some fontina and a little Asiago. You really don�t have to boil the noodles first�this recipe calls for a whole lot of extra sauce that the uncooked noodles will soak up. Gwyneth�s Secretly Sort-of-Healthy Lasagna 1� pounds turkey green chile sausage 6 cups tomato sauce�homemade, store-bought, whatever 1 (15-ounce container) part-skim ricotta cheese 1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese 1 teaspoon dried basil 1 teaspoon dried oregano 2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley � teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1 pound fresh spinach or 1 (10-ounce) package frozen spinach, thawed Salt�only if needed 2 large eggs, beaten with a fork 1 box whole grain lasagna noodles 1 pound shredded part-skim mozzarella Preheat the oven to 350� F. Squeeze the sausages out of their casing, into a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Use a wooden spoon to break up the meat, then brown it on all sides. Actually, go ahead and cook it through because you know you�re going to eat a bunch of it before you put the lasagna together. I did. Pour the tomato sauce into the pan, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and allow the sauce to cool slightly. In a large bowl, combine the ricotta, Parmesan, basil, oregano, parsley, pepper and spinach. Stir all up together. Too thick? Add some milk, or even a little plain yogurt to thin it out. Now taste it. That Parmesan is pretty salty, but if you think it needs more you can add a little salt at this stage. Now add the eggs and stir again. Pour � cup sauce in the bottom of a 13-by-9-inch pan. Put three pieces of uncooked cardboard, er, whole wheat pasta, over the sauce. Then pour a cup, maybe a little more than a cup of sauce all over the pasta. Take about a cup of the cheese mixture and schmear it all in with the sauce, trying to spread it somewhat evenly over the noodles. Then sprinkle a big handful of shredded cheese over the top. Now do another layer of three noodles, cup or so of sauce, cup or so of cheesy goop, big handful of shredded cheese. Then do it one more time. (If you have a regular 9-by-13-inch pan you�ll probably use nine standard lasagna noodles, but if you have a super-deep pan you could do four or more layers.) Pile all the extra cheesy goop and shredded cheese on top and wrap it with foil and shove it in the oven. (You may have extra sauce. Stick it in the fridge and use it for something else.) Bake for about one hour, then remove the foil and cook 15 minutes longer. Pull it out and let it rest on a rack for a few minutes or you�ll burn the hell out of your tongue with that molten lava cheese. Serve with a big salad, some grilled asparagus and a bottle of cheap Chianti. Tell me where to eat! I need your input. Send all of your tips, gripes and raves to food@sfreporter.com. © Copyright 2000-2008 by the Santa Fe Reporter Save This Page to del.icio.us Top of Page