It seems that I am starting off these posts with recipes I have found and want to try. Where Part 1 was planned out for trying to make Cloud Bread for the first time, I have put that follow up post on hold. Why? Well, I found multiple recipes that I wanted to use it with, one of which was my biggest pastry weakness ever and well, I figured that follow-up post needed to include all the ways I found to try it. So that one will take a bit longer to post about.
Part 2 is also a recipe, but as a comparison to a specific recipe that I grew up with: My grandmother’s lasagna!
While searching for general dinner ideas on Pinterest (because I always look for new ideas there, and why not, right?), I came across what was being called “Grandmother[‘s] Best Lasagna in the Whole World.”
The best in the whole world? Really? I mean, of course, I had to pin it to try sometime and so why not try it out and compare it to my own grandmother’s recipe, the one I grew up on!
Comparing the recipes, they aren’t that different. There were just a few bits here and there, that could easily be modified from my grandma’s recipe to create the one I found on Pinterest. Simple things like using different meats and cheeses, down to adding certain herbs or spices. Admittedly, the only reason I wanted to compare the two is that they both had one major ingredient similarity: cottage cheese. Mostly, traditional lasagna recipes use ricotta, but where it used to not be as easy to find in a local grocery store, and then horribly expensive when you could find it, cottage cheese was an easy replacement, and became the ‘norm’ for specific dishes, like this. And as much as I loved my grandma’s lasagna when I was a kid, as I grew up and learned the difference between ‘real Italian’ and ‘makeshift Italian’, I went through a refusal to take shortcuts for traditional style dishes (from any country, actually). I stopped using the cottage cheese that my grandmother’s recipe called for and, since the price wasn’t all that different anyway, starting using ricotta.
***This is my moment to state, for the record, that ricotta is delicious but also rather dry by comparison to the cottage cheese, and that I liked this recipe so much that I will probably just stick to using cottage cheese again, from now on.***
So here are the differences:
- ground beef and Italian sausage vs just ground beef
- yellow onion cooked with the meat vs no onion
- red pepper flakes mixed with the sauce vs no red pepper flakes
- oregano and garlic mixed into the sauce vs parsley and no garlic
- mozzarella and Swiss cheeses on top vs mozzarella and Parmesan
Now, I did not use the red pepper flakes, mainly for my children’s sake, and if it weren’t for them, I would have purchased hot Italian sausage instead of mild. The mild, however, did have quite a bit of a bite to it, so I will be happy using that again. Also, I couldn’t find shredded Swiss cheese on its own, so I compromised with what I did find; a mix of Swiss and Gruyere. I also used less of the Swiss than the recipe called for, and used more mozzarella, too. (There’s never anything wrong with more cheese, am I right?)
Oh, and my son, the pickiest eater in the house, did ask me to please not add the onion next time I make this, so I will save him a bit and likely not bother with the onion, just to see if he notices it isn’t in there or not.
In conclusion, this new recipe may not be one I will consider the ‘best in the whole world’, but it is pretty dang good and will become my new standard lasagna recipe. Or at least until I find one I like better than this one. And as it is so similar to my grandmother’s I may even just use hers and switch it up a bit instead. Different meat choices and cheeses really can change the overall flavor of the dish, and as much of a pain cooking lasagna can seem like, it’s worth the time put into assembling this dish. Trust me! If my kids like it, it’s worth giving it a shot!
Here is the recipe I found and followed.
Please comment and let me know if you have a recipe that you love, whether it’s lasagna or not, and think it’s the best one out there! I’d love to try and it and compare it to what I’ve been making in my adulthood or what I grew up having!
I love, love, love trying new recipes!
♥
michigander♥mander 