Pretty good lasagna

I’m a single guy and most of the food I make is large recipe.  I easily make enough to feed a family.  I can typically make 8 to 10 main dish meals from a recipe.  One thing that keeps well and almost seems to be made for our microwave lives (no time to start a fire, just the world of button pushing) is lasagna.  I have experimented with alternative sauces made from other blended vegetables like avocado.  I have experimented with no cheese on the top.  If you have tomatoes on top and you do it right you can caramelize the tomatoes.  This is a flavor I have enjoyed since having a wet burrito fresh out of the oven for the first time, where you scrape the caramelized tomato sauce off the plate.

For this lasagna I threw out previous experimentations and tried a few different one.  I added a cheese pasta sauce, commercially bought, to the sauce mix instead of cottage cheese or ricotta cheese.  I added heavy whipping cream to the sauce to make it richer and add variety.  I also used chorizo as a meat to add spice and flavor.

The recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 28 oz bottle of pasta sauce
• 3 15 oz cans diced tomatoes
• 2 8 oz cans tomato sauce
• 1/2 bottle commercial cheese pasta sauce
• 6 oz heavy whipping cream
• 12 oz chorizo
• 12 oz mushrooms canned or fresh and sauteed
• 15 lasagna noodles
• 1 C mexican blend cheese

Instructions:

1. Remove chorizo from casing. Brown, then chill for 30 minutes.
2. Mix all ingredients in large bowl including chilled chorizo and excluding lasagna noodles.
3. In 9x13in pan, preferably borosilicate glass, start by covering bottom liberally with sauce.  Then use five dry lasagna noodles to make a layer overlapping them a bit.  The dry noodles will cook while the dish bakes, absorbing water.
4. Make another layer of sauce and noodles.  Repeat till you have your 4th layer of sauce.  You should be near the top of the baking dish.
5. This recipe will have extra sauce.  I froze mine to be had with a plate of pasta like farfalle later.
6. Preheat oven to 350.  Cook for 65-70 minutes.  Start checking at 60 minutes to see if your dish is getting done.  If you used a glass dish you will see water boiling up the sides.  When the liquid on the sides of the pan starts to thicken or congeal, you should move on to the next step.
7. Add cheese to top of lasagna.  Put back in oven to melt cheese.  Should take 5-10 minutes.
8. Remove from oven.  Allow to cool. Serve.

Notes:

I thought this could use more spice.  Maybe add a hot pepper.  This would also be good with zucchini or asparagus.