By Carmel Karni — See the recipe
My mom taught me this uber simple lasagna recipe that uses cottage cheese as the filling and oven ready noodles. Don’t poo-poo it! This recipe gets rave reviews, so much so that my children snub their noses at fancy bechamel based versions. I say, why mess with success.
My Mom’s Cottage-Cheese Lasagna
Ingredients
- 3 cups prepared tomato sauce (I prefer the onion version for this recipe)
- 2 16 oz tubs of cottage cheese, preferably not low fat
- 1 bunch kale
- 1 tsp dijon mustard
- Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
- 1 package oven ready lasagna noodles such as barilla
- Grated mozzarella cheese
- Grated parmesan cheese
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375.
Bring a small pot of salted water to a boil. Wash the kale, remove its stems. When the water boils, add the kale and cook for about 5 minutes until it softens.
Pour into a colander and wait for the kale to cool a bit, then, use a clean kitchen towel (our #2 cook towel is perfect for this job!) to squeeze as much water as you can. Chop fine.
Put all the cottage cheese in a bowl, add mustard and chopped kale. Add plenty of black pepper, taste for salt and season to your liking.
Layer the lasagna in a baking dish (I like a 9x14 pyrex for this) thusly: Start with a bit of tomato sauce on the bottom, then a layer of noodles. Dollop a third of your cottage cheese mixture on top followed by (roughly) a quarter of your tomato sauce. Place another layer of noodles and repeat this twice, until you don't have any more cottage cheese filling left. Cover with noodles, followed by tomato sauce and then sprinkle with mozzarella and parmesan.
Cover with aluminum foil and bake for 45 minutes, then uncover, raise the oven temp to 400 and bake for an additional 15 minutes, until the lasagna top is golden and bubbly. Wait about 15 minutes to tuck in.
