The daily bad: one-layer lasagna

I finally made a passable lasagna. But I still have a sauce problem.

As in, why do I always run out of sauce way before I run out of cheese? In reading through the lasagna-making canon on the internets, I've never come across this particular problem. Which leads me to believe it's my problem. Indeed, if I re-examine my entire lasagna-making history, I have run short of sauce every. Single. Time.

But is it my bad really? I winged the last meat-sauce, but it was based on solid numbers culled from a dozen other lasagna recipes: 1 28-ounce can of diced tomatoes with juice and one 8-ounce can of tomato sauce.

This last lasagna, however, came up so short I had to rename the dish: Welcome to the first ever one-layer lasagna.

I simmered that meat sauce for an hour. It had mushrooms, carrots, juicy chunks of ground beef — it was a real taste sensation.

All was going uncharacteristically well until It came time to assemble the lasagna. I laid out the first layer of noodles, followed by the meat sauce layer. I could already see I was playing with borrowed time, so I tried to make this layer as thin as possible. Then I dished out the ricotta cheese (which I seemed to have plenty of); then Parmesan, then another thin layer of meat sauce. And then I knew my fate.

There was only enough meat sauce left over to cover one of the next layer of noodles. Even using a spatula to scrape together the final saucy dregs.

I hoped the cheese and meat sauce underneath would help cook the top layer. It was my only hope, in fact.

But it didnt work out that way. "Think of these as crispy lasagna chips," I said lamely, serving a dish to the flamenco guitarist. "Isn't that interesting? They're crispy."

"So are deep-fried crickets," he said.

But he ate it anyway. And praised the one layer there was. Good self-preservation instinct that one has.

Lesson learned: Next time, I double the meat sauce recipe. No telling what I'll run out of then.

Stay tuned.

Tagged as: lasagna, meat sauce