So maybe I went a little overboard with the mozarella cheese, but I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t sure if it had enough, so I kept piling on top. But… I’m getting ahead of myself. This gooey saucey delight was dinner this evening: Spinach lasagna rolls.
It all started out very simple. I boiled 11 whole wheat lasagna sheets very carefully, cooking them for only about 8 minutes of their prescribed 10. I laid them out on moistened paper towels as I sauteed one small onions, 3 scallions, 2 cloves of garlic and one bag of frozen spinach, thawed and drained. Each one was sauteed until transluscent before the next addition. Once the spinach was warmed, I added about half a cup of pasta water to it and one container of ricotta cheese. This got stirred thoroughly with a quarter cup parmesan cheese. Covered on low for 5 minutes and then turned off.
When the food was settled enough to handle, I cut the strips in half and filled each side with approximately 2 tablespoons of the spinach mixuture. These rolls were then arranged in a dish that had some sauce and mozeralla cheese laid out on the bottom. The pie plate I used turned out to be too small for what I wanted it for. The rolls ended up getting piled on top of one another. Some more pasta sauce was poured on top and a mixture of parmesan and mozarella cheese was piled on top. I baked this for about 20 minutes at like 400F. I was sleepy and just let it go, but the right finish time is when the sauce bubbles and the cheese melts.
Final Review: This was SO good. I’d been hankering for this idea since I saw something like it in a commercial on tv. I added some green leaf lettuce on the side and called it a meal. It truly was amazing. This very easily serves 3-4 people. Both my housemate and I ate our fill and we only managed to scoop out half the dish. He’d never had spinach before and I was afraid he wasn’t going to like it. Turns out he really loved it and thought it was just amazing. It was nice to actually be cooking real food for a change. Maybe I should do this more often. If I make it… they will it eat.
