Throwback Thursdays with Meka! Episode 3; Homemade Lasagna

Hi, welcome to Throwback Thursdays. I am Mika. Today we are putting a spin on a classic dish. We are making lasagna, but not just regular lasagna. We are making my mom's special recipe lasagna, and I am sure you are going to love it. What makes this lasagna so special is that it has layers of zucchini and spinach. It is amazing. We are going to substitute ground beef with ground turkey to make it feel a little bit lighter. We are also using five different cheeses. That's right, five different cheeses. Let's get started. First things first is you want to boil your lasagna noodles. Now I know they have the kind that you can just bake and you don't have to boil. I've never used those before and I'm not going to start now. If you want to use those go ahead but I'm just going to use the traditional lasagna noodles. I am going to boil these according to the package. Now remember before you put your pasta in the boiling water make sure to salt your water. That is going to ensure that you flavor the pasta. Let me put this in the boiling water. While the pasta is boiling, let's get started on the seasonings for our ground turkey. I have one pound of ground turkey here. I am going to dice one yellow onion and I'm going to chop five cloves of garlic. Adding onion to the meat is going to add flavor. If you are not a big onion fan you can omit the onion or you can chop it really really small but I do suggest trying it with the onion and you will see how much flavor the onion adds. I am going to dice is pretty fine so a couple slits that way I'm gonna go down then we have our dice I always use sweet onion because this is the only onion that does not make me cry I really enjoy the flavor of it and I also enjoy not having my makeup run while I'm cooking but once the onion is chopped I'm just going to run my knife back through it to get a finer dice. I always love chopping garlic because I get to smash it. This is such a stress reliever too. And then we're just going to chop the garlic. Let's cook our ground turkey. Preheat a skillet for your meat while your skillet is preheating. Be sure to check on your lasagna noodles so they're not sticking. once your pan is nice and hot you're going to add about one tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil you're going to saute your onions until they are nice soft and translucent once the onions are nice and soft you're going to add the garlic and your ground turkey you are going to incorporate the garlic and the onions into the ground turkey by folding them in you're going to season with some salt, black pepper, and some basil. Make sure you continue to cook your meat until it's all the way done or until there is no more pink left. Once your pasta is done, drain and run under cold water to stop the cooking process. Let's prep the vegetable layer of this lasagna. I have two bunches of spinach already washed and I have four small zucchini. This is the layer that makes this lasagna irresistible. I am going to chop the ends off of the zucchini. I'm going to slice these in little circles about one half inch thick. After all the zucchini is cut I am going to salt the zucchini to bring some of the water out of it. We don't want the zucchini to be too watery and make our lasagna runny. We're going to let this sit for about two minutes and then we are going to cook the zucchini along with the spinach. Add the zucchini to a preheated skillet with approximately one tablespoon of olive oil. You're going to saute the zucchini until they are nice and golden brown. Once they are beautifully brown you're going to add the spinach and you're going to continue to cook until the spinach is nice and wilted and everything is combined veggies are done we just want to add a little salt just a little bit and a little black pepper I have sharp cheddar cheese I have a block of mozzarella cheese and I have a block of Monterey Jack I am going to shred all these cheeses myself using a grater. Do not, I repeat, do not get already shredded cheese. You have to do this the old way. You just want to mix this up until it's one bowl of finely mixed cheese. I have one 16 ounce container of small curd cottage cheese and also some ricotta let's layer this up now we just have some marinara sauce here so I'm going to put some marinara sauce down now if you wanted to you can combine your marinara and your meat but I like to keep them separate then it's time to go in with our noodles and it's okay if they go up the side you want to make sure that the whole bottom is covered okay I'm going to go back in with some sauce then we're going to go in with our meat this is the ground turkey yummy it smells amazing already then we're gonna go in with those beautiful vegetables I'm using a fork because I want to make sure none of the excess liquid gets in here now this vegetable layer is going to add such a depth of flavor to this lasagna then we're going to hit it with a little of the cottage cheese yum and then the ricotta and you just have to dollop the ricotta on there after the ricotta you're going to go in with that layer of mixed cheeses oh yes i told you this was special you're going to repeat this two more times this is huge cover this with foil and bake at 375 for about 45 minutes i'm definitely going to have to put a pan under here the lasagna is out and we are going to cut inside of it to see these beautiful layers you need a big knife for this oh my oh my goodness look at that serve this up with a salad and some garlic bread and you have the perfect weeknight dinner.