Currently cooking from The Carefree Cook by Rick Rodgers.
This pasta dish was . . . okay. Nothing spectacular. It just needed something more. As in more flavor, more spice, more taste. If you are looking for the flavors of a lasagne without all the time and work, this is it, sorta.
Like most other recipes in The Carefree Cook, this came together quickly. The meat sauce is a mixture of onions, garlic, ground beef and tomatoes that cooks down into a thick, meaty sauce in about 25 minutes. Then you toss the sauce with some wide noodle pasta and top it off with ricotta cheese that has been mixed with fresh basil.
With a little doctoring, this meat sauce could be really good. It doesn’t have the body and flavor of a long-cooked tomato sauce, but it ain’t bad for 25 minutes. The ricotta-basil mixture, while making the dish more like a lasagne, didn’t add any flavor. I would actually leave this out next time.
Now this looks easy and quick so maybe one of these days I could make this. As soon as I find the kitchen again. One thing I like about lasagna is that it is as good the next day as the first. So get us some spices in this and let us know.
Holy smoke! A 25 min. sauce??? I cannot imagine. About the only dish that I still offer to make is lasagna and my sauce takes all day! It’s good but it’s sure not fast. This looks really yummy. If you figure out a better spice combo, will you post it? I’m definitely going to have to check out that book. I could make lasagna any time if were that fast!