Steal of the Week: Meatball Lasagna (Neapoliton Style!)

Remember how I made French Toast for Father's Day? I also made a special dinner for dear hubby that night. He loves Italian food and I recently received a free copy of a Sorrento Cheese mini-cookbook of different lasagna recipes. (Thanks to A Frugal Chick for the original link to get the cookbook!) I asked him to pick a recipe and he went straight for the Meatball Lasagna (Neapoliton Style). So I went to work!

The recipe in the book calls for 4 cups of  basic tomato sauce and it provides the recipe:

2 cups sweet onion, chopped fine
4 cloves of garlic minced
1 medium carrot, chopped fine
3 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
28 oz. of crushed tomatoes
10 basil leaves, thinly sliced



I used my food processor to finely chop the carrot, garlic and onion. These were then sweated in the olive oil on low heat until sweet and very tender, about 30 minutes.

Next step was to add the tomatoes, raise heat to medium, bring to a simmer and cook for additional 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, add basil and remove from heat. Voila!

Now the recipe for the lasagna also calls for you to make your own meatballs! But they are easy and delicious and I think I will make again to use in something else! In fact, as a joke I made my husband his own little "amuse bouche" of one meatball, a dollop of the tomato sauce and a basil leaf! By the way, the basil was from my still thriving herb garden. Yep, I'm proud.

The building part of lasagna has always been my challenge. Dealing with those cooked noodles can be a pain, but this time now only did I use non-stick tongs, I did not make the mistake of draining the noodles and setting them aside to stick to one another as I have in the past! This is after the first layer:

And I know what you are thinking! The recipe was not a misprint...it actually calls for sliced hard-boiled eggs! Now before topping with cheese:

The other thing the recipe mentions is after topping with the cheese (I used 2% mozzarella by the way), to top the lasagna with parchment and then aluminium foil. Somehow I was out of parchment but knowing I needed something to prevent the cheese from sticking to the foil, I lightly sprayed it with Olive Oil Pam! This is what it looked like out of the oven:

Umm, yeah...I think I drooled a bit when I pulled it out. Actually I think I sang a song about how awesome I was! The final plate was amazing and it was loved most importantly by the Daddy and of course by the kids. It also made the "special for company" list so if I ever invite you over for dinner make sure you give me FOUR hours notice if you want it!