As I mentioned last week, I took Thanksgiving “off” this year. I loved the unconventional Thanksgiving that I spent with my guys and my mom. We had Chinese Food for dinner and Skinny Cow Strawberry Cheesecake (my new love!) for dessert. The only thing that I regretted was not making a dish for my father-in-law, so I had my husband ask his father if he would like for me to make one of his favorite dishes of mine (lasagna). Since he said “yes”, I baked him a lasagna on Saturday after I dropped my mom off at the train station.
It was the perfect time to test out the Lasagna Dish that I was sent to review by Villeroy & Boch. I am pretty sure that you have heard about this company that is most well known for its ceramics – it is 260 years old. Well, the company is trying to inspire people to use their “good china” every day so that is exactly what I did! (On a side note, Isabelle von Boch blogs at www.villeroyandboch-blog.com where she shares different simple recipes as well as decorating ideas. Best of all, one of my favorite food bloggers did a recent guest post on Isabelle’s blog.)
Anyway, back to the lasagna story…the thing that I love the most about lasagna is that it can be whatever you desire it to be. If you want it to be healthy, you can use low fat cheese, whole wheat lasagna noodles and such. You can even throw in some spinach and/or other vegetables. Lasagna is one of the few dishes that Sean will eat so I put vegetables in it sometimes. However, the lasagna that my father-in-law loves the most is the basic (super easy!) lasagna recipe that I have been using since I was a college student many moons ago. (On a somewhat related note, my college friend Jessica, whom I first saw use this basic recipe, has a new food business – The Coffee Toffee Company. It is getting great press including a mention in The New York Times. Check it out!)
There are so many easy lasagna recipes (including the one on the back of the Ronzoni lasagna noodles box), that I won’t go into specifics. My photos can be seen below (and if you want the recipe, click-through to Flickr – I’ve included the steps in the photo descriptions):
This recipe is so simple that anyone can make it. However, the presentation made it even more special. When I took some of the lasagna out of the dish, it scooped out so easily. Then, I wiped the dish just to see if the tomato sauce would be difficult to clean. (Many times, tomato sauce is hard to clean off from white surfaces, but it was a non-issue with this dish. Easy cooking and easy clean up – it doesn’t get much better than that. I like the Villeroy & Boch Lasagna Dish so much that I’m starting a new tradition with my father-in-law. The dish is now his. He just needs to give it back to me when he is ready for me to make him another lasagna meal. (It will be our version of Dagda’s cauldron…for the Irish literature lovers.)
