cheese

If you had known that Ricotta is a light, new cheese made from non-fat milk and whey and that it is very like Cottage Cheese, you would not have had a problem. I like Ricotta but it is quite bland (and goes well with spinach or other green vegetables with a distinctive flavour or in a cheesecake). With, perhaps, a little extra stronger cheese (such as Parmesan/Parmigiana), you can easily substitute soured cream, crème fraiche or even natural yoghurt (mixing a little cornflour/cornstarch with the yoghurt before you cook it stops it from separating). My standard recipe for lasagne doesn't have any cheese in the white sauce. It is simply a standard Bechamel sauce. All of the cheese is grated and sprinkled onto the top of the last layer of white sauce before baking. Mine goes (from the bottom up): Meat sauce, lasagne (I buy the kind that you can put in dry and make the sauces a little runnier than you want them to be when done but you can make the sauces quite dry and soak the lasagne for about 30 mins before using it), white sauce, lasagne, meat sauce, lasagne, white sauce then a generous layer of cheese or cheese mixed with breadcrumbs on the top. It all goes in a medium oven for about 30 minutes or until the top is golden and melted. The contrast between the very flavourful meat and tomato and the bland Bechamel is what it's about: the pasta sheets really serve to keep the layers separate. It is almost exactly the same as a Greek moussaka except that a moussaka uses slices of egg plant/aubergine instead of the pasta and, of course the meat and herbs used are slightly different (moussaka should be ground lamb and should not have as much, if any, tomato: lasagne can be made with any ground meat but usually beef or a mixture and has more tomato).

I have made lasagna many times without the ricotta cheese and it always came out really good. The ricotta cheese should be in plastic container in the same area that the mozzarella cheese is at the store. I'm not a big fan of ricotta cheese at all so that is why I don't always put it in my lasagna. If its just my immediate family then I don't put it in. If its for a big gathering then I will put the ricotta cheese in it.

I'll use cottage cheese that I have drained and squeezed dry rather than ricotta cheese. Ricotta in my area is awfully expensive. I use about four or five different cheeses, four or five different meats. I use the usual mozzarella cheese but I add the cottage, cheddar, jack and other cheeses I have on hand. I use ground turkey, ground chicken, beef, sausage, and some ground pork. It takes nearly a full day to put together all the ingredients and I am so tired of the cooking and the lasagna that I end up freezing it for a couple of weeks until I can stand to eat it. Everyone goes nuts over the lasagna and I never have any left overs. If you decide to use the ricotta cheese, look for it in the cold boxes. It could be almost anywhere! I swear that grocery stores hide things to make you search them and make you buy more stuff that you really didn't need in the first place. I went into the grocery store and happened to see that they had my favorite tea on sale (it was a leader item. The price was at a point that I knew that they were losing a LOT of money on each box...somewhere around $2 a box. I rain checked 20 boxes. The clerk tried to get me to rain check only 10, but I wasn't about to not take full advantage of the sale. I am sure they are sorry that they moved the tea to the aisle that leads directly to the bathrooms!!!

You never know any more.They keep things in so many different places. I know the cheese may vary but its still a great dish!!

Ricotta cheese is generally sold at all large grocery chains, and most smaller ones, so maybe you were overlooking where it might be. Ricotta is the most used cheese in the most popular recipe (standard) for lasagna, but it also uses mozarella and parmesan cheeses. However, you can make many variations of lasagna, including one with no ricotta at all. Cheeses can also vary, as in using fontina, asiago, provolone, even jack. Sauces can also vary.