One of my husband’s favourite weeknight meals is my lasagna. I have been looking for a new way to switch up my old recipe.

First, I started off by making my own marinara sauce. It takes 30 minutes to cook, less than 5 minutes of prep and is much better than a lot of store bought sauces. I recommend buying peeled, whole San Marzano tomatoes which add a lot of sweet flavour to the sauce. Allowing the whole tomatoes to stew and crushing them makes the sauce thicker as well. When making a marinara sauce, I usually use two cans of tomatoes and freeze half of the finished sauce for another week night pasta.

You’ll need:

Heat oil and garlic over medium heat for around 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes slowly by crushing them through your fingers (great tip I learned from the Newlywed Cookbook). Add bay leaves, basil and salt/pepper. Keep on medium/low temperature for 30-35 minutes, stirring frequently to crush tomatoes into smaller pieces. Discard of bay leaves.

Secondly, simply adding a layer of fresh mozerella on the very top of your lasagna will revolutionize it. You’ll thank me later…

The cheese trifecta

via Canon T2i