Breakfast Lasagna Will Get You Through These Next Few Days

Lasagna is an effective, thoughtful act of love, care, and neatness. Lasagna is a real art form. Lasagna can't be made at the last minute to serve dinner. A good lasagna is better than the most delicious casserole, and a great lasagna is a desert island dish made on death row for the last meal. Delicious lasagna can be made with store-bought noodles, good meat sauce, creamy ricotta and mozzarella. A great lasagna consists of many layers of super-thin homemade noodles, thick bechamel sauce, homemade stew made with three or four types of meat, fontina and parmigiano-reggiano. On the rare occasions when I cook it, I can't help but go overboard, including reheating leftovers for breakfast. What made me think: instead of just eating lasagna leftover from dinner for breakfast, what if I made lasagna for breakfast? To begin with, I replaced the noodles with homemade pancakes. Italians have been doing this since time immemorial, making crespelle and replacing them with noodles in all sorts of dishes. Pancakes are much easier than homemade noodles, and I strongly believe that breakfast should be easier than dinner. Not wanting to start the day with a long-cooked stew, I turned to my husband's southern roots for inspiration and made a classic sausage sauce. Breakfast sausages in a thick cream sauce almost covered the bechamel and meat in one fell swoop. I chose slices of sauteed tomatoes that are easy to prepare and convey all the tomato flavor without adding extra sauce, some ricotta to soften it up a bit, soft-boiled scrambled eggs, and a layer of mozzarella and parmesan to hold it all together. Is it a quick breakfast before school? No more than lasagna is a quick weeknight dinner. But it's the perfect weekend breakfast dish, when you can make most of it on Saturday and then finish it on Sunday morning as a sign of respect for those you love, and I sincerely hope that includes yourself. This is an amazing dish. No one deserves lasagna more than the chef. LasagnaNote for breakfast: I often bake fresh tomatoes in large batches and freeze them in the summer when the tomatoes are ripe, but for this you need to bake canned tomatoes, which is easier and does not depend on seasonal products. If you have baked tomatoes in the freezer, use them.Note: The dish can be prepared in advance without eggs. Store unopened in the refrigerator and simply bake at 350 ° F under the lid for an hour or so before preparing the dish according to the recipe instructions.
In a small bowl, combine the eggs and milk and add the melted butter. Sift the flour and salt together and place in a medium bowl. Add the wet ingredients and mix until smooth. Sometimes I use an immersion blender to make a homogeneous mass. It should be slightly thicker than heavy cream, but very thin and crumbly. Let stand at room temperature for 30-120 minutes before cooking the pancakes.In a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat, saute the sausages, using a spatula to chop the meat, and cook until they are lightly browned and browned. Transfer the sausages to a bowl, leaving the fat in the pan. Estimate how much fat is left, you need about 3 tablespoons. If you don't have much, add a little butter to make 3 tablespoons.Preheat the oven to 300 °F. Brush a large baking tray with olive oil.Whisk the egg and olive oil together until smooth. Mix with the ricotta until smooth, then add the parsley, salt and pepper. Set aside.Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lay out 2-3 pancakes so that they cover the bottom of a 9x13 cm baking dish, greased with oil. Spread 1/2 of the pancakes with the ricotta mixture. Place 1/2 tomato on top of the cheese mixture, then drizzle 1/2 of the sausage gravy over the tomatoes. Repeat the application in layers. Place the last layer of pancakes on top of the last layer of sauce. Cover the casserole with foil and bake for 30 minutes. After 20 minutes, cook the eggs.Whisk the eggs in a medium-sized blender with grated butter until smooth. Melt the last tablespoon of butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Beat the eggs until the curd is soft. You want it to be more friable than you might think, because it will continue to cook in the casserole. Set aside.Remove the lasagna from the oven and remove the foil. Turn on the grill. Brush the dish with the eggs, then top with 2 cups of chopped, greasy mozzarella and 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese. Return the dish to the oven for 4-5 minutes, until the cheese is melted and lightly browned.