Cheap but Good: Explore your pantry, freezer and fridge

I don't know about you, but I somehow always end up with half used quantities of food in my freezer and fridge. Usually this happens when I buy a food item, planning to use it to make a certain dish, and I don't end up using all of it. It also happens that sometimes I stock my pantry too well, and forget just what canned or dried foods I have in there. I got to thinking about this, and came to the conclusion that I would probably save a lot of money if I tried more often to cook from what I already have in my kitchen. To test how well this could work out, I examined my pantry, freezer and fridge with the goal of creating something delicious without making a trip to the store for anything.

Here's what happened:

Today I had a few mushrooms and 200 g of ground beef left from pirozhki making. I definitely wanted to use the beef, because there wasn't room in the (tiny French) freezer to freeze it. And I'm always a fan of mushrooms, so I decided to use those too. Besides, if I didn't they'd get mushy soon. So I put the beef and the mushrooms on my kitchen table. Looked around some more, but it seemed that everything else would keep pretty well (random cheese, cabbage, pickles) or was already assigned to be eaten for lunch (lettuce, green onions). Ok, moving on to the freezer.

There I found a bag of chopped frozen spinach left from making palaak paneer. It had started out as a 1 kilo bag and there was only 250 g left or so. The lump of spinach was taking up precious freezer space, especially due to the awkward shape. I put it on the table to use. Things were interesting in the freezer. That's because my BF is a total carnivore and buys random meat when there's a good deal. Or when he thinks it just looks tasty. Which brings me to the 500 g of Italian sausage that was sitting in there. I took it out, placed it on the table, and examined my ingredients.

Beef, sausage, mushrooms, spinach. I thought I'd go with something Italian due to the sausage, which I planned on taking out of it's casing and mixing with the beef. Ok, if we're going Italian, let's look in the pantry and see what's available in the way of pasta.

The pantry expedition was the deciding factor in what I'd make. There I spotted, shoved towards the back, a box of never-opened no-pre-cooking-needed lasagna noodles. Interesting. I didn't remember buying them. I asked BF, "Did you buy these?" It turns out he did ... before we even started dating (we're going on two years). :-D But I checked the expiration date, and it was fine. Besides, they'd never been opened.

Fine, it looked like I was gonna make lasagna. Beef, sausage, mushrooms, spinach, noodles. Well, can't really have a lasagna without cheese (or tofu), so I went back to the fridge to see what was available. There was an unopened tub of ricotta. Aw, I had wanted to eat that with canned peaches (I love ricotta with fruit)! But, now I was kind of set on lasagna, so I put it on the table too. But what about mozzarella to go on top? We didn't have any. But I did spot nearly 250 g of chaource cheese. I thought to myself, "If they can put reblachon on pizza, I can use that to top a lasagna." I also grabbed an egg to mix with the ricotta, 2 cloves of garlic and got a 800 g can of peeled Roma tomatoes from the pantry (we always have a few cans of those around).

Lasagna

Ingredients:

500 g Italian sausage, removed from casing
200 g ground beef
1 800 g can peeled Roma tomatoes
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
250 g frozen chopped spinach
3 medium white mushrooms, chopped
1 egg
1 250 g tub of ricotta cheese
20 no-cooking-needed lasagna noodles
Salt to taste
1 T dried parsley
1 T dried oregano
1 T dried basil
About 250 g chaource cheese

Method:

Mix the beef and the sausage. Brown, then mix in the tomatoes (chopped), with their juice. Reserve a bit of the juice (about 1/2 cup). Salt the mixture to taste. In a saucepan, warm the spinach and the mushrooms until the spinach is completely thawed. Cool slightly, and mix with ricotta cheese and chopped garlic. Salt to taste, then mix with beaten egg. Spread the bottom of a large baking dish with the reserved tomato juice. Place a layer of 4 noodles over this. Cover noodles with 1/3 meat mixture. Layer 4 noodles again. Cover noodles with 1/2 spinach mixture. Repeat: noodles, meat, noodles, spinach, noodles, meat. Sprinkle top meat layer with the dried herbs. Cut chaource into 8 even wedges; reserve for later. Place lasagna into oven preheated to 350 degrees F (gas mark 6 in France). Bake for 20 minutes, then remove and top with chaource wedges arranged in a 2x4 matrix. Put lasagna back into oven and bake for another 15 minutes. Remove and allow to cool slightly before slicing.

Notes: Placing sauce/juice before the first layer of noodles is important if you don't want the lasagna to stick. When you remove it from the oven, there will be a lot of liquid around the lasagna. If you let it rest, that won't be a problem. This will form sort of a sauce (just the right amount). For vegetarian lasagna, make a marinara sauce and cut zucchini or eggplant into slices. Instead of the meat layer, put a little sauce, then arrange the veg slices, then top with some more sauce.

Serving Suggestion: Technically I'm going to say that this makes 8 servings, although they are large servings. I think that 1/16 of the lasagna with a nice green salad would be enough for me on most days!

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UPDATE: I just did a calorie calculation for this dish, and it is NOT a light-weight. One eighth of it has 575 calories. Yikes!
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