Baklasagne

This post has been a long time coming, but better late than never. I had come across a recipe on Smitten Kitchen for "baklasagna," a lasagna made with fresh pasta rolled so thin that you would end up with thousands of layers (or at least seven, anyway) of lasagna goodness (like layered baklava). Excited about the recipe, I invited over my friend Rebecca (responsible for the beautiful pictures - a much better photographer than I am), and her roommate Jeanna to assist in the baklasagna preparation and to enjoy the fruits of our labor.

Being up for only so much manual labor, we used prepared fresh pasta sheets, and rolled them through the pasta machine to get them as thin as possible. For our lasagna fillings, we made a tomato sauce with fresh basil, sliced up some fresh mozzarella, and since I had chard from my summer CSA, we sauteed it up with some garlic and olive oil and combined it with some ricotta and parmesan.

Then the assembly began. Following Smitten Kitchen's example, we didn't boil the pasta first, and it came out fine. I think we ended up with 11 layers or so of sauce, fresh pasta, chard-ricotta, and mozzarella.

Once the lasagna was ready to go, into the oven it went...

...And out it came! In all its cheesy, saucy, chard-y glory.

I really enjoyed the silky texture of the baklasagna as compared to a typical lasagna, although I'll admit that it also sat a lot heavier than a typical vegetable lasagna. And the chard was wonderful in place of my usual spinach - I will definitely seek it out for my next lasagna endeavor. All in all, it was a scrumptious dinner and a great time with friends. And a big thank you goes to Rebecca for the great photos - hopefully she'll join me again sometime soon and I'll have more enticing picture to share :)