Greek Style Spinach and Cheese Lasagna

hi everyone welcome to dimitra's dishes so today I'm gonna be teaching you how to make a Greek style spinach and cheese lasagna it does need quite a few ingredients most of these ingredients you might have on hand if you if you follow my recipes the ingredients are pretty bait pretty common and they're just used over and over in just different combinations it's simple to make it's just again it needs quite a few ingredients let me take you over them and then we'll just get started so we need some eggs whole milk ricotta cheese crumbled feta cheese some dill scallions baby spinach or you can use regular spinach if you want I like to use baby spinach because it comes already pre-wash and packed and it's just really simple to use some shredded Parmesan cheese a little bit of flour sun-dried tomatoes that we're gonna chop up whole milk these oven ready lasagna sheets you can go ahead if you feel like using your own if you want if you want to boil as Anya and that's just another step I just like to keep life simple it comes out really really delicious with these sheets that you don't need to boil them you just layer them on and so simple so I don't know why you wouldn't want to use them but if you feel really passionate about boiling your old lasagna go ahead anyway you need a pound of it some olive oil a little bit of oregano sea salt crushed red pepper flakes black pepper black pepper and nutmeg that's it that's everything so we're gonna get started I'm gonna empty out some dough I've already chopped up my spinach and I just roughly chopped it it doesn't have to be finely chopped or perfect just take bunches at a time chop them in two and three two and three sections they don't have to be perfect they're gonna wilt down and then just put them if you have a gas range you can put it in a big stainless steel bowl or a pot if you don't have a gas range just go ahead and use a pot for this it's just easy for me to mix in these stainless steel mixing bowls I love them but again you can't use them if you have an electric cooktop so I'm going to cut my bunch I'm gonna slice my bunch of scallions and so I'm gonna put my my scallions with my spinach my dried dill a little bit of extra-virgin olive oil in here and I'm just gonna cook it down just a little bit until everything kind of wilts and comes together and we're gonna do this over a medium high flame and keeping an eye on it we're not gonna add any liquid to this because spinach leaves a lot of liquid once it starts to cook I'm gonna do this for a couple more minutes and I'll show you to it what it looks like when it's done okay so it's wilted down and it's oh it's only been less than five minutes that I've cooked it let me show you what it's what it looks like you don't want to cook it down more than that that's that's perfect okay so now we're gonna start to add the rest of our ingredients in here the filling ingredients actually there's a few steps so I'm gonna add my feta cheese my crumbled feta cheese and I use really really good-quality feta cheese my favorite kind of fat that uses levanti's which is like a sheep's milk feta that's really creamy and nice and I buy it in chunks I never like to buy crumble fat I like to cover my own feta it's just higher quality when it's in a chunk so I try to bite in chunks and I love the sheep's milk feta if you like if it's hard for you to find or you can't or you prefer the taste of the cow's milk feta which is a traditional feather that you find in most supermarkets that's fine too that'll work okay I'm gonna put my ricotta cheese in here again you want to use full fat I can't promise you if you're gonna substitute low-fat ricotta and low-fat any kind of cheese that you're using that it's gonna taste the way it should so stick to the recipe and I promise it's gonna taste super super delicious okay so since the spinach and the herbs are nice and warm since we cook them down the cheese incorporates beautifully in here and it melts and everything's gonna be really really nicely mixed in together okay so before I add my eggs I'm gonna add a little bit of salt remember feta cheese is pretty salty so I don't want to overdo it I'm just gonna add a little bit and taste it if it if it needs more I'll add a little more after a little black pepper a tiny tiny pinch of crushed red pepper flakes cuz you know me I love crushed red pepper flakes just a little bit I try to sneak it in all my savory dishes I don't know why it's not a traditional Greek flavor but it's just so good I love it it's just a hint of spice that's that's in there and makes everything taste better okay so I've added all my salt my pepper I've added my seasonings I've mixed it all up really well so now it comes time to taste see if it needs a little more salt and pepper at least that's a good excuse to have some of those goodness oh good already he's a tiny bit more salt just a little more and for my taste I'm put a little more black pepper okay that's why we wait to add the egg in last because you know some people are scared of tasting raw eggs I'm really not one of them but I prefer to taste my filling without the egg in there and then kind of just add the egg in the alley and also when you add the egg and last the filling has already cooled down so it prevents it from kind of scrambling and getting chunks of cooked egg in there you don't want that you want this filling to not have cooked pieces of like omelette and it or scrambled eggs that's it the filling is that easy to make that's fast that's simple I'm gonna put it on the side and we're gonna start working on the white sauce I'm gonna put my all-purpose flour in here and I'm gonna begin by making a roux which is basically equal amounts of flour and a fat my favorite fat to use extra virgin olive oil so I'm gonna start that and I'm gonna cook it until where's my actually I'll use a whisk so I'm gonna cook this until the flour turns a little bit of a nice golden brown and it gets rid of that raw taste that flour tends to have so while that's cooking I'll do that on low and I will chop up my sun-dried tomatoes sun-dried tomatoes add that little speck of red in the sauce and also add that smoky sweet delicious tomato chase this tomatoes sun-dried tomatoes are super concentrated in flavor and a little goes a really long way they're sold in the section where they have like tomato sauces and stuff in the supermarket and they're pretty easy to find now because they're used in the wide variety of recipe I love them if you're not a huge fan totally you can leave them out okay so the it's ready for us to add the milk cause if everything is nice and toasted right now in here it's a flower and nice and toasted so I have four cups of whole milk and you want to keep the heat on really high at this point we're gonna bring it to a boil we're gonna add some salt a tiny bit of nutmeg I'm not a huge fan of nutmeg I love the flavor when it's in the background but it I don't like it when it's overpowering so just a little bit of nutmeg some freshly ground black pepper that doesn't have a piece of parsley at the end of it and we're gonna cook this slowly until it comes to a boil and it's gonna start to thicken once it thickens we're gonna shut it and we're gonna add our cheese and our sun-dried tomatoes and that's it it came to a boil let me show you what it looks like just like that we're gonna add our shredded Parmesan cheese here my oven is preheated to 400 degrees if you heard that beeping sound now we're just gonna add our sun-dried tomatoes and that's it we're turning this off and we're gonna layer everything all together it's all ready it's ready to go all right so now we're gonna put it all together on a ladle about two ladlefuls in my lasagna pan of the sauce and just spread it out a little bit more okay a small tight space to work with we move this on the side okay let me get the noodles out of here and there's the perfect amount of noodles to fill this lasagna pan right here so I'm going to put three on the bottom like that I'm gonna put the filling I'm just gonna spread it out even leave sprinkle some shredded mozzarella cheese on top of that I'm also going to put a little bit of oregano put four sheets of lasagna noodles on top like this sauce and the filling is pretty creamy already so you don't need to put that much sauce in between each layer it just adds another layer of flavor and put some more filling not spread it all out sprinkle some more mozzarella cheese some more oregano four more layers or four more sheets I should say a little more sauce try not to make a mess like I always do we're gonna put the rest of this filling coz there are three layers of filling here it already smells so good I can't wait till this is ready that's one of my favorite things to eat I don't make this all the time but when I do we're all really happy around here okay put some more mozzarella just like that maybe a little more and now we're gonna put the final sheets on top well I put three layers on the bottom I don't know why my recipe was written like that I think I was using a smaller pan the last time I made it so do put four sheets on the bottom for four layers all four sheets of lasagna all the way around that's the way it should be okay we're gonna pour the rest of the sauce on here I don't want to waste any of this goodness and my oven is already set to 400 it's already preheated so I'm gonna pour this all over and the lasagna noodles are definitely going to expand while cooking right so it'll fill up this whole pan put some more all the rest of this mozzarella cheese on here some more oregano dried oregano so we're gonna cook this for 40 to 45 minutes I'm gonna tent this with foil let me get some foil so you don't want the foil to stick or touch the cheese because while it's cooking and when you go to take off the foil later on all that whole top layer of cheese I'm going to stick to the foil and come off so just tent it and what I mean by tenting I'll show you what I mean you put a piece over there just like that make sure it's not touching if you have some cooking spray you could just spray the inside of the squirrel with cooking spray and that'll do the trick also I don't have any cooking spray I don't even have any melted butter I guess I could have rubbed some olive oil on there but I'm in a hurry to put this in my oven because I am hungry so I'm gonna put this in let it cook for about 40 minutes 40 to 45 minutes I'm gonna uncover it and then let it cook for another 10 to 15 minutes until the cheese is nice and bubbly and gets like specks of like reddish brown on it and it's gonna look delicious I'll show you what it looks like once it comes out of the oven alright so I just took my lasagna out of the oven and look at it it's piping boiling bubbling away and it's got those beautiful specks on the cheese from when I uncovered it and took the foil off and let it cook for another like 10 15 minutes or until it got this beautiful color on it gone www.hs dishes calm get this recipe make it it's truly delicious you're gonna love it I'll see you next time everybody bye Jimmy Eliseo so are we gonna ladle

Channel: Dimitra's Dishes

Views: 77,905

Keywords: spinach. cheese, lasagna, vegetarian lasagna, greek food, dimitra khan, cooking show, spinach and cheese, Kitchen

Id: psxOTD9WWkM

Length: 15min 55sec (955 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 01 2014