Fresh tomatoes are the best.

One of my favorite ways to take advantage of all the fresh produce around this time of year is to throw a pizza party. Invite a few friends over, take a trip to the farmer’s market and pick out some really fresh toppings, and then experiment with four or five different pizzas! The thing about having a pizza party like this is that a lot of the work is front-loaded (making the dough, cutting toppings, grating cheese, etc) so when the party is in full-swing, you can actually relax with everybody else!

Neo-Neapolitan Pizza Dough (From American Pie)
Makes 4 10-ounce dough balls.

- 5 Cups (22.5 ounces) unbleached bread flour
- 1 Tablespoon honey
- 2 Teaspoons salt
- 1 Teaspoon instant yeast
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1 3/4 Cups plus 1 Tablespoon room-temp water

Helpful Equipment:
- Kitchen Scale
- Pizza Peel
- Pizza Stone

Making the dough

This is my go-to pizza dough recipe these days. I find that it makes a really nice crust that isn’t too thick or thin. It’s has a great crunch to it but is still a tiny bit chewy in the middle. It’s pretty all-purpose which I like for a thing like this where I’m making a bunch of different pizzas.

You can do this!

If you’re using a mixer, mix all the dry ingredients together in the mixing bowl and then add the wet ingredients. Mix on low speed with a dough hook until everything comes together (about 4 minutes), then let the dough rest for 5 minutes in the bowl. This will help it relax and make it easier to mix. Then mix it on medium-low for another 2 minutes until it forms a smooth ball that clears the sides of the bowl but sticks slightly to the bottom.

If it’s too dry, mix in water by the Tablespoon. if it’s too sticky, then do the same with flour. The dough should pass the windowpane test (Rip off a piece of dough and pull it apart. Can you see light through it before it rips? Then you’re on the right track.)

If you’re using hands, stir everything together in a bowl until it forms a ball. Mix the dough with your hands by continuously dipping your hand in water and work the dough as you turn the ball (think of your hand like a dough hook). As all the flour gets incorporated, the dough will become hard to work with. Let it rest for 5 minutes at that point to relax (you and the dough). Then continue mixing again for 2 or 3 minutes until it passes the windowpane test.

Measuring the dough

Regardless of what technique you use, measure your dough out into 10 ounce balls right away and put them in large plastic bags with some olive oil.

Overnight is best.

Let these sit at room temperature for 15 minutes and then stick them in the fridge overnight. If you don’t have time for that, you can let them rise at room temperature for an hour, then take them out of the bags, punch them down to get out some of the gas, return them to the bags, and refrigerate them for 2 hours.

I highly recommend just doing the dough the day before (or a few days before). You’ll end up with better crust and less work to do the day of the pizza making.

This was my dough after a night in the fridge.

Results of the slow rise.

Day of Preparation

Whether or not you decide to give your pizza the overnight treatment, you need to bring the pizza back to room temperature before using it. Otherwise it’ll be too hard to work with. At least two hours before you want to make pizza, take out each dough ball, punch it down, form a ball and put it on a baking sheet.

Drizzle on a bit of oil oil onto each ball and cover all of them with a damp towel. (I did 1.5 times a batch of dough which is why I have 6.)

So to be clear, if you want to make the dough the same day you’re making the pizza, you need to make it about 6 hours before dinner time. Trust me. It’s easier to do it the day before by a long shot.

Very important.

The Pizzas

Finally, some pizza making. I picked up a few great things at the farmer’s market for this meal including some heirloom tomatoes, purple peppers, nice yellow squash, fresh arugula, and hot Italian sausage.

I picked up some sopressata and a few other things (like a lot of mozzarella cheese) from the store as well.

Can't go wrong here really.

For the sauce on all my pizzas I used this basic marinara sauce (also from American Pie)

Basic No-cook Marinara Sauce (I changed around some stuff from the original. Feel free to customize based on what you have in your pantry.)
Makes 6 Cups, enough for probably 18 pizzas. You can freeze the leftovers!

- 1 28 ounce can tomato purée
- 1 1/2 Cups water
- 1 Tablespoon dried parsley
- 1 Tablespoon dried basil
- 1 Teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/2 Teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/2 Teaspoon dried marjoram
- 1/4 Cup olive oil
- 2 Tablespoons garlic powder
- 1/4 Cup red wine vinegar
- Salt and pepper to taste

Just mix all that together in a big bowl and you’re ready to go! It’s actually a really delicious sauce.

Cooking the Pizzas

I used the exact same technique to make each of the below pizzas. Roll out the dough until it’s the desired size (I shot for about 12 inches across). Place the dough on a pizza peel that’s been dusted with corn meal or semolina flour. Add a few Tablespoons of sauce. Add your toppings. Slide it onto a 500 degree (pre-heated) pizza stone. Each pizza should take 10-12 minutes to be done.

Pizza Margherita

The first pizza I made was a take on a classic Italian pizza with fresh mozzarella, heirloom tomatoes, and basil. It’s also the pizza in the first photo for this post.

Don't over top the pizzas...

Meat Lovers

I had some meat lovers in attendance so I did one with just the Italian sausage (I pre-cooked it) and the sopressata.

For the meat lovers...

The Purple Pepper Pizza

This one had these nice little purple pepper slices on it along with fresh yellow squash, cheese, and sopressata. The purple peppers lost a bit of their color in the oven, but it was still tasty.

The Purple Pepper Pizza!

The Leftovers

I made a pizza at the end of the night with just the leftovers so it had some meat, some peppers and squash, a few tomatoes, and I topped it some fresh arugula when it came out of the oven which gave it a peppery flavor.

Last one...

I’ve posted a lot of pizza posts on Macheesmo, but hopefully they make it accessible. The thing that made all these pizzas very tasty was the nice fresh veggies. Their flavors really came through nicely. I was really impressed by how much I liked the squash actually.

Pizza is really one of my favorite things to make and with just a bit of time you can blow 95% of restaurant pizzas out of the water.

Here’s a few other pizzas I’ve made over the years:

- Mashed Potato Pizza
- Shrimp Pizza with Red Pepper Pesto
- 3 Tasty Pizzas
- Deep Dish Pizza

Fantastic summer dish.

Normal pasta carbonara is really good. I mean it’s pretty hard to go wrong with bacon, a creamy sauce, and good cheese. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be improved on! Especially in summer when there are so many delicious fresh veggies, it seems strange to make a meal without packing it full of veggies.

So that’s exactly what this recipe does. Not only does it happen to be delicious, but it’s also quick and easy! Start to finish is definitely under 30 minutes assuming you’re halfway competent with a knife.

Summer Vegetable Carbonara

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

5-6 small to medium zucchini or squash
1 pound penne pasta
4 large egg yolks
1/2 Cup heavy cream
1/2 Cup Parmesan cheese, grated and divided
8 slices (or more if you want) of thick bacon
Few sprigs of fresh thyme
Salt and pepper
Drizzle of olive oil

Directions:

1) Chop your zucchini and fresh squash into half-circles about the size of the penne pasta. Also chop your bacon into cubes.

2) Whisk your egg yolks (save the whites for an omelet), cream, 1/4 Cup Parm, and a pinch of salt and pepper in a seperate bowl. Set aside for later.

3) Cook Penne according to box.

4) In a large pan with high sides, cook bacon over medium-high heat until very crispy and brown. Remove bacon from pan.

5) When your pasta is done, drain it and reserve about 1 Cup of cooking water.

6) Add veggies to the pan with the bacon grease along with a few thyme sprigs if you want and some salt and pepper.

7) Cook the veggies over medium-high heat for just a minute or two. Any longer than that and they'll get soggy and mushy.

8) Combine pasta with veggies and add your bacon back in.

9) Kill the heat and slowly add in your egg yolk mixture, stirring furiously while you add it. If you do this over the heat, your eggs will just cook, but they should into a creamy sauce if the pan isn't on direct heat.

10) If it looks dry, add a bit of reserved pasta water to make the sauce thicker.

11) Sprinkle carbonara with more cheese and serve immediately.

Adapted from Jamie at Home.

Prepping the Ingredients

Jamie starts his version of this dish by noting that it’s really important to get the best ingredients you can. I would definitely agree. If you can get some good thick bacon, really nice fresh eggs, and colorful summer veggies, this dish will be very good.

Good lookin' squashes

As far as prep goes, start by chopping up your bacon and veggies. When you’re chopping your zucchini and/or squash, try to chop them into about the size of the penne. It gives the dish a great texture if everything is roughly the same size.

Also, chop up your bacon into cubes.

Get everything ready...

The only other thing you need to prep before you get started cooking is the egg and cream mixture. Just combine your egg yolks (you can save the whites in the fridge for an omelet or something), cream, and about 1/4 Cup of Parm cheese in a bowl and whisk it together. Add a pinch of salt and pepper also.

The key to a good carbonara.

Making the Carbonara

This dish comes together pretty fast. The thing that takes the longest is probably boiling the water for the pasta actually. So be sure to get that started pretty early.

To start the carbonara though, add your bacon to a large pan preferably with high sides. Eventually everything will be in this one pan so use a big one. You might want to add a tiny drizzle of olive oil to the pan just to get the bacon cooking, but then the fat should render out pretty quickly.

You want the bacon to be browned and really crispy.

A little goes a long way.

The next step involves just a bit of timing. The trick with the veggies is to not overcook them. Squash and zucchini can get a bit mushy if you cook them for more than a few minutes. So ideally you would start them when your pasta is 2-3 minutes from being done.

When you’re ready, add all the veggies to your pan with a pinch of salt and pepper and a few sprigs of thyme if you want. Stir this all around so the veggies get coated nicely in all the bacon oil.

This will smell pretty delicious. You might have people knocking on your door.

Don't overcook these guys!

Finishing the Dish

The key to making a good carbonara is to make sure you don’t add the egg mixture to a super-hot pan otherwise it’ll just over-cook the eggs and you’ll have scrambled egg pasta. Scrambled egg pasta isn’t the best thing in the world.

So here’s how to work it. When your pasta is done, drain it and reserve about a cup of the cooking water from the pasta. I just ladle out a cup or so of liquid right before draining.

Then add your drained pasta straight to the pan with the veggies and bacon. Stir that all together really well so the pasta is mixed in with the veggies.

Next, turn off the heat. Then add all your egg mixture and start stirring! The residual heat from the pan and the pasta will be more than enough heat to cook the eggs, but it won’t cook them quickly so they’ll stay nice and creamy. If it looks a little dry, add back some of your pasta water. The starch from the water will help thicken the sauce and make it even creamier.

I added probably 1/2 Cup of pasta water back to my version. The key is to keep stirring once you add your egg mixture!

Creamy and delicious.

The only other trick to this meal is to eat it as soon as possible! Add on some of your leftover cheese right on the pasta as you serve it.

Yum.

Ideally, your veggies will still have a tiny bit of crunch to them, the bacon will be crispy and salty, and the sauce will be rich and creamy.

This is a really simple dish that can really impress!

I had in my mind what I thought was an awesome idea for a quesadilla (which won last week’s poll by a hair). My idea was to turn the traditional French dish of Ratatouille into a quesadilla. I thought this was a grand idea and I moved full-steam ahead.

The end result was actually delicious!

You can't see it, but there are pretty layers in there.

The problem was that it required a bit more work than what most people are probably willing to do to produce a simple quesadilla. You’ll see what I mean…

Warning: If you’re French, you might want to stop reading because it’s possible I demolished this dish.

Ratatouille Quesadilla

Yield: 4 quesadillas

Prep Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

Ingredients:

2 baby eggplants, sliced thin
1 medium zucchini, sliced thin
1 medium squash, sliced thin
1 red pepper, sliced thin
1 poblano pepper, sliced thick. Just kidding, sliced thin.
1 Cup tomato sauce
1 Tablespoon Herbs de Provence (optional)
Pinch of salt and pepper
Drizzle of olive oil
2 Cups pepper jack cheese or other spicy cheese
8 Tortillas
Pinch of cayenne pepper
Toppings for quesadilla: sour cream (or greek yogurt), salsa, guacamole, etc.

Helpful Equipment:
Mandoline. If you don't have one, this would be pretty awesome knife practice!

Directions:

1) Slice the squash, zucchini, eggplant, and peppers very thinly with a mandoline or with solid knife skills.

2) Put a thin layer of tomato sauce in the bottom of a baking dish and stack the vegetables in the pan sitting on their edge.

3) Stack until you've used all your veggies. Sprinkle with Herbs de Provence (or your other favorite herbs) and bake at 350 degrees for about an hour.

4) When the veggies are done, let them cool for a bit.

5) Layer cheese and as much veggies as you can take between two flour tortillas and bake on a baking sheet at 400 degrees for 7-8 minutes and then flip and bake for the same time on the second side.

6) Top with guacamole, sour cream, hot sauce, or salsa. Serve immediately!

Making the Ratatouille

Ok. There are a lot of way to make this dish. Traditionally, the veggies are lightly fried first, then layered with sauce and baked. Currently, one of the more popular methods of making the dish was popularized by the movie “Ratatouille” which one of my friends (Hi Mike) claims is one of the Top 5 Movies OF ALL TIME.

That method of making the dish is traditionally called a Confit Byaldi which was popularized by Mr. Keller. I used pretty standard ingredients in mine except I threw in a poblano pepper mainly because I was making quesadillas and I thought it would give it some Tex-Mex flare.

I love baby eggplants.

The key to a good ratatouille (in my mind anyway) is to have evenly-sized, thinly sliced veggies so they cook evenly and identically. Can you do this with a knife? OF COURSE.

But if you happen to have one, now would be the perfect time to pull out your mandoline slicer which makes short work of things like this.

I love my mandoline more!

It took me about 20 seconds to dice up this zucchini for example into almost perfectly uniform little rounds.

Thin is key people.

And the peppers were just as fast!

Nice and thin.

This Is the Part Where I’m Ridiculed

You might know where this is going, but allow me too explain. You see, I wanted my ratatouille to look like the ratatouille in, well, Ratatouille. I didn’t have an exact recipe for this, but I knew it involved very carefully layering your ingredients and baking them.

So I added a bit of tomato sauce in a baking dish, and started layering!

Pull up a chair. This could take awhile.

Looks pretty right?!

It took me about 10 or 15 minutes to make this beauty of a dish.

Colorful at least!

It, of course, then dawned on me that after these are done baking, I’m going to just rip them all up and stuff everything between two tortillas so I could’ve just roasted them in any darn fashion I wanted.

But the layers were so pretty! I couldn’t help myself.

However you decide to roast them, don’t forget to layer the tomato sauce under the veggies and sprinkle on your herbs if you’re using them. These add some awesome flavor to the veggies.

Herbage.

Roast these guys in a 350 degree oven for about an hour. That might seem like a long time but there’s a ton of water in these veggies and you want it to cook out or you’ll just end up with soggy quesadillas later.

They look and smell great when they come out though.

60 minutes in the oven people.

Cooking the Quesadilla

I like to bake my quesadillas in the oven at about 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes and flip them halfway through.

Basically just pile as much cheese and veggies as you can handle in between two flour tortillas. I also added a sprinkle of cayenne pepper which was complete overkill because I was using really spicy Habanero cheddar cheese.

This was actually really spicy.

Half way through cooking, use a big spatula (or slide the quesadilla onto a plate) and give it a flip!

Nice and crispy.

After the cheese is melted and the tortilla is crispy, it’s done! I always cut mine up with a pizza cutter and serve it with lots of toppings.

With necessary quesadilla toppings.

At the end of the day, this quesadilla was completely delicious. The summer veggies were a perfect addition. It’s also a good idea to cut the veggies thin like that and roast them because it gets out extra moisture and intensifies the flavors. All good things for a quesadilla.

But, like I said, if you aren’t going to serve it all pretty then there is no real reason to layer it all pretty. Just get the things roasted!

Now, you could of course eat this as a very nicely presented ratatouille over rice or pasta on night one and then turn the leftovers into a quesadilla on day two… I’m just trying to justify the pretty layering here people.

I’m not really sure if “griddle omelet” is even the official name. That’s just what I call it. I would also accept diner omelet or awesome omelet. By cooking the eggs on a griddle, you can make the egg layer really thin which means that you can stuff it with more stuff.

Like this!

The Griddle omelet.

This kind of omelet is really easy if you have a 5 foot flat top grill like they have in diners. For the average home cook though that isn’t really an option. But you can simulate the effect with a normal griddle, lots of heat, and a little bit of guts. I say you’ll need guts, because there is a step, which you’ll see in a minute, where you think everything is going horrible wrong. It’s not! But it might be scary.

The Griddle Omelet

Yield: 1 omelet

Prep Time: 5 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

2 or 3 large eggs, beaten very well with a pinch of salt
1 Tablespoon butter for the griddle
Fillings! Go crazy. I used some summer squash and zucchini for this version
Cheese. I used goat cheese, but again, any cheese will work.
Salt and pepper
Parsley for garnish (optional)

Helpful Equipment:
Nonstick Griddle

Directions:

1) Sauté fillings for about a minute just to soften them up slightly.

2) Get the griddle hot. A drop of water should dance like crazy on it.

3) Quickly add the butter to the griddle and move it around to coat everything with the spatula.

4) Once the butter stops bubbling, add the eggs. Use a spatula and scoop all the eggs into a rough rectangle.

5) Add the cheese and any other fillings you have.

6) Do a two part fold. Fold the top over the fillings and then the bottom half over the top.

7) Now you have two options: Pull the omelet off the heat. It’s done! You may have some runny egg around the edges, but some people like it like that OR using the spatula, deftly flip (or roll) the omelet over so the seam of the fold is down on the griddle.

8) If you let it cook for another 30 seconds or so like this, then the egg will be completely cooked through. The cheese will be really melted by now also.

Preparing the fillers

Some fillers you may not want to cook ahead of time, but they won’t cook much in this omelet. They will only be on the griddle for a few seconds in the omelet so if you want them cooked at all, do it beforehand.

I sauteed my squash in zucchini for about a minute just to soften them up slightly. Totally personal preference though.

Veggies ready.

Take photo of Tipsy

Ok. That’s just for me. She was very intrigued by the omelet process on this day.

What's up Tipsy?

Making the omelet

Take a deep breath. This is going to all happen very fast. First, get your griddle hot. A drop of water should dance like crazy on it. Then quickly add your butter to the griddle and move it around to coat everything with your spatula.

Once the butter stops bubbling, add your eggs. If your griddle is silly like mine and not completely level, the eggs are going to run all over the place! Have no fear.

Disaster?

Work quickly now, but use a spatula and scoop all your eggs into a rough rectangle. They shouldn’t run away from you this time. They’ll stay right where you put them.

Better?

Then add your cheese and any other fillings you have. Again the benefit of making an omelet like this is that you can fill them to the brim. Don’t be shy!

Note: If you are using a cheese that is hard to melt like cheddar, definitely put it under your fillings so it will be as close to the griddle as possible. It should melt okay as long as you aren’t using a pound of it.

You can really fill these things.

Then do a two part fold. Fold your top over the fillings and then your bottom half over the top. Now you have two options. 1) Pull the omelet off the heat. It’s done! You may have some runny egg around the edges, but some people like it like that. 2) Using your spatula, deftly flip (or roll) the omelet over so the seam of the fold is down on the griddle.

If you let it cook for another 30 seconds or so like this, then your egg will be completely cooked through. Your cheese will be really melted by now also.

Pretty easy to fold actually.

So the above photo and the first photo in this post was the omelet I made while taking pictures. Duh. Because there are pictures of it. It probably took me twice as long to cook though because I had to alternate between spatula and camera (skillz). This means that my egg was a bit more cooked than I like it actually.

I made a second omelet on day two without the camera and cooked the eggs more to my liking.

A bit less cooked. More my style.

Notice the very thin layer of egg around the fillings? I love that. It’s not quite as heavy somehow as a normal omelet even though you are using the same amount of eggs.

You do need a bit of confidence to try this recipe and a quick spatula hand as you need to gets those eggs together pretty fast once they hit the griddle. It’s not that hard though. Once you make one, you’ll get it down really quickly.

Anybody else make their omelets this way? Favorite fillings?

I really liked the vegetables as a substitute. Veggie lasagna is awesome.

Good and healthy! Well, kind of healthy.

In my opinion, and I’m a quarter Italian(!), there are three important steps to making a really good lasagna: 1) Use really good ingredients. 2) Don’t overcook your pasta. In fact, undercook it slightly. 3) Be mindful of the water content in your dish. The last thing you want is a watery lasagna.

It’s that third thing that causes problems when making a veggie lasagna. Vegetables are mostly water and if you just throw them into a lasagna, it is going to be a huge sloppy mess. We’ll take care of that though!

Vegetable Lasagna

Yield: Makes 13x9 pan.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

1 16 ounce package of lasagna
8 ounces fresh ricotta cheese
8 ounces mozzarella
2-4 ounces Parmesan, freshly grated. Use the good stuff.
1 medium squash
1 medium zucchini
1 medium eggplant
3 Tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper

Quick marinara sauce:
28 ounces canned tomatoes
A few sprigs of fresh basil (and maybe some oregano if you have it). You could use dried, but fresh is best.
1/2 onion, diced and lightly sauteed
3 Tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Helpful Equipment:
Mandoline Slicer

Directions:

1) To make the marinara, you have four choices:
a) Drain the can of tomatoes and add them to a blender with the herbs, olive oil, salt and pepper. Lightly sauté the onions and add to mixture. Then give it a buzz. If the marinara is too watery, just pour it into a saucepan for a few minutes and reduce it down.

b) The opposite way to do this works just as well – sauté all of the ingredients together and then blend them up!

c) If fact, if you wanted you don’t need to blend these up at all. You’re sauce will be a bit more rustic, but you can just cook all the ingredients together for a few minutes and then mush everything together and you’ll have a nice looking marinara.

d) Use store bought marinara.

2) Chop up mozzarella into cubes and mix it into the ricotta.

3) Wash veggies and then chop off both ends. Slice them about 1/8 of an inch thin. If you have a mandolin then this will be really easy.

4) Once all the veggies are sliced, lay them out on a sheet pan and sprinkle them with a little olive oil and salt.

5) Roast all the veggies (zucchini, squash, and eggplant) for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees. The eggplant might need another five minutes. Also, you might want to flip the veggies half way through.

6) Cook the pasta according to instructions on the package.

7) Spread a few tablespoons of sauce into the bottom of the pan and lay out a few noodles lengthwise.

8) Lay down all the eggplant slices, more sauce, and then about 1/3 of the cheese mixture.

9) Add another layer of noodles, more sauce, and then artistically arrange the zucchini and squash.

10) After the veggies, add some more sauce, another layer of noodles (yes three noodle layers!), more sauce, the last 1/3 of the cheese and then finally grate some of that lovely Parmesan on top.

11) Hit the top with a good pinch of Kosher salt and pepper.

12) Bake for 30 minutes at 400 degrees or until it’s bubbling and the cheese is just starting to brown.

13) Make sure to let this cool for 5-10 minutes before chopping into it. It will be very hot. Serve it with some freshly chopped parsley.

Making the marinara

This marinara is pretty easy to pull together. Drain your can of tomatoes and add them to a blender with your herbs, olive oil, salt and pepper. Lightly saute your onions and add those to the party also. Then give it a buzz.

If your marinara is too watery, just pour it into a sauce pan for a few minutes and reduce it down. Mine was definitely too watery, but after literally 5 minutes in a pan, it was the perfect consistency. The opposite way to do this works just as well – saute all of your ingredients together and then blend them up!

If fact, if you wanted you don’t need to blend these up at all. You’re sauce will be a bit more rustic, but you can just cook all your ingredients together for a few minutes and then mush everything together and you’ll have a nice looking marinara.

I make the lasagna. It's takes... not all day.

Preparing the cheese mixture

This is pretty easy, but I like to chop up my mozzarella into cubes and mix it into the ricotta. That makes it easy to drop onto the lasagna later.

The veggies

These guys are really the star of the show though.

See the layers?

Wash them and then chop off both ends. Slice them about 1/8 of an inch thin. If you have a mandolin then this will be really easy. If you don’t (like me) just be careful not to slice your finger off please. It’s really okay if the slices are not perfectly even. Once all the veggies are sliced, lay them out on a sheet pan and sprinkle them with a little olive oil and salt.

Roast all the veggies (zucchini, squash, and eggplant) for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees. The eggplant might need another five minutes. Also, you might want to flip your veggies half way through. Why roast these guys? Well, it pulls out some of the moisture which will help your lasagna not become too watery later.

Roast these up.

Cooking your pasta

Basically, just cook your pasta according to instructions on the package. It’s better to under-cook the pasta by a minute than over-cook by a minute. It will continue to cook a bit in the oven when it’s everything.

Making the lasagna!

Finally, the moment of truth! As an aside, it may seem like a lot of different parts, but each really only takes a few minutes. My Italian grandmother will tell you that taking the time to make sure each part of this dish is made properly really makes the final version shine.

If you wanted to take one shortcut, you could use canned marinara instead of making your own. But don’t tell my Grandmother!

To start, spread a few tablespoons of sauce into the bottom of your pan and lay out a few noodles lengthwise. If you have a few broken ones, that’s okay. you can piece them back together. The lasagna police will not bust in your door.

Layer 1. Sauce and noodles.

After your noodles, lay down all your eggplant slices, more sauce, and then about 1/3 of your cheese mixture. If your eggplant doesn’t all fit… MAKE IT FIT!

Layer 2. Eggplant. Sauce. Cheese.

Then another layer of noodles, more sauce, and then artistically arrange your zucchini and squash. Ok. You don’t have to do it artistically, but just get them all in there.

Layer 3. Noodles. Sauce. Veggies.

After your veggies, add some more sauce, another layer of noodles (yes three noodle layers!), more sauce, the last 1/3 of your cheese and then finally grate some of that lovely Parmesan on top.

Hit the top with a good pinch of Kosher salt and pepper!

Layer 4! Noodles. Sauce. And more cheese of course.

Thirty minutes. 400 degrees. Or until it’s bubbling and the cheese is just starting to brown.

Whoa.

Make sure to let this cool for 5-10 minutes before chopping into it. It will be very hot. I like to serve it with some freshly chopped parsley, but that’s kind of unnecessary.

I never thought I would say this, but who needs meat?

This is definitely one of those dishes that pays dividends to the single guy (my girlfriend is in Atlanta for the summer). I was able to eat it for many meals and it is great for either lunch or dinner. Also, it tastes just as good, if not better, reheated than it did on day one.

Give it a shot the next time you are in the mood for lasagna!