Seafood Lasagna

I decided to use the rest of my ricotta cheese up by making a lasagna.  This was not a "healthy" lasagna by any meaning.  My son's favorite is seafood so I went with that.  I don't follow a recipe and make it different every time, pretty much.  I do get my fresh lasagna noodles from Choices market.  I really like them.

This time I used:

• 1 lb fresh sole filets, cut into small pieces
• 1 lb jumbo prawns (21/30 ct) cut in small pieces of 4 per prawn
• Crab meat from 5 king crab legs, cut in small pieces 
• 1 large sweet onion, diced
• 1 jalapeño, diced
• 1/2 lb of white mushrooms sliced and halved
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 package of Knorr alfredo sauce
• 1 package of Knorr creamy garlic sauce
• 5 leaves of organic kale, ribs taken out and chopped in shreds
• 3 cups of ricotta cheese mixed with an egg, 1/2 cup of fresh grated Parmesan cheese and 1/2 cup of fresh parsley chopped fine 
• 3 cups grated Kraft Cracker Barrel mozzarella cheese
• 2 cups grated Kraft Cracker Barrel jalapeño cheddar cheese
• Fresh cracked pepper, ZERO salt

I started by chopping the veggies. Then I got all the seafood ready.  The crab legs took me a half hour to crack and clean.  I got a small bowl full.

That was $17 - half price, frozen.  My co-worker who loves my seafood lasagna offered to scratch the $17 I owed him and let me use it for the crab, since he wanted it in there, so I accepted.  I got the crab bonus as I wasn't planning on using any.  With shelling and slicing the prawns and cutting up the sole, getting the seafood ready took me about an hour!  EEK!!!  Not fun on a Monday, work night.  However, my "absent sous chef" did all my cheese grating and that eased my load immensely!

I sautéed the onions, jalapeño, garlic and mushrooms in olive oil & butter.  I added the two sauce packs and the milk required (3 cups).

I added the seafood and took off the heat.  The prawns and sole were raw when added to the sauce.

I mixed the ricotta.  I started to assemble.  Prep took me 3 hours, at a leisurely pace, but still, it took 3 hours.  I just kept thinking, "What if this tastes like crap after all that?"  ;)

I greased a 13" x 9" baking dish with "Pam".  This went on a baking sheet lined with foil as I knew it would spill over.  I put a thin layer of sauce on the bottom and then a noodle layer.  I added the kale and some sauce and about a cup of mozza.

Another layer of noodles, sauce and then ricotta mixture.

Another layer of noodles, the remaining sauce and LOTS of cheese - a mix of mozza and jalapeño cheddar.

Into a 350°F oven for an hour...It smelled divine while cooking but then again, I was starving now!  I told my son it would be ready by bed time and I wasn't far off to be honest as it wasn't ready until 9pm.

I let it rest for a half hour when it came out and it was almost perfectly rested at this point.  I don't know if it was because we were so hungry or it really was as delicious as we thought.  This version, this time 'round, turned out PDG (pretty damn good)...