Chicken Lasagna with Spinach and Fresh Cheese
February 4th, 2012 in Chicken, Main Dishes by Julia Volhina
Total cooking time: 2h 30min
Don’t get scared by amount of ingredients: it isn’t that complicated to cook chicken lasagna with spinach and fresh cheese at home, especially if you have noodles which doesn’t require boiling.
Of course it will take some time too cook stuffing as well white sauce, but at the end you will get whole baking pan of tasty creamy lasagna.
I used fresh spinach, but frozen will work good too, just thaw it before cooking and drain liquid before mixing with cooked chicken. Tvorog (fresh cow cheese) can be replaced with ricotta of the same weight as well.
Serve lasagna 10-15 mins after you take it from the oven; leftovers can be stored in fridge and re-heated in microwave.
Ingredients:
- Lasagna noodles for 4 layers
- 2-2.5cups of shredded mozzarella
- 1/2 cup of grated parmesan
-
Chicken and spinach stuffing: - 1lb-1.5lb of chicken breasts
- 1 onion
- 2 garlic cloves
- 10-12 oz fresh baby spinach
- 3/4 lb of fresh white cheese (quark) or ricotta
- Fresh parsley
- 2 tablespoons of oil
- Herbs: dried basil, dried oregano to taste
- Salt
Bechamel (white) sauce:- 1/2 cup of butter (1 stick)
- 3.5 cups of milk
- 1/2 cup of flour
- Salt
How to prepare, step-by-step:
- Prepare ingredients:
- Start by making chicken-spinach stuffing with fresh cheese. First warm up deep skillet with 1-2 tablespoons of oil, peel and chop onions, fry them over moderated heat until lightly colored:
- Then peel and chop garlic, add to onions and fry them together until soft, stir from time to time:
-
Rinse and finely chop chicken, add to the skillet and fry until cooked, add dried basil and oregano:
- Rinse spinach, remove hard steams (if any) and gradually add it to the skillet (during cooking its volume will decrease, so eventually you will be able to add all 10oz):
- After all spinach is in, salt it all to taste, mix and set skillet aside:
-
In large bowl mash fresh cheese with a fork, add chopped fresh parsley and mix:
- Mix fresh cheese and parsley with chicken and spinach:
- Now it is time for white sauce – it is important to stir it all the time while cooking so it doesn’t burn. First melt all butter in large sauce pan:
- Gradually stir all flour in until blended:
- Cook until bubbly:
- Warm up all milk in microwave and still in gradually into the flour and butter mixture:
- Stir until homogeneous, salt to taste and bring to boil, remove from burner:
- Turn oven on 355F and let’s assemble lasagna while oven is warming up: lay bottom of baking pan with a layer of lasagna noodles (1/4 of all noodles), leave a bit of space from sides, lasagna will increase during cooking:
- Spread 1/3 of chicken-spinach-cheese mix:
- Cover with a 1/4 of white sauce:
- And spread about 1/3 of mozzarella cheese:
- Cover with other 1/4 of lasagna noodles:
- And repeat last 4 steps for 2 sets of more layers:
- Then cover with last layer of noodles:
- Spread over remaining of white sauce and put to oven warmed up to 355F for 30-35 mins:
- Then take baking pan with lasagna out, season with shredded parmesan cheese and put back to oven for 10 mins more:
- Remove baking pan from the oven and let it stand for 10-15 mins before splicing up:
- Then serve: