Flatbread Lasagna

The April issue of Food & Wine magazine has an intriguing recipe for lasagna made with flatbreads instead of pasta. I love lasagna, but seldom want to deal with cooking and untangling lasagna noodles. And forget the no-cook variety - they require far too much sauce and often end up a soupy mess.

We had a bunch of leftover sauce, meatballs, and Italian sausages in the fridge so I figured now was a good time to try out this flatbread thing. Mr Minx prepared the dish for Wednesday's dinner, and I couldn't wait to get home from work to try it.

This is what greeted me when I walked into the kitchen:

Hello, handsome!

And this is what it looked like cut into portions:

As you could probably guess, this "lasagna" was more like a deep dish pizza than anything. Nothing wrong with that - I love a good pizza, and they are oh-so-rare in this neck of the woods. The sauce and meatballs were home-made, and the sausage had been grilled, so this dish was packed with flavor. But...there seemed to be something missing.

Me: The ricotta cheese must have become one with the middle layer of naan, because I am not tasting it.

Mr Minx: Ricotta? Damn, I knew I forgot something.

No worries. We'll find another use for the ricotta. I can eat that stuff with a spoon directly out of the container and be satisfied, but I may mix it with vanilla, sugar, and cinnamon and call it cannoli filling. But back to the lasagna....

Although it's not the real deal, neither pizza nor lasagna, it's an interesting hybrid of both, and I can imagine adapting the recipe by using different meats (or no meat), mushrooms, spinach, maybe a bechamel instead of ricotta and/or the tomato sauce. The magazine also gives recipes for using naans or Greek pitas in pizza (obvious - and we've done that already), burritos (what? too thick!), and the Web exclusive dessert panini (maybe a use for my ricotta). Personally, I like naans for soaking up the sauce of Indian food, and Greek pitas slathered with tzatziki and maybe some grilled lamb. How about you?