1,000 Layer Lasagna

CELEBRATION!  KABLAM!  BOOM!  CHEESE!  ONE THOUSAND!!!  

When you opened this post, fireworks were supposed to go off inside of your house.  Did they?  Ugggh, Blogspot, what's wrong with you?!?  I get no 'wow factor' for 1,000 posts??  I guess they'll be sending me one thousand dollars at a later date.  They probably need my address.  Anyway.  

Welcome to my 1,000th post.  I'm glad you're here.  If you weren't here, I would be writing these words to myself, and to those tiny creatures that live inside computers and make the Internet work.  If you weren't here, well, then I just put 1,000 pieces of food in my belly for no reason at all.  But you are here!  So I bought you candles!  And I made you the best lasagna I've ever tasted!  Thank you for being here, never leave.  Let's put another '0' on that lasagna one day... one day, when the Internet can fly and I need an actual forklift to exit my house.  

This recipe couldn't have been more perfect to celebrate my 1,000 post.  There's obviously the name, but then there's the deliciousness.  However, I definitely made it the "Sirious" way (aka: I cheated, I made it easy, I didn't follow directions).  The recipe calls for paper-thin homemade noodles.  I bought sheets of pasta vs. making my own (Italian deli's will sell them, or even a restaurant might), and I didn't run them through a pasta maker to thin them out.  I didn't even flatten them with a rolling pin.  They looked thin enough to me, so I just went with it...  

     

The beauty of this recipe is how simple it is.  Just a few ingredients, so I decided not to skimp on quality.  I bought fresh mozzarella, used my favorite olive oil that I usually reserve for dipping in bread, really good canned tomatoes, meyer lemon zest and obviously fresh pasta.  The result tastes relatively light, lacking meat or heavy ricotta.  It gets crispy in the corners and caramely and bubbly, it's seasoned perfectly (I added oregano to the top once it came out of the oven), the lemon zest and red pepper flakes brighten it and add a subtle kick, and the fresh, salty cheese... I'm going to cry it's so good.    

Here's to 1,000 more.  Food!!!