So I recently bought the Lord of the Rings DVD set. Extended versions of all the movies, plus two discs each of special features– in total, something like 16 hours of LOTR stuff, mostly consisting of 13 hours of the movies. I decided to start tonight with the extended version of Fellowship of the Ring, which clocks in at 3 1/2 hours. So I had a lot of time to cook something nice while I watched, and I chose lasagna.

There are plenty of different recipes around for it, and I haven’t made it ever before, so I didn’t really have one in particular. I kind of combined a few of them, and made up my own. The good thing about this version is that you don’t have to actually cook the noodles– heating them in the sauce cooks them enough. I even stopped by the famous Italian grocery store Bari Foods here in Chicago and picked up their original pasta sauce and homemade Italian sausage. If there’s one thing Chicagoan italians make, it’s sausage, baby.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1 lb Ricotta cheese
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
2 eggs
2 jars pasta sauce
1 pound Lasagna noodles (I guess if you wanted to be really hardcore, you could make them yourself, but so far that’s beyond my ken)
1 pound bulk Italian sausage
4 cups Mozzarella cheese
and, because I had it sitting around, a little oregano, a little basil, and a little parsley

Of course, you can adjust these ingredients as you like– this will make a pretty heavy lasagna. I actually used quite a bit less of everything, almost half really. For one thing, I’m not feeding a family, I’m just feeding myself (and my roommate sometimes), and for another thing, 1 pound of Ricotta cheese is a lot of cheese, so feel free to cut back if you like. As long as you keep everything in ratio, shouldn’t be a problem.

In a bowl, combine the eggs (beaten), Ricotta, and Parmesan. Mix that all up well, and add in the spices.

Meanwhile, put the sausage and a little bit of water in a big skillet, and let that brown up a bit. I even added a little garlic for flavor. Here are my favorite kitchen smells:

1) bread baking
2) meat cooking in skillet
3) chocolate chip cookies

Bread baking is, of course, a great smell, but next to that you can’t beat the smell of meat, especially sausage, sizzling in a skillet. So cook up that sausage, pour off the grease (I didn’t have any tonight, which means Bari gave me some terrific sausage), and grease up a baking dish (I used olive oil with a little bit of lemon juice tonight, which messed with the taste of the noodles a bit– probably just olive oil would have been fine).

Pan greased, sausage cooked, and cheese mixed, you can layer the stuff up. First is sauce, put a thin layer around the bottom (make sure you only use about 1/4 of the ingredients at a time, because you should build up three or four layers). Then lay the noodles in (if you want to cook them you can, but they’ll be fine uncooked as long as you use plenty of sauce), top with the cheese mix, then sausage, then a layer of mozza, then start all over again with the pizza sauce. Keep layering like this, at least three times, and then end with a layer of the mozzarella (garnish the top with parsley if you like).

And here’s the real key: once everything is layered and in, cover it with foil, and put it in the fridge. Let it sit there, and everything will mix, seep, and meld together. A friend of mine even recommended leaving it together overnight, and then cooking the next day, but I didn’t quite have that much time, since I needed to make it tonight.

So I went to put in Fellowship of the Ring. After a few hours or so, around the time when they actually create the Fellowship (“AND MY AXE!!”), preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and throw the whole pan in there, covered with foil and all.

Then go back to Lord of the Rings. About an hour later (during Frodo’s visit with Galadriel), pull it out, and let it sit for 15 minutes to let everything calm down and coagulate. That’s right, “coagulate.”

Pull off the foil and check it out– you’ve made Lord of the Rings lasagna! I cut a piece, put it on a plate, and went off to watch Boromir mess up royally, only to kill some orcs and make up for it.

I Require Sustenance runs every Wednesday at mikeschramm.com. If you’d like to suggest a recipe, or even be a guest cook, send an email.