I’m always interested in a fun new lasagna recipe so when I saw a recipe for carbonara lasagna in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago, I was immediately intrigued. I showed it to Keith who liked the idea of the pancetta and the cheese but was not enthused about the fact that the recipe called for eggs to be cracked into the top of the pasta and just set. I also thought that lasagna was decadent enough without adding heavy cream. I decided to add chicken to it and make some other tweaks. It was a big hit with my family and the leftovers went into the freezer. We had leftovers from the freezer tonight with a Graul’s Caesar salad and Samantha said “This is the one I really like.”
Chicken Carbonara Lasagna
- 1 package lasagna noodles
- 12 oz sliced pancetta, diced
- 1 1/2 lbs chicken boneless, skinless chicken cutlets
- 2 shallots, thinly sliced
- 1 lb ricotta cheese
- 4 oz Fontina cheese, shredded
- 2 oz grated Parmesan cheese
- 2 eggs
Preheat the oven to 375. In a non-stick skillet, cook pancetta over medium heat, stirring often. When crisp, drain on paper towels. Saute shallots in fat from pancetta until soft. Reserve. Cook chicken in remaining fat from pancetta until lightly browned and cooked through. Remove from pan and cut into pieces. In a bowl, mix ricotta with eggs and 1/2 the Parmesan cheese. Cook pasta according to package directions and drain.
Butter the bottom of a glass or ceramic lasagna pan. I did a layer of noodles topped with the chicken and the ricotta/egg mixture, then another layer of noodles, then pancetta and Fontina and then another layer of noodles.
The original recipe called for infusing heavy cream with thyme and pouring that over the whole thing. I skipped that step to make a small dent in the calories but between leaving that out and not using the eggs, the top layer of noodles was too crunchy. We removed them and it was fine but next time I would either brush the top layer with butter or top with tomato sauce. Here is a picture of the topless lasagna:
