Mushroom Lasagna

[2018 update] I have been making this recipe for years and it never fails to receive rave reviews, even from people who think that they could only love red-sauced lasagna. I tweak it in a bunch of ways. I swap out portobellos with cremini (small brown) mushrooms as portobellos are more expensive, harder to find, break easily and are, in fact, just large brown mushrooms. I add a clove of minced garlic to the sauce, because I love it in a bechamel.

My only gripe with this recipe is the number of pots it uses; I counted 4 in the original (not including the colander, cutting board, and knife, ugh) and managed to trim it to 3 in my version. However, I always forget all about the inconvenience of dishes once I taste the final dish — completely and totally worth it.

I sometimes add 1/2 cup chopped shallots to the pan before the mushrooms, cooking them until they soften a little, then adding the mushrooms. I often skip warming the milk and just add it slowly and carefully to the butter-flour mixture, and it isn’t a problem. A splash of wine or marsala would be great in the mushrooms, then cooked off at the end. Finally, I am always tempted to increase everything in this recipe by 1/3, i.e., using a full pound of noodles and a full two pounds of mushrooms, and make a more towering lasagna, but you’ll want to make sure you have a deep pan (mine is 3″ deep and I’m not fully confident). There’s also the fact that it might be almost over-the-top rich; the thickness, as written, is quite nice.