Creamy Chicken Lasagna

(Photo by Taste of Home)

Looks like I am in the recipe-trying mode these days.  This is another new one for me.  I make supper for my dad (and deliver it to his home) one night a week.  (Some other nights he comes here, and I cook for him one lunchtime each week as well, so one way and another I am often cooking for him.  He isn't picky about food, but does love to eat, so I often try new recipes for him as well as for ourselves.)  I had planned to make a harvest chicken salad (with sweet potatoes, apples, etc.) using some leftover chicken I had.  But last evening was chilly and spitting snow, so I decided to make something warmer.  I had been looking through an older Country Woman magazine and spotted this recipe: Creamy Chicken Lasagna.  I had [nearly] everything on hand, so decided to try it.

I did change quite a few things.  I dislike boiling lasagna noodles, but the ones I had were not the oven-ready type.  So I did what I usually do in such a case: assemble the recipe using the uncooked noodles, cover the pan with foil and bake an hour and 15 minutes at 350º;  then let the lasagna stand for 15 more minutes before cutting.  It worked out fine.  The noodles I had were the gluten free brown rice type, but this procedure works with any kind of lasagna noodle.

The sauce came out quite a bit thinner than I thought it should be, especially for the "filling" part to which chicken and tomatoes are added.  Since I was starting with uncooked noodles, it would be fine to have a thin sauce to add moisture to the top and bottom layers, but not for the filling.  (This is a rather unusual lasagna in that it does not include ricotta or cottage cheese in the filling, but rather chicken and tomatoes.)  So, for the part reserved for the filling, I thickened it further with several additional tablespoons of cornstarch. 

The sauce was very flavorful, but I must admit I left out the Dijon mustard because I just didn't think it would go that well in a tomatoey cream sauce.  I only used 1/8 tsp. cayenne because an older person was going to be eating it, and often they don't like things really spicy.  In spite of all my changes and tinkering with the recipe, it did come out very well.

In fact, Mr. T thought it was a definite "keeper" recipe.  I will be keeping this lasagna in mind for another time when we have leftover chicken to use up.