Sausage and Swiss Chard Lasagna

Ingredients

• 1 lb Italian sausage (casings removed), chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced or chopped or whatever
• 1 can tomatoes (14.5 oz) - we used "fire roasted," which worked really well
• 2 tsp dried basil
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1.5 tsp salt
• 10-12 lasagna noodles
• 1 16-oz package of shredded mozzarella cheese
  
• 1 container ricotta cheese (1.75 cups)
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 tbsp dried parsley
• 2 eggs
• 1-2 ozs chevre cheese (we used herb & garlic chevre)
• 1/4 fresh basil, shredded
• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 1 (large) bunch swiss chard, bottom inch of stalks removed
  
• 1 yellow summer squash
• 6 oz frozen spinach

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Brown the sausage over medium-low heat until it's pretty cooked through. Add the garlic, tomatoes, dried basil, dried oregano, and 1.5 tsp salt. Simmer, uncovered, for 30 minutes. You can add some water to it if it gets too thick. Remove from heat.
Boil some pasta water in a large pot and cook the lasagna noodles in batches.
In the meantime, saute the onions over medium-high heat until almost translucent.
While you're sauteing the onions, prepare the Swiss chard. This is how you do it:
remove the stalks from the leaves and chop the stalks into smallish pieces. Chiffonade the leaves.
When the onions are almost translucent, add the stalks of the Swiss chard. Cover and cook for around 8 minutes, or until the stalks are tender, stirring occasionally. When tender, remove the onion/chard mix from the heat and set aside.
Take the chard leaves and add them to a smallish pot with the 6 oz. of frozen spinach (which you need to thaw ahead of time. Do it now if you haven't yet.). Cook the chard leaves and spinach, covered, over low heat. Add a few tablespoons of water to facilitate wilting. Cook for 5 minutes, or until wilted. Remove from heat and mix with the onion/chard mixture.
In a large bowl, mix ricotta, mozzarella, eggs, fresh basil, dried parsley, Parmesan, and some salt. Mix thoroughly. When the onion/chard/spinach mixture has cooled a little, add it into the cheese mixture and mix thoroughly.
Wash the summer squash and chop off the ends. Slice length-wise into sheets and grill until softened.
Now assemble the lasagna:
Coat the bottom of a glass lasagna with olive oil.
Put as many noodles as you'd like on the bottom. Put a layer of tomato/sausage mix on the noodles. Then add a layer of yellow squash. Then add a layer of the cheese/vegetable mixture. Then more noodles, then more tomato sauce, then more squash, then more cheese/vegetables, and then a final layer of noodles. On top of that we drizzled some olive oil and then the chevre.
Put in the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes.

Thoughts: Delicious. We based this loosely on a recipe we found online, and then added all sorts of stuff (swiss chard, spinach, yellow squash, chevre, onions, fresh basil). The flavor was fantastic. Maybe it was the sausage, maybe it was the swiss chard, maybe it was the yellow squash, but either way, it was fantastic. We didn't have as much tomato sauce as I would have liked, so we didn't get to put a layer of tomato sauce on top of the whole concoction. So next time I would have added another can of tomatos or something. I don't know. Fantastic.

Disaster Index:1/10