For this noodle midterm project, I have chosen to make Homemade Turkey Lasagna. I choose the Italian side of cooking for a few reasons. My family and I tend to make lots of Chinese style dishes already. We often cook rice noodle and chicken stir fry, fried rice, and curries. I don’t eat good Italian food often, mostly just plain spaghetti, so I wanted to make a more advanced Italian dish. I chose lasagna because I remember trying it for the first time in Sri Lanka and it was absolutely delicious so I wanted to taste it again, but instead, homemade.

The Turkey part is what strays away from normal recipes. Turkey isn't usually cooked into lasagna or Italian dishes from what I understand. My dad doesn’t eat beef because of his own religious reasons, but my mom, sister, and I all do eat beef. Our dinners that my mom cooks are nice since they bring everyone together and we can share our thoughts on the cooking. We didn’t like the idea of leaving my dad out of the dinner or having to fetch / cook other foods just for him. My mom came up with the brilliant idea of replacing the beef in lasagna with turkey. That is why I decided to make turkey lasagna for this project.

The dish, in all honesty, isn’t very healthy but not many Italian pasta dishes with this much cheese are healthy. There is a large amount and variety of different cheeses and a lot of oil from sources such as the sauce and cheese. The long process of cooking this recipe is worth it because many servings can come out of this. This recipe yields around 8-10 servings but more can easily be made. Since it takes so long to make, my mom doesn’t make it often. She tends to make it about once every few months for all of us to enjoy. She likes to make it for us when we are all in the mood for a hearty noodle dish to treat ourselves.

One aspect of the dish that is most important is the fact that it is turkey and not beef. This is very important because leaving my dad out of a large dinner such as this one isn’t right. At first, I was appalled by the idea of turkey in lasagna but I knew my dad deserved to be able to enjoy the meal with our family. Interestingly enough, I could not tell the difference between the turkey and beef in the lasagna. There are so many ingredients, such as the fresh herbs, sauce, and many cheeses, that it masks the miniscule difference between the meats. This large meal really helps our family to all sit at the dinner table and enjoy it together, especially after tailoring the recipe for my dad. It is very meaningful to him and to the rest of us.

I really enjoyed this recipe because I love cooking with my mom. I was actually planning on learning many recipes that my mom cooks so I can start to do them on my own. I’m moving into an apartment next year with a stove so I wanted to learn as much as I could before the school year started. This project was the perfect opportunity to cook with my mom and learn a more advanced recipe that I hadn't planned on cooking before.