Chicken Lasagna with Pesto Cream Sauce

Easter is Sunday April sixteenth and Mama is hosting an Easter dinner this year for the first time in seven years. I want to write the sentence down again because I have not stopped sitting with it. Six people at our kitchen table on Easter Sunday. We have not had six people at this table since my grandfather Earl died in 2010, and the household has been smaller and quieter for seven years, and Mama has not had the energy or the budget or the capacity to host. Mrs. Tilford has been gently pushing since the Christmas cookies in December. This year Mama said yes.

The guest list. Aunt Tammy is driving down from Tulsa. Mrs. Tilford from First Baptist. Mrs. Henderson from three doors down (whose entire family is in Stillwater for Easter and who would otherwise have been alone). Mr. Briggs from the high school, who has been my English teacher for two years, and his wife Linda, who I have not met. Mama and me. Six people total.

I want to put on the page that the Mr. Briggs invitation was Mama’s idea. She said it at the kitchen table on a Tuesday three weeks ago, while I was telling her about the Steinbeck list Mr. Briggs had picked for Cody’s books. She said, baby, do you think Mr. Briggs would come for Easter dinner. I said, Mama, that is a school teacher. She said, baby, that is a man who has been kind to your brother. Ask him. I asked him the next day before fifth period. He said yes within five seconds. He said, Kaylee, my wife and I would be honored.

And so the Easter dinner has six people, and I am cooking the main dish, which is chicken lasagna with pesto cream sauce, and I want to walk you through it because the recipe is the kind I would not have considered six months ago and which I am ready for now.

The recipe is from A Family Feast. Layers of lasagna noodles with a pesto cream sauce instead of red sauce, shredded chicken (the recipe calls for rotisserie; I baked four chicken thighs and shredded them by hand to keep the budget intact), wilted fresh spinach, ricotta cheese, and mozzarella. The pesto cream sauce is the part that turns this into a dinner-party dish — it is a basic bechamel (butter, flour, milk) finished with homemade pesto and parmesan.

The pesto. I made the pesto Friday afternoon from the basil plant on my kitchen windowsill, the plant that started as a small terra cotta gift from Mrs. Henderson in January. Three months later the plant has put out enough leaves to make a full batch of pesto. I cut the largest leaves with kitchen scissors, pinching the smaller ones to encourage more growth (the trick I learned from a YouTube video). Two cups of fresh basil leaves, a third of a cup of pine nuts I had toasted briefly in a dry skillet, three cloves of garlic, a half cup of grated parmesan, a half cup of olive oil, a pinch of salt. All into the food processor Mrs. Henderson loaned me Friday afternoon. Pulsed for thirty seconds.

The pesto came out the deep green color of pesto in the magazine pictures. The smell, when I lifted the lid, was the smell of every Italian kitchen I have ever read about — basil and garlic and pine nut and parmesan, all together, louder than any of them apart. I made a double batch and froze the second batch in ice cube trays for the future. The first batch went into the lasagna.

The math: lasagna noodles $1.49, four chicken thighs $2.79, spinach $1.99, a 15-oz container of ricotta $2.99, mozzarella $1.99, pine nuts $4.99 (the splurge), parmesan from the wedge in the fridge $0.50 worth, basil from the windowsill free, butter and flour and milk from the kitchen, garlic free. Total: $11.20 for a 9-by-13 pan that will feed six adults with leftovers.

The technique on the assembly is the careful layering. Cooked-and-drained lasagna noodles on the bottom of a buttered pan. A layer of pesto cream sauce. A layer of shredded chicken. A layer of wilted spinach. A layer of ricotta dolloped in pockets. A handful of mozzarella. Repeat the noodles-sauce-chicken-spinach-ricotta-mozzarella sequence twice more. Top with extra mozzarella and parmesan. Bake at 375 for thirty-five minutes covered with foil, then fifteen minutes uncovered for the brown top.

I am making the lasagna Saturday afternoon ahead, refrigerating overnight, and reheating Sunday at noon while everyone arrives. Mama is doing the deviled eggs and a green salad. Mrs. Tilford is bringing rolls. Mrs. Henderson is bringing scalloped potatoes. Aunt Tammy is bringing a coconut cake. Mr. Briggs and Linda are bringing wine, which Mama said was, quote, fine for them, but I am not drinking it, in the tone she uses about other people’s wine.

I am writing this Friday afternoon. The lasagna is in the fridge of my mind, fully assembled. The basil pesto is in the freezer in cubes. The kitchen is going to smell, on Sunday at noon, like an Italian grandmother’s kitchen on Easter Sunday in 1962, and the table is going to have six people at it for the first time since 2010, and the year-long project of reopening this household to the world is going to take a step forward. I am writing it down because the writing is part of the work.

The recipe is below, the way A Family Feast wrote it. The trick I want you to keep is the homemade pesto — do not substitute jarred. The food-processor pesto takes thirty seconds and the difference is enormous. If you can grow basil on a windowsill, do; if you cannot, the small clamshells of fresh basil at the grocery store will work. Make this for an Easter dinner with people you have been opening your table to. Some recipes are the centerpiece. This is one of them.

Prep Time: 30 min | Cook Time: 45 min | Total Time: 1 hr 15 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

12 lasagna noodles, cooked al dente and drained
3 cups cooked shredded chicken (rotisserie works great)
1 cup basil pesto, store-bought or homemade
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
2 cups whole-milk ricotta cheese
1 large egg
2 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, divided
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
Fresh basil leaves, for garnish

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat your oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish and set aside.
Make the pesto cream sauce. In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, whisk together the pesto, heavy cream, and minced garlic. Stir until smooth and just beginning to simmer, about 3–4 minutes. Remove from heat and season with red pepper flakes if using. Set aside.
Mix the ricotta filling. In a medium bowl, stir together the ricotta, egg, salt, pepper, 1/4 cup of the Parmesan, and 1/2 cup of the mozzarella until well combined.
Layer the lasagna. Spread a thin layer of pesto cream sauce across the bottom of the prepared dish. Lay 3–4 noodles in a single layer. Spread 1/3 of the ricotta mixture over the noodles, then scatter 1 cup of shredded chicken evenly on top. Drizzle with 1/3 of the remaining pesto cream sauce and sprinkle with 1/2 cup mozzarella.
Repeat layers. Repeat the layering process twice more — noodles, ricotta, chicken, sauce, mozzarella — until all ingredients are used. Finish with a final layer of noodles, the remaining pesto cream sauce, mozzarella, and Parmesan.
Bake covered. Cover tightly with aluminum foil and bake for 35 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling around the edges.
Bake uncovered. Remove the foil and bake for an additional 10–12 minutes, until the top is golden and slightly crisp in spots.
Rest before serving. Remove from the oven and let the lasagna rest for 10 minutes before slicing — this helps the layers hold together. Garnish with fresh basil and serve warm.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chicken Lasagna with Pesto Cream Sauce — The Easter Main Dish My Mama Hosted Six People For