Lasagna

Roasted vegetables and Italian Fontina lend this lush-tasting lasagne a more intense flavor than than you'd get with the usual spinach and ricotta filling.

These pretty frilled-edge rolls conceal a spiral of creamy ricotta and deep-flavored Parmigiano-Reggiano. Roasted tomatoes and eggplant fulfill the promise of lasagne.

Lasagna is comfort food — a real PMS soother. But it's also loaded with symptom-fighting calcium.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

You don't have to cook the lasagna noodles first - just assemble the dish, cover and bake.

To complete the menu, serve seeded Italian breadsticks and a salad of radicchio and marinated artichoke hearts tossed with balsamic vinaigrette. Spumoni ice cream is a perfect ending.

Kevin Graham, of Graham's in New Orleans, occasionally adds a Parmesan sauce to go with the tomato cream.

It’s little wonder that lasagna became the informal party dish of the fifties and sixties-it can be assembled ahead of time, it freezes well, and it is a delicious and inexpensive way to feed a crowd. In this contemporary-and meatless-version, "no-boil" noodles eliminate a step, and bottled pasta sauce stands in for homemade.

In the recipe below it is not necessary to soak the pasta squares because they are not cut or rolled.