Schwäbisch Lasagna

Inspired by a selection from the rotating menu at Barfüßer, I present my new, favorite thing to make for dinner, Schwäbisch Lasagna.

Ingredients:
• 3 packages of the €0.99 Maultaschen. That's 900 grams or 18 individual Maultaschen, if you buy a different sized package. As the story goes, the Catholic Schwaben people invented Maultaschen in order to hide meat so that they could eat it on Fridays without anyone knowing. If you are going veggie, you may have to be a little picky about the contents of your Maultaschen to find some that are "ohne Fleisch".
• 800 ml (2 jars) of tomato sauce. We have had the best reults with the "extra spicy" (for Germany) arrabiata sauce. If your sauce is boring, add spices as deired.
• 0 - 500g Hamburger (we use the pork/beef mix, actually) This can be omitted, if you want the veggie option.
• Cheese. The more the better, in my opinion. 400g grated cheese is a minimum. Nicely enough, they sell bags of grated cheese in this quantity. Variety is up to your taste, but Mozzarella works nicely, or "pizza cheese". Or gouda. Stay away from swiss.
• 1/2 of an onion.
• 375g of frozen mixed veggies. The one we like is called "Italian mix", and it contains zucchini, onions, olive, green beans, peppers, ???
• Seriously evaluate the cheese quantity. You probably need more.

Preheat your oven to a convienent baking temperature. 180° C or 350° F. Coat the bottom of a 9x13 pan (import from America, if needed) with a thin layer of the sauce. Line the pan with Maultaschen (import from Germany, if needed or make your own), cut up the last couple to fill in the inevitable cracks between them. Brown your meat (skip this if you are a vegetarian). Chopitta chopitta chopitta your onion into the size of onion bits that you like (which could be as small as indidivual Carbon, Oxygen & Hydrogen atoms, if you are anti-onion). Having a spouse do this while you brown the meat means you can eat dinner faster. Wipe tears from your (and/or your spouse's eyes if they are helping). Mix meat (if you swing that way) with the onion and one of the sauce jars. Mix the other jar of sauce with your frozen vegetables that are no longer frozen thanks to Mr. or Mrs. Mircrowave. Those two steps can be combined, I suppose. Consider putting cheese on top of your Maultaschen, but only if you have more than the bare minimum 400g. Layer the veggie & sauce mix on top of the Maultaschen (that may or may not be covered with cheese). Layer the meat & onion & sauce mix on top of that. Then evenly distribute the remainder of your cheese on top.

Pop in the oven and bake for a while. More experienced spouses may recommend putting foil on top for the first 25 minutes or so, then taking it off for the last 5.

Serves 2 people for 3 meals or 6 people for 1 meal. You do the math if you have a different number of people.

Serve with a nice Heilbronn wine. Like this one: