A party dish to make everyone gasp with delight! It looks pretty fancy, I know, but if you feel it's too much work to prepare lasagna this way, know that all the preparation can be done a day ahead. The chunky meat sauce is sausage meat cooked in homemade tomato sauce. Because both are already highly flavored, we skipped sauteeing a spice base.To save time, prepare the rest of the ingredients while the meat sauce is chilling in the fridge. Boil and dry the noodles. Blanch and chop the spinach and mix in the cheese.
Crumble the sausage meat and spread on a frying pan. Leave to brown the underside in the fat that renders, stir and continue cooking until uniformly browned.
Pour in the tomato sauce and allow to boil.
Taste and add salt, pepper and sugar to get a good balance of flavors. Continue cooking until the sauce loses its soupy appearance.
Cool the meat sauce and chill until firm.
Assemble the lasagna roll-ups
Spread the cooked lasagna on a rack to allow water to drip off.
Preheat the oven to 375F.
Spread a couple of tablespoonfuls of tomato sauce on the bottom of a baking pan that should be large enough to hold all the rolled lasagna noodles.
Stir together one cup of shredded cheese and the chopped spinach.
Lay a lasagna noodle flat. Spread two or more tablespoons of the cheese-spinach mixture on the noodle.
To the spinach-cheese mixture with a couple of tablespoonfuls of the cold meat sauce.
Roll the lasagna and immediately and arrange, seam side down, on the baking tray.
Repeat until all the noodles have been filled and rolled.
Spoon the remaining tomato sauce on top, around and between the rolled noodles.
Top each rolled noodle with shredded cheese.
Bake, covered, for about 20 minutes or until the meat sauce is heated through, the tomato sauce is bubbly and the cheese is melted.
Sprinkle chiffonaded basil over the meaty lasagna roll-ups before serving.