It's easy being green: Swiss chard lasagna

All I need is a tiara! But a "Plays in the Dirt" ballcap will do (thanks, Mom!).

This bounteous bouquet of Swiss chard was destined to be a lasagna experiment. I've made lasagna with chard before, but with just a thin layer of green, and I also had asparagus in there. This time, it's two super-thick layers of chard.
I assembled this fairly late last night, so the lighting sucks, but you get the picture.

A lasagna like this couldn't be easier to make. The most time-consuming part was tearing up the chard leaves and washing them (three batches in my jumbo salad spinner). I'll sautée the stems and cook them separately for a different meal.I spread a thin layer of jarred sauce (Safeway brand vodka sauce) in the bottom of the pan and three noodles on top (no, I do not pre-boil them, and they're just regular noodles).

A few more dabs of sauce, and a crumbling of queso fresco. Thick layer of chard. More sauce. Repeat. I had to mash the whole thing down a bit to compress the layers. The top noodles are covered with sauce to their edges and the whole thing is covered with foil to sit in the fridge overnight. The noodles will soak up sauce, which obviates the need to pre-boil.

Total assembly time was about 15 minutes (including leaf-prep).

This morning, I cooked it covered at 350 for about 45 minutes, then took the foil off, sprinkled shredded mozzarella over and baked for another 10, then turned the broiler on for a minute to brown the cheese.

You can see it sank in the pan quite a bit. Just like spinach, chard loses a lot of volume as it cooks.

Et voilà!
This turned out spectacular. The sauce is quite tangy, and the chard still has a little texture and resistance between the soft noodles (the advantage of using the really big, stiff leaves). It still doesn't have quite the volume I was aiming for, so next time I will find an even deeper pan and double the chard layers. Lord knows, I've got the leaves!