I was spit-balling meal ideas with my fiance and it came up that apparently Mexican Lasagna was a specialty of hers that some how had been withheld from me up until now. And I thought I knew her!!!! Well that got fixed last night. We started with her recipe and because I'm the chef in the house (and I got left alone to do the prep work while she went to the gym after work) I couldn't help but meddle. The results were fantastic and surprisingly simple for a lasagna. This is definitely going into our regular rotation of things. Let's get to it so that you too can taste the awesomeness. We could have gone more complicated with it and probably had an even better result, but we're packing for a trip and so ease won here. The wonderful thing about lasagna is you can make it to your tastes! This one fit ours, but there's definitely room in there for stuff like beans, corn, or tomatoes. Play around and make it yours!

Make Some Taco Meat

I generally prefer ground pork for this, but because I was letting her run most of the show here we used beef. When I make ground taco meat, generally just use the McCormick Seasoning from Costco and make some additions to it. Aside from the seasoning I added some extra cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, chili power, paprika, cayenne pepper, and black pepper. No measurements, just flavor senses. Can confrim this was delicious by itself, the leftovers ended up as tacos.

Mix-up the Cotija Cheese

So this was one of my additions. I was trying to think up a way to emulate the ricotta layer in from an Italian Lasagna. After some discussion we settled on trying it with cotija cheese. I started by chopping up some cilantro (sub for parsley in the Italian version) into very fine bits, about half a small bunch worth.
Then I mixed an egg into the cheese. I was hoping this would turn it from crumbles into a smoother texture. It definitely did not do that, instead making it clump. I fixed it by whisking with a fork (it was all getting suck in a regular whisk) but I would avoid that in the future. Next I dumped in all the chopped cilantro, then mixed in some onion powder, garlic powder, chipotle powder, and black pepper, pretty much all to taste. The cotija is plenty salty on its own, I avoided that.

Final Preparations!

The last few steps are to grate up some cheddar and dice a red bell pepper. I would suggest a mild cheddar here, there is already a lot going on with the dish.

Assemble the Lasagna!

This was where we definitely went with convenience over quality. For a sauce we used just a 16oz jar of Newmans. We really probably needed 24oz. Definitely happy to discuss ways to punch that up in the comments. For the noodles some say use tortilla, but honestly I think this works better with Lasagna noodles. We used the oven ready ones, which are generally perfectly fine, except for the bits around the edges that occasionally don't get enough sauce and therefore don't soften up. We're also making this in a smaller dish (7x11 as opposed to the standard 9x13) so we needed to break some noodles to fit. This... didn't go well in all cases. Step one is put down a layer of noodles, then salsa, beef, and cheddar. The next layer is (every layer assemble the noodles perpendicular to the layer below, this helps it hold shape when you plate it) salsa on the noodles, then the peppers and cotija cheese mixture. The third layer repeats the first. Then you add another layer, some salsa, some Cholula, and top with Oaxaca cheese (replacing Mozzarella in the Italian version) when finished it should look something like this:

Bake Time!

Have your oven preheated to 375. Place foil over the whole thing. At 30 min, remove the foil and check. Give it another 15 min to crisp up the cheese on top. Pull it out and you will see this beautiful sight:

As you can see, there are a couple spots with dry noodle, just cut that off if it happens and the rest is fine. I was going to garnish the top with cilantro, but all of that ended up in the cotija. The picture below does look like a bit of a mess, but who cares? What matters is the unbelievable fiesta that is about to happen in your mouth. So much spicy cheesy goodness. I can't tell you how excited I am to make the rest of it disappear at lunch today!

Recipe TL;DR

Please keep in mind this is for a smaller pan (7x11) than the usual (9x13). This is because we're traveling this week and did not want any lasagna left behind!

Each layer gets a schmear of salsa on top of the noodles. We used a 16oz jar, probably needed more.

Layer 1 + 3

1lb ground beef. Brown it and work some taco magic into it. Mine is Taco seasoning, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, chili power, paprika, cayenne pepper, and black pepper.
6oz shredded cheddar cheese. Really as much cheese as you want.

Layer 2

6oz cotija cheese. I mixed an egg with it, but probably won't in the future. Finely chopped cilantro, diced bell pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, chipotle powder, and black pepper get mixed in.

Final Layer

Salsa, Cholula, and top with Oaxaca cheese.

Eat and make your mouth happy!