We're trying to reduce the amount of meat eaten at our house, so I thought I'd try to cook vegetable lasagna. The recipe, Veggie Lasagna Florentine, is the basis for my first experiment with lasagna. The only difference is that I added an eggplant to the recipe, took out the brown sugar, and added chili powder to my pasta sauce. Oh, I also added A LOT more garlic than proposed in the official recipe. Anyway, here's the run-down:
There are four layers to this lasagna...
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(1) 1 16 oz pack rice lasagna pasta
-this does not have to be boiled; when you stack the lasagna layers, as long as the pasta is covered in the sauce layer, it will absorb the liquid from the sauce and become soft during the baking process
(2) Sauce
2 tbsp olive oil/grapeseed oil
1 large onion, sliced
5 tbsp minced garlic
1 8oz pack of cremini mushrooms
1 zucchini, finely chopped
1 Asian eggplant, finely chopped
3 tomatoes, chopped
1 12oz can of tomato paste
2 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp chili powder or red pepper flakes
-cook the above sauce separately from the ingredients below; stir until zucchini and mushrooms are soft
(3) Spinach/Cheese Combo
1 10oz package chopped spinach
1 16oz container non-fat cottage cheese/ricotta cheese
2 eggs, beaten
5 fresh basil leaves, chopped
-mix these ingredients together in a large bowl
(4) Cheese Layer
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
500 g shredded mozzarella
-mix these ingredients together in a large bowl
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After these four layers are prepped, preheat oven to 175 degrees C (350 F). Stack these four layers in a large glass dish as follows:
sauce layer
lasagna layer
spinach/cheese layer
cheese layer
repeat
Make sure that you have enough pasta sauce at the end to pour on the top lasagna pasta layer. Otherwise, the top layer will be as hard as a rock @~@ Finally, cook this dish for about 40 minutes. You could probably get away with a shorter cooking time, since it's a vegetable dish. The original recipe called for 1 hour in the oven, but I thought that was too much. Turns out 40 minutes is just perfect.
Happy eating :D
