Fully Loaded Vegan Lasagna

This fully loaded vegan lasagna is a plant-based dish full of hearty, sautéd vegetables and a tofu ricotta cheese that everyone will love - even meat-eaters! 

My lasagna quest started at Aldi with a box of lentil noodles - they sounded interesting and I wanted to give them a try and honestly, I couldn’t remember the last time I made lasagna. As it turns out I’ve never made lasagna for Dan so it’s been about 17 years - yikes. In fairness, he made a raw lasagna for me once but forgot to rinse the spinach and it was so salty that we ended up tossing it. Later we took a raw food cooking class and got the recipe but for some reason, we never got around to making it. 

Our harvest is pretty much bottled, I made tomato sauce, jam and sun-dried tomatoes, zucchini fritters, and sauerkraut. We have butternut and acorn squash, fingerling potatoes, and kale - lots of kale in the fridge/pantry ready to be used. Last weekend I cleaned out the garden and flower beds and planted next year’s garlic - the cycle continues. We’ll definitely make some changes to the garden next year and move the peppers to the front where they get more sun - hopefully that will help them ripen. 

One of the reasons I don’t make lasagna is that it has all that cheese, which makes me super sick, and the vegan cheese - well let’s just say it doesn’t do much for me. It doesn’t really melt and the taste is - blah. And for those of you ready to tell me to try X, Y, or Z brand, believe me, I’ve tried it and didn’t like it. 

This lasagna took some prep but I cut down the time by using the tomato sauce I made a month or so ago and I used oven-ready noodles - there were still a lot of dishes - but hey dishes are not my job. I added some Field Roast Italian vegan sausages to the veggie mix and it really hit the spot. 

Ingredients:

Vegan Ricotta Cheese

16 ounces extra-firm tofu

1.5 tablespoons roasted garlic hummus

1 cup sautéed kale

1 tablespoon nutritional yeast

1/2 lemon, juiced

1/4 teaspoon salt

Lasagna

7 - 8 lasagna noodles, you can use pre-cooked noodles

4 cups marinara sauce

1 cup onion, diced

1 zucchini, cut into quarters and chopped

1 red pepper - chopped

1 green pepper - chopped

2 field roast Italian sausages (vegan) - thinly sliced 

1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped

1 bay leaf

olive oil

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Bring a large saucepan with tomato sauce, basil, and bay leaf to a boil, then simmer while you prep the other ingredients.

Prep the rest of the ingredients and set aside.

Vegan Ricotta Cheese

Gently mix tofu, hummus, kale, nutritional yeast, salt, and lemon juice with your hands or a spatula until semi-smooth and resembles ricotta cheese.

Vegan Lasagna

Heat a large skillet with 1 1/2 tbsps of olive oil on medium-high heat. Sauté zucchini, peppers, vegan sausages, and onions with salt and pepper to taste for 4-6 minutes until tender and starting to brown. 

Cook the noodles until just al dente and set aside, laying flat in one layer. Skip this step if you are using pre-cooked noodles.

Assemble the Lasagna

Remove the bay leaf from the marinara sauce and spread about 1 1/2 cups in the bottom of a 9×9 inch baking dish. Top with 2 1/2 noodles (I sliced one in half lengthwise to cover the extra space). Then add a generous amount of ricotta, vegetables, and sauce, top with another layer of noodles, ricotta, vegetables, and sauce. Add one more layer of noodles and finish with a generous amount of sauce. You can top it with fresh chopped basil for extra flavor!

Cover lasagna with foil and bake for @ 40 minutes.

Tonight we had leftovers with a green salad - it was delicious!

Enjoy!

Home-made Ravioli - My First Attempt

It’s funny how quickly things change from Fall to blowing snow - sometimes on the same day. The summer garden has been put to bed, the garlic planted and the Halloween decorations are up. Not that we’ll have trick or treaters - but who knows. I’m thinking of tying a rope across the front porch and stuffing goodie bags with candy and clipping them on the rope with clothespins for a non-contact Halloween - we’ll see. 

A couple months ago I was looking for a pasta roller/maker. My stepdaughter has one and we’ve made the most delicious kinds of pasta at her house but that rolling by hand wasn’t quite what I had in mind. However, the attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer was crazy expensive but I found an off-brand that got very good reviews so I added it to my cart and before I knew it - the box had arrived. Now I had to use it and since it was a cold and windy day, pasta sounded like the perfect dinner option.

I'm going to say I got the pasta recipe from my stepdaughter and the recipe for the filling is partially from Bee Seasonal site. The sauce is my own, I just tossed things together until it looked good 

Fresh Egg Pasta

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

3 eggs - beaten

water

Instructions

Pulse flour in a food processor to remove any lumps. Add beaten eggs and process until the dough forms a round ball (@ 30  seconds). Turn out dough (and any little bits) on the counter and knead 1 - 2 minutes until the dough is smooth. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let rest 15 minutes to 2 hours.

Cut the dough into 5 pieces and roll out into sheets (follow pasta machine directions)

Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese Filling

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked butternut squash

3 ounces goat cheese

1T fresh herbs - I used rosemary and sage

salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

Bake squash in a 350-degree oven until you can easily pierce it with a fork - let cool. When cool scrape the flesh into the food processor and process, leaving some chunks. Add goat cheese, herbs, and salt and pepper, pulse to combine.

Putting it all together

Using the pasta machine roll the pasta sheets, dusting the surface with some flour all the time, so the pasta won’t stick to the surface. Put the filling from one side lengthwise, lightly brush the sides with water, and cover it with the side of the pasta sheet. Pinch the sides and cut the ravioli.

Bring to a boil salted water in a large pot and cook the ravioli for 3-4 minutes or until they float. 

Sauce

Ingredients:

1 medium onion - diced

1T olive oil

2T butter

sage leaves 

2 T walnuts, chopped

1 - 2 pears - chopped

salt and pepper to taste

Instructions 

In a large skillet, heat 1 T olive oil and 2 T butter, add the onion, and cook until translucent. Add the pears and walnuts and cook until the pear is softened but not mushy. Slowly add the cooked pasta and toss just until they are coated with the sauce, add sage leaves and serve. 

It took a long time but it was worth it, those little pillows of squash and goat cheese in the fresh dough were near perfection. 

Thanks for stopping by. 

Green Tomato and Cheese Muffins

It’s been far too long since I’ve blogged and I have no good excuses for my absence so I won’t pretend to make one. There have been lots of things going on tho. Dan turned 60, the garden has gone crazy and we’ve been trying to soak up as much of the beautiful fall weather before it fades. 

We’ve had a few events on the deck with friends (sweaters and blankets provided), eaten at a couple trusted restaurants - outdoor seating only. And we’ve done some hiking near Taylors Falls and a long weekend at the North Shore. 

Amidst all of that I have been cooking - a lot! I made sauerkraut - with cabbage from the garden, tomato jam, tomato sauce, sun-dried tomatoes, zucchini fritters, and many, many kale salads. The squash is still ripening (this year we tried a new hybrid - honeynut butternut squash. From a food perspective, we are doing well - actually from every aspect, life is good. 

I’ve been working hard to incorporate vegetables from the garden into our daily meals; kale, collard greens, herbs, zucchini, tomatoes (lots and lots of tomatoes), peppers, and eggplant. But the temperatures are dropping and we finally took the plunge and brought in the squash and green tomatoes yesterday/today. So what do we do with all those green tomatoes - jam, relish, chutney, and today I tried green tomato and cheese muffins - they are so simple to make and while I haven’t tried them yet, they smell awesome. 

Ingredients:

2 cups chopped green tomato

3 tablespoons honey

3/4 cup milk - I used oat milk

1 egg

1/2 cup oil (I use Canola)

3/4 cup shredded or grated vegan cheese

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 T baking powder

Instructions:

In a large bowl combine tomatoes, honey, milk, egg, salt, cheese, and oil.   Mix with a spoon.  Add flour and baking powder to the mixture.  The batter will be lumpy.  Spray or grease a 12 cup muffin pan or use paper liners.   Fill cups about 3/4 full.   Bake in a preheated 400-degree oven for 25 to 30 minutes until brown on top.   

Enjoy - and since you spent time stopping by, I’ll share some photos of our latest food feasts.