lasagna » VeggieGirl

Spinach Mushroom Lasagna

I’ve had a hankering for lasagna for a few weeks now, so I finally headed into the kitchen and set about making one. I had a few recipes, but in the end, I just threw a bunch of stuff together and did my own thing. The ricotta recipe is based on the cashew ricotta recipe in Veganomicon.

Here’s what I did:

Ingredients:

1 package of no-cook lasagna noodles (I used rice pasta)

28 ounce can of tomato sauce (or you can make your own, of course)

5 ounce container of spinach

10 ounce package of mushrooms, chopped

1 small onion, chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

14 ounce package of firm tofu

1/2 cup raw cashews

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/2 cup nutritional yeast

2 tablespoons vegetable broth

2 cloves garlic

1 teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup Daiya cheese (or more, to your liking)

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350.

Sauté the spinach in 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Set aside.

In a food processor, blend together the cashews, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, broth and nutritional yeast. Crumble the tofu and add it to the food processor. Blend until the mixture is thick and looks like ricotta cheese. Add more vegetable broth if the mixture is too thick. Add the cooked spinach and pulse until it’s mixed in.

Sauté the onion in the remaining tablespoon of olive oil until translucent. Add the mushrooms and cook until they’re soft.

Spoon a quarter of the tomato sauce over the bottom of a casserole dish. Layer a third of the noodles over the sauce. Spoon another quarter of the tomato sauce over the noodles, followed by half the ricotta and half of the mushrooms. Cover with a third of the noodles. Then spread another quarter of the tomato sauce over the noodles, followed by the rest of the ricotta and mushrooms. Cover with the rest of the noodles and spread the rest of the sauce over the top. Cover with foil and cook for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and sprinkle the Daiya cheese over the top. Bake for another 15 minutes. Enjoy! This tastes even better reheated the next day!

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Cabbage Casserole

This Cabbage Casserole recipe is from the March issue of Vegetarian Times and it’s basically a lasagna with cabbage leaves instead of noodles. The recipe calls for blanched savoy cabbage leaves, but I accidentally bought napa cabbage instead. Napa cabbage is much more delicate than other varieties, and I didn’t think it needed to be blanched. The recipe also called for a 15 ounce can of chopped tomatoes, and I felt it needed about twice as much to spread out properly between the layers of cabbage leaves. Instead of dairy ricotta, I once again used cashew ricotta. The filling between the layers was sautéed leeks. This was absolutely delicious, and I’ll definitely make it again!

I also made roasted cauliflower and a mixture made with with shallots, mushrooms, red peppers and chickpeas. This was a perfect dinner!

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Gobo

Yesterday I met my friend Irina in NYC and we went to lunch at Gobo in the West Village. Gobo has Asian inspired food and they have many wheat-free dishes. I started out with a Liquid Live juice that was made with wheat grass, carrots, beets, celery and apples. I was feeling tired and a little “off” from the chocolate party the night before, and this juice was just what I needed to wake up and get myself going. I ordered Swiss Chard and Sun-dried Tomato Rice Lasagna for lunch, which was really tasty. I realized after I started eating it that it had soy in it, but I decided to keep eating and look at the experience as an experiment. If I woke up digestive problems on Monday morning, I’d know that the soy had something to do with it. If not, I’d know that it as really the wheat in the rum ball I ate on Saturday night that made me feel crappy on Sunday morning. Well, I woke up feeling just fine this morning, which means it really was just that one rum ball that made me feel sick. How crazy is it that one cookie can make me feel poorly?!

Irina has also gone wheat-free, so she had Singapore Stir-fry mai-fan, which was rice noodles and veggies.

After lunch, we went to see the play Time Stands Still starring Laura Linney, Alicia Silverstone, Eric Bagosian and Brian D’Arcy James. It was really good and I highly recommend it if you’re in NYC and want to go to the theater.

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Lasagna!

I was excited to find lasagna noodles made with brown rice flour at Shoprite of all places, so I decided to make an a attempt at a wheat and soy-free vegan lasagna. In the past, I’ve made lasagna with tofu ricotta and soy cheese. This time I made cashew ricotta and Daiya tapioca cheese.

I layered tomato sauce, cashew ricotta and sautéed kale and mushrooms between the layers of rice noodles, covered the dish with foil and then cooked it in the oven at 375 for half an hour. Then I removed the foil, sprinkled Daiya cheese over the dish and returned the whole thing to oven for another 20 minutes. I served the lasagna with a side of finely chopped broccoli sautéed in olive oil and lemon juice. This meal was absolutely delicious, and it’s prooves that you really don’t have to be deprived of anything on a wheat and soy-free vegan diet.

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Lasagna Tart

This recipe is from 101 Cookbooks. It was published in June, but it was far to hot to have the oven turned on for over an hour, so I saved it for the cold of winter. I made a few small changes to the recipe. I used spelt flour for the crust, and I don’t have any pie weights, so I cooked it for 20 minutes without covering it and weighing it down. I doubled the tomato sauce recipe, and I used a cashew ricotta instead of cheese. (See recipe below.) This was the perfect meal for a cold winter’s night!

Cashew Ricotta
2 cups raw cashews, soaked for an hour or more
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon sea salt
6 tablespoons water

Process all ingredients in a food processor until fluffy and ricotta-like.