An Experiment - Veggie Lasagna

10:11 PM Edit This 15 Comments »
Well. When I want to cook something, I generally google it. Then I print off about five different recipes and make what I will of them. I can't attach this incarnation to any recipe in particular, but I really wanted to try making a veggie lasagna with no noodles. So here you go. Zucchini makes the noodles. Peel it.
Then slice it. I really need a mandolin. Want to take up a collection?
Then you squish it in a bag with olive oil and garlic. Spread in a single layer on a cookie sheet and cook it for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.
Then you chop up everything else. Half a red onion, half a red pepper, half a yellow pepper, two pathetic looking summer squash, and three carrots, grated. Mix it in the same Ziploc with a little more olive oil and garlic.
Cook it on the stove until it's soft.
Then you start to assemble. The recipe I was going with called for 1/2 cup low fat ricotta. I'm not a super huge fan, so I used half ricotta and half cottage cheese.
And 2 percent mozzarella.
The recipe told me to make a homemade tomato sauce, but I was too lazy. If I make it again, I will most certainly do it. This pasta sauce was incredibly uninspired.
This is a little pan. Not a 9 by 13. But more like 7 by 10. I'm single, okay? Pour some pasta sauce in and layer it with the roasted zucchini. It's supposed to be the noodles.
Then add the sauteed veggies. They were steaming.
The ricotta and cottage cheese mixture. (I added a bunch of black pepper, because it looked pretty.)
More zucchini.
Then the mozzarella.
Another layer of veggies and sauce.
Then more mozzarella and Parmesan
Then I baked it for 40 minutes at 350 degrees, with a cookie sheet underneath it. It didn't QUITE spill over, but it was threatening to.
Was AWESOME! But a little watery. I soaked up some of the veggie water with paper towels. Not quite sure how to get away from that in the future. But I'm going to eat the heck out of this. YUMMMMM!

15 comments:

kelly said...

One way to keep veggie lasagna from getting too watery is to (like a maniac) prepare the veggies kind of separately before layering them.

You've inspired me to make my veggie lasagna recipe. So good!

Looks wonderful!

buffalodick said...

Looked good, but there would be a lot of moisture...

Jen said...

That looks delicious! Any left?

carrster said...

YUM!

Call me Kate said...

Mmm... looks tasty to me too. AND. I miss Hy-Vee.

Rebecca said...

Can you please come cook for me?

artemisia said...

Ohhhh, that sounds super yummy.

Meigan said...

OH my gosh yum!

And I'm lol at all your Hy Vee brands. Love it lady. At least you are using Ziploc - thank you!

BrianAlt said...

I'm thinking if you roasted the zucchini longer you might eliminate more moisture.

But it looks great!

Anonymous said...

Draining the water from the zucchini would help too. I think if you added a bit of salt to the zucchini noodles, put them in a strainer then let them rest while you prepared everything else, that might work.

Anonymous said...

I need to make this. Like, soon. I bought the stuff to make your black bean taco fajita thingy. I haven't made it yet but I'm gonna try it.

The Good Cook said...

That Lasagna looks amazing.. and so healthy!

One of the reasons you ended up with too much moisture is the fact you were using lowfat cheese products. Strain the cottage cheese next time and opt for full fat ricotta and full fat mozz. You will notice a difference. Sorry - sometimes low and non fat products just don't work as well.

Nilsa @ SoMi Speaks said...

Use flour noodles and meat next time and I'm pretty sure you won't have a veggie water problem. ha. I kid. Looks like a great, light and reasonably healthy meal with lots of leftovers. Score!

Shelley said...

A girl after my own heart - I'm not a huge fan of ricotta either, so cottage cheese goes in my lasagna!

Oh, and I bought a mandolin after Christmas. It was so freaking sharp that I was afraid I would slice my fingers up, not just using it, but changing the blades and cleaning it. So back to the store it went. I slice everything by hand.

Kim said...

Yum! I need to try something like this.