Today we are going to use tofu to replace ricotta cheese in a healthy and hearty lasagna. This recipe makes for 2 dishes of pasta, so you can freeze one and then thaw it for cooking at a later date.
Start with your roasting vegetables. Preheat your oven to 450°F.
Slice up 2 Italian eggplants (or one small regular one), 1 zucchini, and 2 red peppers.
Make the pieces relatively small so you don’t have to cut them up too much when you eat them.
Plop those in a roasting pan and drizzle lightly with olive oil. Toss thoroughly and roast for about 20-30 minutes, stirring about halfway through, until everything is tender and fragrant. Reduce the heat of the oven to 350°F if you are planning on cooking your lasagna right away.
Next, chop up about half a large yellow onion, and about a dozen mushrooms. Sauté those suckers in a large saucepan with a wee bit of olive oil until they are tender as well.
Add the roasted vegetables and stir them around.
Pour in 2 jars tomato-based pasta sauce and mix that around to warm everything up. I only used one jar of sauce in this recipe and didn’t have quite enough sauce to cover everything, so I definitely recommend two jars. Add in a bit of fresh basil, too, if you’ve got it.
Thaw 1 500g package of frozen spinach.
Add to that 2 packages soft tofu (or firm silken tofu) and squish it around.
I puréed about half of it in a blender for a creamier texture.
Season with salt and pepper. Shoulda used a bigger bowl …
Now, line the bottom of your oblong casserole dishes with noodles. I use the no-cook lasagna because it’s less of a pain in the butt, and with the size of my dishes, each casserole will take 9 noodles. Spread on a generous layer of the roasted vegetables in tomato sauce (I had to be sparing, because I only used the one jar of sauce).
Add another layer of noodles, then a heaping of the tofu/spinach mixture. Use half the stuff for each casserole.
More noodles. The rest of your tomato sauce. Try to cover all the noodles so they don’t dry out while baking. Obviously, that’s not what happened here. But what can you do? I learned from my mistakes.
For a little extra flavour, feel free to top the lasagna with a handful of crumbled feta cheese.
Bake at 350°F for about 30-40 minutes, or until the top of the lasagna is all nice and bubbly. Some lasagna advocates recommend covering the casserole and then uncovering it in the last ten minutes to crispen it up, but I’ve found that’s only helpful if you are working from a frozen casserole. If you plan to freeze this lasagna and eat it later, I suggest you let it thaw completely before cooking.
Now you can eat it. Comfort food that won’t kill you. Genius. Though it probably would have been a better choice NOT to eat it with garlic bread.