Vegan Lasagna
This recipe is more of an art than a step by step. Its so flexible. Here is the basic order to follow. get creative using ingredients on hand or to suit your fancy.
1. Make or buy a tomato sauce with organic tomatoes and spice it up however you like it. *** my bonus plum tomato sauce recipe at the very end
2. No-boil vegan pasta sheets are a great time saver - I used 14 -but there are some who would make theirs from scratch.
3. for the oval casserole dish pictured I used half of a tofu container for this step. Silken is best but wasn’t available this time so I used firm and mashed it with a fork along with oregano, basil, Italian seasoning and chopped red pepper, if you prefer you can add the pepper and even the mushrooms to the next step but I prefer not to as fewer enzymes are lost this way.
4. chop an onion fine with some garlic to taste and add it to an iron skillet with soysages til browned.
5. meanwhile chop up several mushrooms and prepare some fresh spinach.
6. now its time to layer it up. There is room for variation on this but basically start with a watered down layer of sauce on the bottom. The extra water added there is really necessary so it doesn’t burn. Also if you are using a jar of sauce it may need more water.
Here is the order I used this time:
Sauce, the flat noodle sheets, more sauce, spinach, tofu mixture, soysages mixture, mushrooms, sauce, noodles, sauce, spinach, tofu mixture, soysages mixture, mushrooms, sauce, tofu mixture, mushrooms, fill in any spots with sauce on top too.
Tip to using no-boil lasagna sheets is that sauce must go under and on top of each layer of them.
7. now cover it up with foil tightly and bake 350 F for 35 - 45 min
• you can also use vegan rice-cheezes which makes it really nice but I didn’t have any at this time. If you do, take the foil off for the last 7 – 10 min to brown it.
* another note – this is a heavy soy meal which is why I used only half the package of tofu. The soysages add more flavor but both together make it seem more the traditional way we envision lasagna. We made it for Xmas dinner as a treat.
BONUS! *** make your own home made plum tomato sauce:
• olive oil
• 4 cloves of garlic finely minced,
• a bunch of fresh basil, leaves picked from stems and coarsely chopped
• 2 – 4 T dried or fresh oregano
• 15 – 20 plum tomatoes from your garden or the farmers market OR
3 big tins of good-quality, whole plum organic tomatoes chopped up a bit
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• one bay leaf
• small amount of water
in a large heated cast iron or heavy pot pour in a bit of olive oil.
Add the garlic, (onion too if you like and mushrooms, peppers, etc but not for this recipe above)
add the basil and the tomatoes together. Stir and mash up the tomatoes to make a chunky sauce as it cooks down
stir and check it often but in between stirrings, leave a lid on it at a simmer.
sea salt and cracked pepper last.
notes:
Some folks will prefer a smoother sauce than I do and would push it thru a sieve after cooking just the tomatoes in garlic and oil without the other veg and herbs yet and before the salt and pepper. And then return it to simmer and cook fully. That’s fine if you do so after its cooked to a good bubble for a few minutes and cooled. But the other veg and herbs will have to be done separate to add after straining. You could theoretically cook it all up as I do and then strain it to make a totally thin smooth sauce with the flavor but not the pieces of herbs, garlic and onion etc in there but why would you want to do that? Some folks do.
Water is another thing that depends entirely on the tomatoes used. The cans generally have enough liquid but fresh tomato tends to need a bit more. I also remove the seeds which is just a preference not necessary but juice is lost there too. Just a touch of water so it doesn’t burn on the bottom of the pot for pasta pouring and more water needed for lasagna.
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