1. Make or buy a vegan pesto in a jar and spice it up however you like it. My recipe pesto is at the very end ***
2. grate 2 zucchini and one carrot and dice one yellow onion fine, saute with the tastiest veg oil you can find (but not olive oil for high temps remember) and add the pesto last to the saute just to stir it up and heat thru.
3. No-boil vegan pasta sheets are a great time saver - I used 14 made with spelt flour - but there are some who would make theirs from scratch.
4. 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 purple onion, if you prefer you can add the onion and even the mushrooms to the next step but I prefer not to as fewer enzymes are lost this way.
5. chop an onion fine if you havent used it in the last step or want more and chop some garlic finely to taste and add it to an iron skillet with soysages til browned.
6. meanwhile chop up several mushrooms and prepare some fresh spinach. These will get added to the layers raw before baking.
7. now its time to layer it up. There is room for variation on this but basically start with a watered down layer of pesto on the bottom. The extra water added there is really necessary so it doesn’t burn. Also if you are using a jar of it may need more water.
Here is the order I used this time:
Zucchini /pesto, the flat noodle sheets, more zucchini /pesto, spinach, tofu mixture, soysages mixture, mushrooms, more zucchini /pesto, noodles, sauce, spinach, tofu mixture, soysages mixture, mushrooms, a bit of zucchini/ pesto with the remaining liquid from the pan, tofu mixture, mushrooms, fill in any spots with liquid on top too covering all the pasta so it cooks well.
Tip to using no-boil lasagna sheets is that a wet saucy thing must go under and on top of each layer of them.
8. now cover it up with foil tightly and bake 350 F for 35 - 45 min
• note: 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 can be omitted if too much soy at one sitting. both together make it seem more the traditional way we envision lasagna but I skipped it for this time where I took the photos.
this is so good make it if you want a real pesto experience
*** home made VEGAN PESTO
We love to grow our own basil when possible – other herbs we grow indoors, but since pesto takes a lot of basil (and arugala in this case) farmers markets enable us to have organic greens a lot more often.
1. chop up equal parts of basil and arugala until you have 3 cups loosely packed. This can be done by hand with a big chef knife along with the entire recipe -taking time to get it really fine – I went for years without a food processor or electricity. I have also used a hand plunger nut chopper for this too in my past -- or -- chop it coarsely by hand and throw it into the food processor with the rest of the ingredients.
2. chop up the garlic fine – we use a lot (like 7) but the faint of heart may use 2 or 3.
3. gather up 1/4 to 1/3 cups of nuts - now I like to use walnuts with the arugala version, if you want more traditional, use pine nuts along with all basil.
4. add herbs: I use a handful of oregano and parsley each but if I have cilantro I will throw that in too. A bit of sea salt and cayenne pepper to your liking too.
5. This can all get a good whiz in the processor before adding the oil and yeast.
6. add 1/4 to 2/3 cup oil adding spoon by spoon after the first 1/4 cup. Olive oil is the traditional way but walnut oil rocks the arugala and you will find some interesting ways to vary pesto by just variations in veg/ nut oils and spices.
7. optional vegan bonus (instead of parm) use 1/4 to 1/3 cup of nutritional yeast.
Note for the recipe above a little more than “normal” water will be required to bake in a lasagna. For tossing on pasta or grains, not to do that.
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