My animal loving daughter is a keen vegetarian so I’m working on making delicious meat/animal free meals. I make a pretty good lasagne however, in the past when I have made it vegetarian, it never goes down as well and the kids tend to pick out all the veggies and only eat the noodles and cheese part.
So, this lasagne is a white one (no tomato). This is very different for me as I always do a tomato based sauce with lasagne. Amazingly the kids wolfed this down, including all the pumpkin and spinach (it’s a first!).
There are 3 parts to it: 1. White sauce, 2. Ricotta sauce and 3. Veggies and assembly. But, once it comes together you can pop it in the oven, pour a wine and relax until dinner.
White sauce:
1 1/2 cups raw cashews
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Salt
2 cups water
3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1/2 teaspoon paprika
Soak the cashews in a large bowl of water for 2-4 hrs. Drain and rinse well.
Put the cashews in blender and add water, salt, yeast and paprika. Blend until smooth (you might need to adjust the water). You want it to be fairly runny with a bechamel sauce consistency. Put aside. (You can prepare this a day in advance). When you want to use the sauce, stir well and add the lemon juice. (I forgot to take a picture of this).
Ricotta cheese
In a blender combine:
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion (chopped roughly)
2 -3 garlic cloves
400g tofu (firm)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
Salt and pepper
Blend until ricotta consistency. Can be prepared a day ahead as well.
Vegetables:
I roasted half a pumpkin which was sliced up (1cm thin slices) in the oven for 30 mins turning the slices over halfway.
I also put 400g baby spinach in the frypan with some oil just to melt it down. You could also use defrosted frozen spinach for this recipe.
Assembly:
Spread a thin layer of white sauce on the bottom of lasagne pan.
Arrange noodles on top.
Spread a layer of ricotta cheese on the pasta. Use half of what you have.
Place a layer of pumpkin and spinach over the ricotta. Use half the vegetables here.
Repeat with pasta, ricotta and vegetables. I poured half the white sauce over all of it at this point.
Add another layer of pasta and use the rest of the white sauce. I added some salt, pepper and chilli and panko breadcrumbs to give it a Parmesan effect.
Bake in a moderate oven (180 Celsius/ 360F) for 55 mins. You might want to put foil over the top for the first 35 mins to cook the pasta well.
Serve with green salad.
It will stay in the fridge for 3 days and the leftovers are great for lunches.