Lasagna: Vegan, Gluten Free
- December 2009
- Recipes
This is more of a procedure than an actual recipe–I think of it as a little art project 🙂
You can make white or tomato (red) lasagna, depending on your inspiration. Last night I was inspired for a white one, and it was great!
You need several layers, and these are somewhat up to you:
9 brown rice lasagna noodles (incredibly delicious, no discernible difference from wheat ones), cooked.
2 packages shredded white soy cheese or whatever cheese substitute you use.
Tofu “ricotta” mixture
Roasted eggplant rounds, red pepper strips and zucchini slabs.
Tomato sauce or pesto sauce.
Diced, sauteed vegetable mix (onion, mushrooms, spinach, etc), or just a layer of sliced mushrooms
For the tofu “ricotta” mixture, I saute some minced garlic and onion in grapeseed oil. Then I add some chopped fresh basil and spinach, along with salt, pepper and oregano. I squish up a package of fresh firm tofu in a bowl, and mix everything into the tofu along with some nutritional yeast. This is the “ricotta” layer.
For the pesto sauce, I usually start with a paper packet of pesto mix, add in the requested water and olive oil, and then make it really good by grinding up a lot of fresh basil and pine nuts and stirring that in. At the very end, I add PLAIN, UNFLAVORED soy milk (be careful! so many soy milks appear to be plain and then are not, which is not good for creamy pesto!) to make it creamy. If I want a tomato lasagna, I make tomato sauce with garlic, onion, mushrooms, sundried tomatoes and kalamata olives.
When I want to roast vegetables, I do it in my toaster oven….very easy!
So here’s where this is your own artistic expression 🙂 Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Put some oil in a big rectangular lasagna pan, and pour a little of your sauce in the bottom (either pesto or tomato). Lay out three noodles. Start layering as you like….a layer of tofu mixture, a layer of eggplant rounds or possibly your sauteed vegetable mix, another noodle layer, some shredded soy cheese, pour on a layer of sauce, more roasted or sauteed vegetables or raw mushrooms, another layer of tofu mixture. It’s up to you. Just make sure you get at least one layer of shredded soy cheese in the middle area, and try to finish it with your last 3 noodles. Top the noodles with the last of your sauce and then cover that with a good layer of shredded soy cheese. Sprinkle nutritional yeast all over the top.
Cover with tinfoil, and bake for a long time, at least 45 minutes. Then take the tinfoil off and continue to bake until the top is golden brown.
Delicious! Non vegans and people who eat wheat think this lasagna is fantastic 🙂
