Wednesday, October 24, 2018

No Noodle Vegetarian Lasagna

So, last week while grocery shopping, I saw butternut squash (kind of unevenly) cut into "lasagna noodle" style. OOH. Had to do this. 

It's roughly based on my chef mom's lasagna recipe. she does sort of an easy dump method, to cook for large crowds, like sorority size or jazz club restaurant size ....

See photos for better descriptions ... "a picture is worth 1,000 words"
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This could easily be made with any kind of squash "noodles" .... pumpkin, zucchini, yellow squash....
If you cut your noodles fat, then I suggest maybe boiling them in water until they are a bit more floppy. I didn't do that with my raw butternut squash "noodles" so they were hard to cut through.
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What you need:
- practically any kind of squash vegetable cut to look like lasagna noodles i.e.: long, thin strips
- lentils (1-2 packages of Tasty Bite Indian Madras Lentils)
- cauliflower rice, at least thawed. cooked is fine.
- brown rice, pre-cooked, thawed, whatever. not raw.
- garlic salt
- cracked pepper
- ricotta cheese
- some water so I could stir the cheese
- mozzarella
- red chopped tomatoes in sauce (2 cans)
mix the whites and mix the reds. in this case, the cheeses and veggies are white. the lentils and red sauce are the reds.
put something on the bottom of the pan, either the white cheese mix or the red sauce mix. whatever you have more of.
layer from there - one thing, the next thing, the next thing, repeat. About half way up the pan, sprinkle with the garlic salt and cracked pepper. Then continue the layers. Sprinkle the top with the rest of the mozzarella cheese, then add the garlic salt and cracked pepper on top of that.
fold a piece of tinfoil length wise (like a very wide, very long hot dog bun). "Tent" it over the top of the lasagna. Put in oven:
350 degrees F in the oven for 35 minutes. then 250 degrees F in the oven for 20 minutes. Let it rest after you pull it out of the oven, at least 20 minutes.
See photos for what I used.