Friday, March 26, 2010

Roasted vegetable lasagna

I was in the mood for lasagna yesterday. But we had recently had spaghetti with sausage (I always make my lasagna with sausage), so I wanted to try something meatless. I've never been a fan of vegetable lasagna because they often have white sauce instead of tomato sauce, but I found one on allrecipes.com that looked good. I made a few modifications, based on reviews and what we had in the house. For example it called for 3 small zucchini and 1/2 pound fresh mushrooms, which we didn't have. But we did have asparagus and kale. I guess you can use any kind of veggies you want, but the eggplant is the most important one because it is SO GOOD roasted. This was the first time I've made lasagna without cooking the noodles first. I've always been leary, but it worked out just fine.

Ingredients
1 whole eggplant, sliced 1/4" thick and quartered
1 red bell pepper, cut in half and sliced
1/2 pound asparagus, cut into 1" pieces
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
salt & pepper
1 bunch of kale

1 (15 ounce) container cottage cheese
1 egg
1 Tbsp dried parsley
1 (26 ounce) jar spaghetti sauce
10 no-boil lasagna noodles
2 cups shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss eggplant, red pepper and asparagus in a bowl with olive oil and garlic. Spread out on extra large cookie sheet and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake, uncovered for 15 minutes. Turn vegetables over. Bake 15 minutes longer.
Meanwhile, boil kale in a large pot about 5 minutes or until tender. Drain and thoroughly dry on paper towels, squeezing out excess water; remove stems, chop leaves and set aside. In a bowl, combine the cottage cheese, egg and parseley.

Reduce heat to 350 degrees. Spread about 1/3 cup spaghetti sauce in a 9x13 pan. Layer with 5 lasagna noodles, half of cottage cheese mixture, half of mozzarella cheese, half of roasted vegetables and kale, and half of remaining spaghetti sauce. Repeat layers. Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Uncover; bake 5-10 minutes longer or until edges are bubbly. Let stand for 10 minutes before cutting. Yum! Everyone loved it.