trio lasagna pan

The idea, right, is that you've got a pesky vegetarian at your dinner table.  But the carnivores don't have the grace to eat something minus meat without complaining about protein deficiency.  The solution?  A trio lasagna pan that comes with a fancy special spatula that'll fit in the perfectly-spaced rows.  $32.

h/t:  rare bird finds.

Vegetarian Lasagne

Ingredients:

• All the veggies you want! I used mushrooms, spinach, carrots, onion, garlic, red pepper, and courgette.
• Pasta sheets.
• White sauce (er..I used a jar but will write how to make your own here). To make own: 50 grams margarine, 50 grams flour, pint of milk
• Tinned chopped tomatoes
• Cheese (mozzerella/cheddar)
• olive oil
  

Herbs and flavouring:

• Basil,
• Oregano,
• Pepper,
• Salt,
• Nutmeg,
• Marjoram,
• Bayleaf

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.

2. If using carrots, chop them and boil for a few minutes to soften them, while preparing and chopping the other vegetables.

3. Soften the onions and garlic in olive oil in a saucepan. After a few minutes, add the red pepper. After they have cooked for about five minutes, all in the courgette, carrots and mushrooms.

4. Stir and cook in the oil for about ten minutes, then add the tinned tomatoes and mix in all the herbs.

5. Cook for ten minutes or so, flavouring more as needs be.

6. For the cheese sauce, melt the margarine in a sauce pan and then mix in the flour. When the margarine has absorbed the flour, slowly add in a little of the milk, stirring constantly. Stir carefully to make sure the milk soaks into the flour without becoming lumpy. Keep adding the milk bit by bit, stirring all the time, until you have a creamy sauce. to thicken the sauce, raise the heat; likewise, if you want to thin it out a little, lower the heat and add a little more milk until its the consistency you want.

7. When the mixture is finished, take it off the heat and add in all the cheese. You don't need to cook it for this, it should just melt in the heat of the mixture.

8. Take the vegetable mix, and pour half of it into a dish. Add some pasta sheets, then layer on some of the cheese sauce. Repeat: another layer with the remaining vegetable mix, a layer of pasta sheets, and finish with a layer of cheese sauce.

9. Sprinkle some pepper on the top, slices of tomato are nice too.

10. Cook the mixture in the oven for 30 mins.

vegan lasagna

Inviting vegans to a dinner party often causes issues. What can you serve that everyone will like, without causing the meateaters to grumble or the animal-lovers to go hungry? The solution is a big dish that tastes like it has dairy in it but doesn't really. This is a vegan lasagna recipe we made for friends a few weeks ago.

We slightly messed with a recipe found here. They called for making your own sauce. We skipped that hour-long step in memory of Paul Newman, RIP.


Be sure to get two jars of tomato sauce - you'll need 'em. Here's the rest of the recipe:

• 1 Tbs. salt
• 1 lb. dry uncooked eggless lasagna noodles
• 2 (16-oz.) packages firm tofu, drained
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
• Salt and ground black pepper to taste

Bring large pot of water to boil. Once the water boils, add salt and noodles. Cook until al dente. Drain, rinse with water and drain again. To keep the noodles from sticking layer them between damp paper towels. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Crumble tofu into a blender or food processor. Blend with garlic, basil, parsley, salt and pepper until you have the consistency of ricotta:

Now you're ready to put it together. Spoon about 1 cup sauce over bottom of a baking dish (no need to oil first). Add layer of noodles and top with one-third tofu mixture. Spoon over about 1 1/2 cups sauce and top with another layer of noodles. Keep doing this in stages until you're out of everything.

Cover with foil and bake for half an hour. While you're waiting discuss animal rights.


Remove from oven and let stand about 15 minutes before serving.
How did it taste? Great, and everyone liked it. However... we all had ideas for how to improve on it. The tomato sauce we used could have been chunkier, for one. We could have added more garlic to the tofu, too. But the best idea was to include fake ground beef in a layer. Because it's such a simple recipe, there are hundreds of ways to vary this one. And they will all work.