The cold and rainy weather, an intense craving for veggies, and Meghan's healthy lasagna inspired me to whip up a little vegetable lasagna of my own last week.
During a quick trip to the grocery store on the way home from work, I walked around the produce section collecting veggies I thought would work well and ended up with an onion, a couple of yellow squashes, a zucchini, and a package of baby spinach. Then I headed to the pasta aisle for some no-boil noodles and a box of Pomi diced tomatoes. (I wanted chunks of tomatoes rather than sauce.) Some mozzarella, Parmesan, and ricotta rounded out my purchases.
I got everything home and started by dicing and sautéing the onion. I cut the squashes and zucchini in half lengthwise and then sliced them and sautéed them, adding handfuls of baby spinach to wilt in the pan once the squash was almost done. I stirred half of the onion back in at the end.
While my veggies cooked, I stirred two eggs into the ricotta (15 ounces), added some generous handfuls of shredded mozzarella, and seasoned the mixture with salt and pepper. (I used half of this cheese mixture in my lasagna and used the rest to make a non-veggie lasagna for Jeff.)
Then I simply layered. I spread some diced tomatoes in the bottom of the pan and topped them with noodles. I spread some of the ricotta mixture on top of the noodles and spooned half of the vegetable mixture on top.
I spread more diced tomatoes over the veggies, sprinkled the parmesan on top and repeated with the next layer.
For the top layer, I covered the veggies with noodles, poured the rest of the diced tomatoes on top, and covered the tomatoes with mozzarella.
I baked the lasagna, covered with foil, at 350 for 50 minutes. Then I uncovered it and baked it for another 10 minutes, until the mozzarella was nice and melty. After letting it sit for 10 minutes, I dug in.
All my veggie cravings plus some comfort food cravings were instantly satisfied. And I had plenty of leftovers to get me through the rest of the week.
What veggies would be in your ideal vegetable lasagna?