Vegetarian Lasagna with Homemade Pasta – Yum!

Our neighbor just had her first baby and I wanted to bring over a casserole. She is vegetarian so I made my best veggie dish, Vegetarian Lasagna. Packed with cheese, sauces, roasted and sautéed vegetables, it contains all the power foods you need to get back on your feet–not to mention the tender deliciousness of homemade pasta. She and her family declared it the best lasagna they’d ever had. Even if you haven’t had a baby, you’ll want to try it: Vegetarian Lasagna with Homemade Pasta –it’s tasty and tender.

Vegetarian Lasagna

Preparation Time: 1.5 hours; Cooking Time 45 minutes

Below are all of the elements of this divine vegetarian lasagna. 

• One 9 x 13-inch baking pan, or a slightly larger “lasagna pan.”
• One recipe homemade pasta dough (recipe below)
• One recipe lasagna sauce (see below)
• One recipe ricotta filling (recipe below)
• Two small zucchinis, and two yellow squash, sliced, sautéed in olive oil until tender, seasoned with salt and pepper
• ½ pound mushrooms, chopped and sautéed in olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper
• One recipe of roasted eggplant, red pepper, tomatoes and onions found in Zacusca (recipe below)
• One 15-ounce container of Buitoni Alfredo Sauce, or you can make your own
• One pound grated mozzarella
• 8 ounces grated Parmesan cheese

Homemade Pasta Dough

Preparation Time: 15 minutes

Now that we all are spending more time at home, take five minutes to learn to make your own pasta and discover what you’ve been missing all this time!

Ingredients:

• 4 cups flour or semolina flour
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• ¼ cup water, as needed

Measure flour into a large bowl and stir salt into the flour. Beat eggs lightly. Add the olive oil to the eggs and mix. Then make a well in the flour and pour the egg mixture in, folding it into the flour mixture. Add water as needed to make the dough pliable. Knead the dough until it is smooth and firm, approximately 3 minutes. You can use your electric stand mixer with a dough hook, if you like. Just mix until the dough is smooth and clinging to the hook. Remove from bowl and shape into a flat disc. Cover the dough with a damp kitchen towel set in fridge to rest for 30 minutes while you prepare the rest of the dish.

Roll out pasta dough until nearly transparent and cut into 3 inch by 13 inch strips and set aside. Or you can cut as you assemble your lasagna later. The dough should always be pulled as thinly and transparently as possible.

Lasagna Sauce

Preparation Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

• ½ cup olive oil
• 1 large, sweet onion, diced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• One 28-ounce can of Italian whole tomatoes, shredded with your fingers
• A 28-ounce can Italian-style purée
• One 4-ounce can tomato paste
• 1 Tbsp dried basil
• 1 tsp fennel seed
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 ½ tsp pepper

Heat olive oil in a large stock pot and add onion and cook until golden. Add garlic and cook for one minute then add all the tomatoes, purée and tomato paste, herbs, salt and pepper. Cover pan with lid and simmer on low for 45 minutes. 

Ricotta Filling

Preparation Time: 5 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. ricotta cheese
• 2 tablespoons fresh chopped/1 tsp dried parsley
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese

Mix ricotta with eggs, parsley and 2 Tbsp of the parmesan cheese. Refrigerate until use.

Zacusca

Preparation Time: 45 minutes

• 28 ounces fresh or canned tomatoes
• One, 4-ounce can of tomato paste
• 2 medium eggplants
• 2 red peppers (my notes say “long red peppers”)
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tablespoon sugar/or to taste
• Salt to taste

1. Finely chop onion and brown it in the olive oil. 
2. While the onion is browning, pierce and roast eggplant and peppers and place them on your grill at high heat. Check on them every 10 minutes and turn them to expose the skin to the grill. The skin will be charred and the flesh tender when they are ready. 
3. Remove tomato skins using the boiling water/ice-bath-plunge method. If using canned tomatoes, you can skip this step. Finely chop tomatoes and set aside.
4. When done, remove the grilled vegetables to a Dutch oven with a lid and keep it closed for 20 minutes. The heat and moisture from the vegetables under the lid will cause the skin to peel away easily.
5. Peel the skin from them and finely chop and set them aside together.
6. Add tomato paste and tomatoes to golden onions on the stove and let cook 5 minutes. Add to the onion mixture the chopped eggplant and peppers and continue to cook, stirring frequently for another 5 minutes. Add sugar and salt to taste and continue to boil on medium heat until thickened enough to spread.
7. Set Zacusca aside in a bowl.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. You should have a line of bowls at the ready for assembly: the bowl of chopped, sautéed mushrooms, the sautéed zucchini and yellow squash, the Zacusca, the ricotta mixture, the lasagna sauce, the mozzarella and parmesan cheeses and an Alfredo sauce.

1. Coat the bottom of your pan with lasagna sauce. (Do not over sauce!)
2. Cover sauce with strips of pasta dough. (Remember to stretch the dough as thinly as possible. It’s very stretchy and shouldn’t tear.)
3. Spread more lasagna sauce evenly over the pasta dough and cover with half the ricotta mixture and spread it evenly using a spoon.
4. Sprinkle a layer of grated mozzarella over the ricotta mixture.
5. Cover this with strips of pasta dough.
6. Cover the pasta dough with one generous layer of Zacusca.
7. Cover this with strips of pasta dough.
8. Cover the pasta with all of the sautéed mushrooms and smear lasagna sauce over this.
9. Cover this with strips of pasta dough.
10. Cover with lasagna sauce, then grated mozzarella, the Alfredo sauce and top with the parmesan.
11. Cover with aluminum foil.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake in oven for 50 minutes. Remove pan from oven and let cool for 10 minutes before serving. Serve with whatever lasagna sauce you might have left. And enjoy your Vegetarian Lasagna with Homemade Pasta!