Well, the almost 6 pound zucchini met its fate this past weekend. After a lot of effort M. and I managed to turn this zucchini into 'noodles' for our lasagna. I found a recipe in my More Peas, Thank You cookbook:
The author of this cookbook is also a food blogger that unfortunately has retired. She published two successful cookbooks and I have found many mouth watering and appetizing recipes including the meatless meat loaf I made this past May that you can read about here.
On to the lasagna recipe! The main difference in this lasagna (besides the lack of meat) is using the zucchini as noodles instead of pasta. In the end less carbs (thumbs up) and less calories (double thumbs up!).
The recipe first called for some marinara sauce and tomato sauce... what is the difference? I made my own marinara sauce and for the tomato sauce I just used tomato paste.
For the marinara sauce, use some olive oil, garlic and italian spices in a hot pan.
Once fragrant, add the diced tomatoes that were smoothed out in a blender.
Let it simmer for approximately 20 minutes.
On to the zucchini. We own a mandolin and attempted to use it on this monster squash! Here are a couple shots of M using it.
He did a good job! Here are our 'noodles'.
To get rid of some of the bitterness I put some salt on each 'noodle' and layered some paper towels between them. The paper towels absorbed the water from the zucchini. We needed 12 'noodles' for this recipe.
To make the first layer of this lasagna, I first put about 1/2 a cup of marinara sauce in my casserole dish and then a layer of zucchini noodles. On top of the 'noodles', I put a thin layer of the quinoa mixture and then 1/3 cup of marinara sauce. Add another layer of zucchini and then repeat!
After the final layer of zucchini, quinoa mixture and the remainder of the marinara sauce, I put a thick layer of vegan cheese. In the oven it goes at 400 degrees for 30 minutes!
I have a confession: I am not a fan of any type of squash. If it's in a pie, I will eat pumpkin and if it's in a soup, i'll eat butternut but when it comes to zucchini, I have tried it roasted, cut up in small chunks in a way to hide it in a vegetable medley or even fried and I am not a fan. The only reason I wanted to attempt this lasagna is because I hate wasting food and I would have hated throwing out that giant zucchini. Well folks, this lasagna was superb. I was more than happy to eat the zucchini in this recipe. The texture was creamy, cheesy and it had a bit of crunch from the zucchini. This recipe is a winner and I cannot wait to make it for my family and friends at our next dinner party. If you are like me and you really are not a fan of squash, this recipe will certainly change your mind. What I love most about it is how healthy it is and I was surprised at how I didn't miss the layers of ricotta cheese that you would usually find in between the layers of noodles in a lasagna.
Final product:
The only thing I would strongly recommend is to cut off the skin. The skin on our zucchini was tough and we had to cut around it when eating our lasagna. Despite that, I give this recipe 5 out of 5!
***Cannot share recipe due to copyright laws.
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