The Suburban Herbivore

Vegetable Lasagna

This is another meal from my teenage years when my mom was looking for vegetarian entrees that the rest of the family would enjoy. I’m happy to say that this one was such a winner that my non-vegetarian family continued to make and enjoy it long after I’d moved out of the house.

Though I’ve been preparing this lasagna on my own for fifteen years, it was only recently that I solved a long-running problem. It always seemed too wet and the pieces would immediately collapse when I served them. I worked hard to push all the water that I could out of the spinach and sweep off any water clinging to the noodles. I went from using 3/4 of a pound of Jack cheese to the full pound. It made little to no difference. Then, at some point last year, I was shopping for the ingredients, and the store was out of the fat-free cottage cheese that I usually bought. (I’d figured why not save the calories?) So I used regular cottage cheese instead, and voilà – problem solved. (To some extent, anyway… it is still lasagna, after all.)

Now, you can use fat-free or reduced-fat if you like, and the lasagna will taste great, and, after a night in the refrigerator, will stay together in fairly well-formed pieces. For me, having lasagna that doesn’t go all fall-apart-y when you cut into it is worth a little extra fat.

I’ve never gotten on board with the no-boil lasagna noodles, so I still cook mine separately. If you try this recipe with the no-boil kind, let me know how it turns out!

Ingredients

1 onion, chopped
olive oil
4 cups pasta sauce (homemade or jarred)
2-3 carrots, grated
6 lasagna noodles
2 10-oz boxes frozen spinach
16 oz regular cottage cheese
3/4 to 1 lb Monterey Jack cheese, grated
1/4 to 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated

1. Preheat oven to 375°.
2. Put the spinach in a microwave-safe bowl, cover, and zap for five minutes. Chop the onion and grate the carrots. After the five minutes is up, stir up the spinach, re-cover, and zap for five more minutes. Begin cooking the noodles.
3. Saute onion for a few minutes in enough olive oil to coat the bottom of your pan. Add the carrots, and saute for several more minutes.
4. Once the spinach is done, set it to drain in a colander or other strainer. Use a fork to push out as much water as you can.
5. Add the pasta sauce to the carrot-onion mixture, and heat until simmering.
6. Layering: Start with a large spoonful or two of sauce in the bottom of your lasagna dish. Put down three noodles. Spread out half the spinach. Spoon on half the cottage cheese. Add half the Jack cheese, and cover with about half of the sauce. Repeat: noodles, spinach, cottage, jack, sauce. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top.
7. Bake for half an hour, and let stand for ten minutes. Enjoy!

Tags: lasagna, vegetarian cooking

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 24th, 2010 at 10:23 pm and is filed under Cooking, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.