Vegetable "Lasagna"

Ann put me onto the idea of making a vegetarian lasagna a week or so ago. It was kind of a fun dish to assemble and eat. Naturally, it would have been a lot better if I weren't working so hard to minimize the fat in it, but it was delicious.

Vegetable "Lasagna"

Once I assembled the lasagna, it baked in a moderate (350F) oven for an hour to heat through and crisp the pecorino romano that I grated over the top. I filled the oiled 9x9 baking dish level with the top rim and as you can see in the photo, the lasagna puffed up about a half an inch above the rim of the dish. It later settled back as it cooled.

Baked Squash Slices for "Noodles"

I started by cutting several (let's call it 9 or 10) small zucchini and Lebanese squash (the light green, small straight squash) into 5-6 slices each and placing the slices on two sheet trays sprayed with pan spray. They went into a moderate oven (350F) with a turn every fifteen minutes for about an hour.

The point of pre-cooking them is to evaporate much of the water in the squash so that it does not bleed into the lasagna. I jammed the slices together as closely as possible until both sheet trays were full. You can see how much shrinkage there was in the oven; that's water that will not dilute the dish.

I know that Ann wanted me to use eggplant in the dish as well but it is winter now. While we have a year-round supply of decent summer squash at the store, the eggplants tend to be terrible out of season. I just want Ann to note that I have bent my rule about using out-of-season produce (the squash) to make her what she requested.

Extra Thick Marinara

To make the tomato sauce, I roughly blended two drained 28-ounce cans of diced tomatoes and then put them on the flame to reduce and thicken. To the pan, I added four cloves of garlic (minced), a tablespoon of dried basil, and a pinch of red pepper flakes. I never salt dishes that are going to be highly reduced until the end for fear of overly concentrating the salt.

When reducing tomato sauce, you really want to watch the flame so that you don't send geysers of red sauce all over the kitchen, especially as the sauce becomes thick. It took about an hour of cooking to reduce the sauce to the point you see above, with me getting up from my movie every 10 minutes to check the flame and stir the sauce.

White Bean and Pesto Purée

For the alternating layers, I decided to make a purée of white beans and pesto. I drained four 15-ounce cans of white beans and put them in the food processor with a tablespoon and a half of pesto. It took several minutes for the food processor to convert the very dry beans to a smooth but stiff purée. I seasoned it to taste with salt.

Then came the assembly: a thin layer of marinara, a layer of squash, a layer of beans, a layer of squash, a layer of marinara, a layer of squash, a layer of beans, a layer of marinara, and a grating of pecorino romano.

This was a fun dish for a lazy and cold winter Sunday afternoon.