The plan was to make a vegetable lasagna, using my home-made ricotta in the cheese sauce. The lasagna sheets in the cupboard however, had been got at by pantry beetles and were full of chewed holes. It has been a while since we last made lasagna!
I decided to use some spiral pasta to make a pasta bake instead, and prepared a tasty vegetable sauce topped with the ricotta cheese. I borrowed ideas from a couple of recipes.
Ricotta cheese sauce from Spicy Vegetarian Lasagne on Allrecipes:
- 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 400g ricotta cheese
- 250g grated mozzarella cheese
- 4 eggs
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano, crushed
I didn’t have mozzarella so substituted cheddar cheese. Also used fresh basil instead of oregano. This was very easy to prepare in the Thermie – threw in cubes of the harder cheeses to grate at speed 8 for 10 seconds, then added the other ingredients and combined at speed 5 for 5 seconds. Poured into a bowl and set aside.
The vegetable sauce from Vegetable Lasagne on Forum Thermomix:
- 1 onion peeled and quartered
- 1 clove garlic peeled
- 20 gm EVO
- 2 medium carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
- 2 medium zucchini, peeled and roughly chopped
- 100 gm sliced mushrooms
- 1 x 400 gm can chopped tomatoes
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste
- 1 teaspoon dried basil
I omitted mushrooms and added a large capsicum (also didn’t peel the zucchini). Used fresh basil from the garden. Into the clean dry bowl of the Thermie I chopped the onion and garlic, with a splash of MOO (mild olive oil) since I’m not a fan of the taste of olive oil. Then sautéd for a couple of minutes on speed 1, temperature 100°C.
Added carrots and basil leaves, chopped. Added zucchini and capsicum, chopped. Added can of tomatoes, tomato paste and a spoon of vegetable stock concentrate (from EDC). Cooked for 15 minutes on Reverse speed 1, Varoma temperature.
To assemble, I placed pre-cooked pasta spirals in the bottom of a large 30 x 40 cm casserole dish, poured vegetable sauce over this and topped with the ricotta cheese sauce. Baked at 180°C for 40 – 50 mins until the topping was golden brown.
Very tasty 😀 the ricotta added a nice tang.