Tricolour Vegetable Lasagne
Italian Style Green White & Red Saucy Vegetable Layers Pasta Recipe
Some evenings call for simple yet stunning dinners to be filling and relaxing to make. One pot cooking crosses the line first for easiness with its thrown all the ingredients in, let it cook covered for an hour with minimum watching and serve.
This new recipe offers the easiness and timeframe of one pot cooking by constructing three layers of vegetables sauces and pasta into a stoneware baker cooked in the oven, a champion dish with no supervision required.
Tricolour Vegetable Lasagne
Ingredients:
- 350g zucchini
- 3 green peppers
- 2 red onions
- 6-9 garlic cloves
- a tin of Italian chopped tomatoes
- 8 lasagne sheets
- olive oil
- 2 large free range eggs
- 125g creme fraiche
- 50g Parmesan cheese
- 50g hard unsmoked cheese
- 1/2 teaspoon chopped red chilli
- handful fresh basil leaves
Directions:
A square or rectangular dish work best for lasagne baking. Using a stoneware baker means no need to grease up the dish before use. One saucepan, with washing up between layers during preparation, will be required cooking the vegetable sauces.
Green Layer
- Slice zucchini and cube deseeded green peppers to put the green into the base layer.
- Gently fry the zucchini and pepper together in olive oil until cooked yet crunchy and uncoloured. Fresher organic ingredients will bleed their juices into the oil adding to the green layer. Tired vegetables can be used for less crunchiness with sieved canned Italian chopped tomatoes added to make the sauce. Transfer the vegetables into the baking dish.
- Top the layer with lasagne sheets.
White Layer
- Finely slice two medium red onions and chop 6-9 cloves of garlic to bring bite and saltiness to the white layer.
- Gently fry garlic and onion in olive oil. Remove from heat once garlic starts to crisp.
- Set aside the pan, add crème fraiche and stir into the olive oil, onion and garlic in the pan. Check consistency which should be running off spoon. Do add soya milk if not runny.
- Next to bolster this layer, add grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Parmesan cheese and two large free range eggs to the pan and return to the heat until it starts to bubble.
- Pour the sauce immediately onto the lasagne sheet and construct more lasagne sheets on top.
Red Layer
- Finally the red top layer of the vegetable lasagne is saucy, spicy and red. Mix a full can of Italian chopped tomatoes or the sieved juices of the can used in the green layer with add a quarter of a teaspoon of chopped red chilli (or half a teaspoon of chilli powder) and a handful of chopped fresh basil (or two teaspoons of dried basil).
- Spoon this mix onto the lasagne sheets.
- For flavour, grated unsmoked hard cheese such as Cheddar or Tasty can be added while keeping a red sauce.
- Bake in oven at high temperature for 40-50 minutes until browned on the top.
Relax, serve and enjoy the tri-colour vegetable lasagne supper dish.
Technical notes
This is an original recipe created and tested by the writer. Lasagne sheets – such as La Cucina del Doge Lasagne Specialita Italian - that do not require pre-cooking work best. The Tricolour Vegetable Lasagne was made in a Le Creuset Stoneware Dish, a 9 ¼ inch red square baker which can be brought to the table. Serving suggestion per person is a half dish portion served with salad leaves and fresh bread. There is no added salt or sugar to the recipe. Seasoning can be varied for your palette by adding table salt to the white layer or by adding caster sugar to the top red layer.
