Vegan lasagna for everyone!

We had a pot luck luncheon for a co-worker friend who was leaving the company. I brought vegan lasagna! And homemade garlic bread.

Here's my version.

Lasagna noodles

Sauce

Tofu ricotta

Soy cheese

Lasagna noodles-store bought, dry lasagna noodles

Boil noodles until al dente and drain or...don't

Note: The Barilla "no cook" variety is made with eggs, so you may want to just go with the old school version and boil them. Conversely, the normal old noodles don't have to be boiled if you add an extra cup of water to the sauce and make sure the sauce comes all the way to the top of the lasagna in the pan. If you do this, make sure you cook covered 1 hour, the uncovered another 1/2 hour. First hour cooks the pasta, next 1/2 dries out the sauce.

Sauce: I made a big pot-this makes more than you need for the lasagna-I have about 4 cups leftover

1/4 cup olive oil

1 onion

20 (yes I said 20, but you can use less) cloves of garlic

1 eggplant (mine was not small)

1 green bell pepper

1 can crushed tomatoes

1 can whole peeled tomatoes (broken into small pieces)

3 TBS Italian seasoning (or combination italian friendly herbs, oregano, basil, marjoram, etc)

2 tsp salt

1/4 cup sugar (test first, you may need less if tomatoes are already sweet)

1/2 cup dry red wine

Chop onion, garlic, eggplant, and bell pepper very fine or in food processor. Add olive oil to a large pot and saute vegetable mixture. When vegetables are softened, add remaining ingredients including juice from tomatoes and let simmer until veggies are cooked and sauce has thickened stirring occasionally.

Optional uncooked noodles version: make a runny sauce; puree 2 cups of sauce and 1 cup of additional water/broth so you have a not thick sauce. Use this on the first and last layers.

Tofu Ricotta (adapted from vcon)

1 package soft/silken tofu

1 bunch fresh basil

1 big handful spinach

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tsp salt

2 Tbs olive oil

Drain tofu and place in large bowl. Mix tofu with a fork so it's broken up, but not smooth. Chop basil and spinach and add to tofu. Add lemon juice, salt and olive oil and mix together. The mixture will be fairly wet.

Soy Cheese:

I grated some follow your heart mozzarella.

Preheat oven to 375

Assembly: (unboiled regular noodles version)

Place 1 cup runny sauce in bottom of 13X9 pan. Add layer of noodles, top with 1/3 ricotta, 1 cup sauce (make sure to get a good amount of the veggies in it) and 1/4 soy cheese. Repeat until you fill the pan. The last layer should be just noodle, runny sauce and cheese. Make sure the sauce comes up to the top of the noodles. Cover with foil and bake 1 hour. Test a piece of the noodle to make sure it's cooked. Tuck in any pieces that may be poking out and crispy. Remove foil and cook additional 1/2 hour.

If you did boil the noodles, you don't need the runny sauce or the extra 1/2 hour cook time, just remove foil and turn up to 450 for 5 min so the soy cheese melts.

Garlic Bread:

1/4 recipe artisan bread dough from the fridge-or 1 baguette

5 cloves garlic chopped

1/4 cup olive oil

Make bread: let cool

Saute garlic in oil

Slice bread almost all the way through, but leave the bottom so the loaf still holds together.

Put spoonfull of garlic oil mixture into each slice and then wrap in foil. Heat in oven 375 about 15 min.