Inspired by various friends and this whole "meat free Mondays" thing I decided to try out a vegetarian lasagne rather than my usual meaty version. Beef is pretty bad for the environment so I reckon cutting back can only be a good thing!
The recipe is a bit long winded but it's really worth it, it breaks down to about three parts: the tomato sauce, the white sauce and the roasted vegetables. For the tomato sauce you'll need three tins of chopped tomatoes, two onions, a carrot, some basil and some 200ml of white wine.
The white sauce only needs 750ml of milk, 85g of butter and 85g of plain flour.
For the actual lasagne part you'll need two aubergines, three red peppers (feel free to mix up your colours of peppers but red are my favourite), some fresh lasagne sheets (cos I'm lazy and couldn't be bothered to get dry and cook them first) and some mozzarella for the top!
Start with the vegetables, while these roast you can get started on the sauces! Begin by chopping the the red peppers into chunks and slicing the aubergines.
You'll have a HUGE pile of veg on your hands so you'll probably need two large baking trays. Place your peppers and aubergines onto these and drizzle them with olive oil. Put them into an oven that's heated to 200 degrees and let them roast for around 25 minutes of until they've started to go golden brown.
While your vegetables are roasting make a start on your tomato sauce, chop the onions finely and the carrot into chunks (you're going to whizz it through a food processor so don't worry about the massive pieces of carrots). Pop these into a frying pan with a table spoon of oil and let them soften for about 5 minutes before chucking in two table spoons of tomato puree.
It's time to bring on the booze! Pour in 200ml of white wine and cook this for about another 5 minutes or until the wine has reduced down. Once it has add in your three tins of tomatoes.
Stir in a handful of basil leaves and bring to the boil, once you've done this turn it down to simmer and leave it for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
At this point your vegetables will probably be ready so grab them out of the oven and leave them to rest, we'll come back to them later.
We're onto the final step, the dreaded white sauce. Melt the butter in the pan and slowly sift in the plain flower stirring all the time to avoid any lumps.
Now once the flour and butter is all mixed it will turn into a worrying kind of paste that seems completely wrong, but don't worry it's meant to all clump together! Slowly begin to stir in your milk bit by bit with a whisk over a low heat. This will make it go really watery and again, if you're anything like me, you'll think you'll have done something wrong, but bare with it. Keep stirring the mixture over a low heat and eventually it'll thicken up until it coats the back of a spoon.
While you're waiting for this to happen pop your tomato sauce into a food processor and give it a whizz, it won't be completely smooth but don't worry about that, as long as those carrot pieces are sliced down. By this point the white sauce should be ready and it's time for assembly!
Start with a layer of aubergine and peppers and pour over some tomato sauce, then you'll need a sheet of lasagne and coat this in a layer of white sauce. Repeat this until you reach the top of your dish. To finish it off throw over some mozzarella (because mozzarella just makes an Italian dish doesn't it?), I added some more basil leaves cos I just adore basil! Pop it into a pre heated oven at 180 degrees and leave it for 40-45 minutes - use your judgement, if it's started to go golden brown and it bubbling it's probably ready.
Isn't she a beauty? And believe me it tastes as good as it looks. I was feeling a bit worried about this to tell you the truth. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a big meat eater and I usually find vegetarian dishes lacking in something, but this lasagne is full of flavour and textures that meant I wasn't missing the mince one bit.
I only have a small dish which meant I couldn't make a huge lasagne but this recipe would definitely give you enough for about 6/7 portions if you had a bigger dish. I just kept the leftover ingredients to make another Italian dish in the future. So this is perfect if you're a student and want to bulk cook food to freeze or are just lazy like me and don't want to cook a different meal every evening!
If you have any other vegetarian recipes you love it'd be great to hear them so I can expand my meat free repertoire!
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