Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Green-red vegetarian full-corn lasagna

Finally! I came up with a lasagna, that is sooo good (for my taste) and that fully fits to my healthy profile :) The green lasagna I learned from Agne and Daniele, and that is certainly the best lasagna ever. The red part came in for a change, and also because I did not have enough of spinach, but, if you have never tried green one, just use double ingredients and don't mess up with the red. This version also has no bechamel souce. You can add it, but it is also good without. You can also use lasagna noodles from the pack, but it is just not the same!

Ingredients

Green part
125 g low-fat ricotta chease or sweat (not sour) cottage cheese
250 g frozen finely chopped spinach
a spoon of olive oil
one big onion
2 garlic cloves
1 bay leaf
a bit of peper
a bit og nutmeg powder
a teaspoon of salt

Red part
1 can of tomatoes
2 garlic cloves
1 carrot
A handful of black olives
a spoon of olive oil
basil
a bit of chilli (optional)
a bit of paprika powder
a teaspoon of salt
80 g of low-fat mozarella (fresh or shredded)

Lasagna noodles
2 eggs
1 glass (or a bit more) of all-purpose wheat flower
3/4 grass of full-corn wheat flower
a teaspoon of salt for boling

Preparation

1. Defreeze the spinach in hte fridge, some 10 hours ahead. You can also use the fresh ones and cut them in tiny pieces, but that will add plently of prep time.

2. Prepare the noodles: add flower to eggs and put it together with hands, until it is uniform and not sticky. If the dough is still too soft, add some more flower, but not too much. Then, roll it out on a kitchen table until it is very thin. When it already seems very thin, make it double more thin. Then, cut in squares and let them dry (honestly, I do not know why it is needed to dry). If you are making only green lasagna, you can add some spinach to the dough. If you are making a green-red lasagna, you can add some spinach to half of the dough.

3. Cut garlic and carrots to small pieces.

4. Prepare the green filling. Cut garlic cloves to halves and fry a bit in olive oil in a sauce pan. Then, add onions and saute until they are transparent. After, add spinach and a bay leaf and saute a bit more. At the end, add salt, spices, turn it off, take out garlic and bay leaf, and mix with ricotta. I used home-made low-fat ricotta, the recipe is on the way - it is extremelly simple.

5. Prepare the red filling. Cut garlic cloves to halves and fry a bit in olive oil in a sauce pan. Then, add onions and saute until onions are transparent. Add tomato, basil, sliced olives, and saute until part of liquid evaporates. At the end, add the rest of the spices and take out garlic.

6. Put everything together. Bring the salted water in a big pot to boil, and add some 5 noodles at a time. Add a bit of red sauce on the bottom of an oven dish, then cover with 1 layer of noodles. Add a bit more of red sauce, cover with a bit of mozarella, and a layer of noodles. When the red sauce and the biggest part of mozarella is finished, continue with the green one. Finish with the green sauce and some mozarella on top.

7. Bake it in pre-heated oven and bake for ~30 min. Take it out and let it settle down for few minutes before cutting.

Experiences

For me, it was great. Fresh and light and tasteful. The noodles were much thicker than I expected, so really roll them out until they are transparent. Full-corn flower did not mess up the taste, but use some white flower as well, otherwise it becomes too bitter. I had some left-over noodles, so you could use a bit more sauce. And, I did not miss bechamel sauce at all. This time I ran out of garlic and did without, but garlic adds lots of flavour.

Possible changes - paprika and mushrooms for the red sauce, no onion for the green sauce.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is great info to know.