Tofu Lasagna

In my books, Lasagna, particularly, vegan lasagna, always had two major strikes against it. When I was growing up,  we used to have Lasagna all the time and I hated it.  It was the ricotta cheese. Ordinarily, I am a big fan of cheese, any kind of cheese. But I don't like ricotta.

This recipe replaces the ricotta with tofu, which I must admit doesn't sound very appetizing, but it is actually quite delicious and relatively simple to prepare! This recipe was adopted from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics. And here in comes the second strike against this recipe--I used to hate this book as well. From my freshman to junior year in college, I lived in a vegan co-op, where we cooked our own food. Most of the food we cooked was vegan, or rather, normal food adopted to a Vegan diet. All in all, it was a fairly miserable gastronomical experience. Bad thing too, because it really make me loathe even looking at the Moosewood cookbook.

Flash forward 16 years....(my god has it been that long?) and I am marrying a dietitian with a penchant for vegetarian food. Ah, the things we do for love...

This dish can be made relatively quickly with little prep time. There is no need to boil the lasagna noodles before placing them down in your baking sheet. You can just lay down uncooked lasagna noodles. By adding water, vegetable stock or chicken stock to your tomato sauce, you increase the water content-this will help cook the lasagna noodles while they are baking.


Ingredients
Tomato sauce (vegetarian or non vegetarian)

12 oz tofu (1 package), roughly cut into chunks
1 cup mozzarella cheese (shredded or grated)
Oregano
Dried Basil

Lasagna noodles (about 1 lbs)


Drain the tofu and cut into chunks. Add to a food processor. Add mozzarella cheese, Oregano, Basil and any other spices you want. Blend into a fine puree. There should not be any lumps at all in the tofu puree. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350.































Begin by pouring a thin layer of sauce into a 9"x 13" pan and spread it out till it coats evenly, albeit thinly.














Begin laying down the lasagna noodles. I like to lay the noodles next to each other. Break off the noodles if they are too big for the pan. Use the broken pieces to fill in the nooks and crannies that might appear.














With a spatula, spread a thing layer of the tofu mixture on top of the noodles, covering all of the noodles.































Sprinkle a layer of cheese onto of the tofu.


Continue layering in this order: Sauce, Lasagna Noodle, Tofu, cheese....Sauce, Lasagna Noodle, Tofu, cheese.

I usually do 2 layers of Sauce, Lasagna Noodle, Tofu, cheese, and then my pan is full. You want your pan to be pretty much full with your layers of sauce, lasagna noodles, tofu and cheese.













When you think you are finished, make sure the final layer that is on top is a nice think layer of cheese. This layering method will help the lasagna to fuse together and not fall apart when you cut into it.














Cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil and put it into the oven. Try and tent the aluminum foil so it actually doesn't touch the sauce. Since your final layer is cheese, this shouldn't be too much of a problem. But bad things happen when tomato sauce come in contact with aluminum foil.












Bake for 1 hour at 350.

Allow the Lasagna to cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Delicious!

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