Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Lasagna and Caesar Salad


After seeing a picture of Matt's lasagna over on his blog "My Veggie Kitchen," I had to try it. It looked so saucy and amazing. Oh, and it was! I used his Bechamel replacement for cheese instead of grated vegan cheese. I was a little afraid because it was very liquidy when I poured it on, but as you can see above it turned out really nice and firmed up well.

I used no-boil noodles and it worked out great. I also added some extra spinach and garlic and used crushed fire-roasted tomatoes in lieu of diced because that's what I happened to have in the cupboard. This is by far my favorite recipe for vegan lasagna yet. It had a lot of sauce, which I like. I'm also not a fan of a lot of the mock meats, some other recipes call for the ground round or crumbles and those have an off flavor to me that I'm not fond of.


I served this with Caesar salad and took the opportunity to make my own croutons, something I've never done before. For the dressing I used the recipe from reFresh; it's a lot less complicated and uses less oil than most other recipes I've seen. We've made it before and it's incredibly good. It also lasts a while, so it can be stored in a resealable container and use it again (which is good because it makes a lot). The croutons were roasted garlic and came from Veganomicon. I just roasted the garlic while the lasagna was baking. Then I cut up the bread and after about 25 minutes pulled out the garlic. I made the oil mix for the croutons, mixed them up, then put them in the oven to cook while the lasagna was finishing up. While the lasagna cooled I had a chance to put get the lettuce ready for the salad, then the croutons were done. When we make Caesar salad we like to have the lettuce and croutons coated in the dressing, so we put everything in a bowl with a lid, shake it up, then serve. Yum!



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