This is “less lasagna” because it has less of the two things that scare us away from lasagna: fat and work! It also takes less time in the oven than a conventional lasagna because it’s baked in loaf pans. It is great made as a vegetarian dish or you can add cooked, crumbled sausage to the sauce, but either way it’s pretty good.
For the cheese blend, I like to use my food processor. If you have never seen dry curd cottage cheese, it’s very different from the regular kind. It is a lot like ricotta, but doesn’t have as much sodium, stabilizers or the weird after taste. When I bought it here in the Midwest at Meijer, it was tucked away by the dips and tubs of ready-made guacamole in the dairy cooler.
I like dried herbs in Lasagna: the fresh ones are lost in the complex flavors.
Less Lasagna
Makes 10-12 servings
DeBoles Gluten Free “no-boil” Rice Lasagna Noodles: (1) 10 oz box
Low Fat Dry Curd Cottage Cheese: (1) 1# container (or the the closest package to 1#)
Egg White Substitute: 1/2 cup- or 3 egg whites
Shredded Parmesan Cheese: 1 cup (pre-shredded okay: the green cardboard can is not)
Part Skim or 2% Mozzarella Cheese 1 cup
Onion, peeled: 1/2 of a baseball sized onion, roughly chopped
Garlic, 2 large cloves, peeled- remove if there is a green sprout in clove
Frozen spinach: 12-16 oz, thawed and drained- vary amount according to taste
Sliced Mushrooms, sauteed- 1 pound.
Jarred or canned homemade tomato sauce: about 1 1/2 to 2 quarts
Dried Basil and oregano
GF chicken- or- veggie base of you choice (optional): use about 1/2, by volume as you would to flavor broth.
Combine the cottage cheese, egg white substitute, parmesan, garlic, herbs and onion in the bowl of a food processor. If it doesn’t “spin” when you run it, add a little more egg white.
Spray 3 loaf pans with flour-less pan spray. Combine the base with the sauce, if you are using it. Layer sauce, mushrooms, spinach, cheese blend, more sauce, then noodles. You should have enough to repeat this twice in in each loaf pan. Top lightly with mozzarella cheese. I cover this and put it in the refrigerator overnight for the next day.
Bake at 350 degrees on a center rack until it is bubbly and golden on top: about 35 minutes: it should read 160 degrees on an instant read thermometer inserted in the center of the dish.
Each loaf pan will feed a family of four, if you have other sides, such as salad and dessert. If you freeze it, before baking, wrap it tightly around all sides. Bake uncovered, mostly still frozen, at 325: it will take about 50-60 minutes. Do not pre-heat your oven. Especially if you use glass loaf pans.
Chef Silly has has been quiet lately. My computer died, and I (finally) replaced it with shiny new one, and even set up the wireless router, all by myself.
What else have I been doing? I’ve set up online classrooms for the vocational classes that I teach, and I’m in the beginning stages of putting together a cooking series for another local college. Also, yesterday, I was the floor judge for a cooking competition. The prize was a scholarship to study in France.
It was a “Mystery Basket”, which means the competitors don’t know what they are going to be cooking before they arrive for the contest.
Eight students were chosen, and nobody backed out when they found out that I was the instructor accompanying them to Provence for two weeks in May.
Because I was not a tasting judge, I didn’t taste any of the students’ food; this event was not gluten-free.
Here’s a sampling of what some of the students did:
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