This recipe is great for throwing all veggies you have left over in your frig and making a flavorful delicious meal. If you have left over spinach, I would recommend not putting it in the sauce, rather putting it as a layer in the pan. If you have kale, I would put it in the sauce towards the end of cooking; since kale is a little more tough in texture (about 3 minutes).
The hidden flavor of the bell pepper, garlic, and onion, bring out an incredible taste to the lasagna. The great part about this recipe is that you can play around with the vegetables in your kitchen and still get a great flavor!
Please let me know if you try this recipe!
Ingredients:
2 tbl fresh parsley (minced)
1 yellow bell pepper
1 red bell pepper
½ white onion
3 garlic cloves (if they are small)
1 bag of frozen broccoli (12 ounces)
1 bundle of asparagus
1 jar of tomato sauce (24 ounces) or 2 jars (depends on how thick you want your sauce to be)
1-2 cups Vegetable broth (low sodium preferably)
1 egg (I use brown)
1 box of oven ready lasagna noodles
*Olive oil spray or canola (whatever you have)
Dairy:
1 ricotta cheese (15 ounce) (preferably low fat or reduced fat)
1 bag of mozzarella (8 ounce) or more (depends on how cheesy you like your lasagna)
*Parmesan cheese
Seasoning:
Salt, pepper
Directions:
Sauce:
Poor broccoli into a medium bowl and let sit in cold water. Let broccoli sit for about 5-10 minutes or until broccoli is semi-melted (usually when the broccoli doesn’t stick together anymore).
Rinse-well and cut asparagus into bite size of an inch (I don’t include the end, too-tough for me).
Place in water with broccoli.In a blender, pour 1 cup of vegetable broth, de-seed and rough chop yellow bell pepper and onion, garlic cloves, and then place in a blender. Blend until pureed.
In a large deep pan, pour red tomato sauce in pan. Use a little of the vegetable broth to get the remainder of the sauce out of the jar and poor remainder in the pan.
Poor blender mixture into pan.
Heat to medium low heat; partially cover.
Add broccoli and asparagus. Add the remainder of the vegetable broth of your liking (depends on how thick you like your lasagna).
Cook for about 5-7 minutes or until they are dente.
Remove from heat. Let sit uncovered for about 2-5 minutes or until room temperature.
Ricotta mixture
In a small bowl pour ricotta, crack egg, 2 tbl of parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, a pinch of fresh parsley, and then blend together until all ingredients are incorporated.
Place a side.
Lasagna
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
In a 13×3 pan (or something longer and deeper, depends on how many layers you want). Spray bottom of pan.
De-seed and vein the red bell pepper, cut red bell pepper in thin strips.
First, place tomato, broccoli, and asparagus mixture (just enough to cover the bottom, remember not to put too much you have other layers), next, place thin strips of bell pepper,next, take a spoon and scoop the ricotta mixture (no bigger than a table spoon) there should be a 7-10 scoops or so, next, mozzarella cheese, and then a little parmesan (then sprinkle the fresh parsley, salt and pepper), and lastly, the lasagna noodle (you may have to break some of the pieces so it fits exactly in the pan).
Repeat this step until you reach the top of the pan.
Cover with foil (On the last layer I spray a little more canola/ olive oil, so the cheese doesn’t stick too much to the foil).
Bake for 50 minutes.Remove foil increase heat to 375 or 400 cook for another 10-15 minutes or until golden.