Dr. Larue’s Most Favorite Vegetarian Lasagna Ever

Dr. Larue’s Most Favorite Vegetarian Lasagna Ever 

Serves 6-8

 

Dr. Larue’s Most Favorite Vegetarian Lasagna Ever 

I would love to tell you that this is a quick mid-week meal, but it is not. However, there are few dishes more freezer-friendly than lasagna, and I love a good one. This lasagna is truly exceptional. Your carnivores will not miss the meat in the mushroom-laden lasagna, and it makes a huge pan with leftovers that freeze beautifully to serve at the next mid-week meal in a rush!

Most of the lasagnas I’ve made fall in the American-style “ricotta/tomato sauce/mozzarella/ground meat” style and I never took to them, finding them both heavy and yet, still dry. I found my lasagna nirvana in the béchamel-ed variety, which managed to be light and almost delicate. One does not traditionally think of a white sauce with a lightweight meal, especially over pasta, but paired with salad this was surprisingly refreshing meal without making me feel like I must switch to my fat pants. This lasagna is a vegetarian take on the classic, creamy lasagna Bolognese. The meat is replaced with earthy shitake mushrooms and the noodles are not boiled before baking, so they are less mushy when they come out of the oven.

• 12 Tb unsalted butter
• 15 sun-dried tomatoes
• 1 shallot chopped
• 1 carrot chopped
• ½C flour
• 5 C milk
• 1 tsp ground nutmeg
• Salt and pepper
• 3 Tb olive oil
• 2 lbs. fresh mushrooms, shiitake or mix shiitake & cremini, stemmed & quartered
• ½ lb. fresh spinach, chopped
• 7 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 Tb chopped flat-leaf parsley
• 2 Tb chopped fresh oregano
• 1 Tb chopped fresh thyme
• 1 Tb chopped fresh rosemary
• 1 Tb tomato paste
• 5 C whole canned tomatoes, crushed
• 1 lb. lasagna noodles – no boil brand such as Barilla
• 2½ C grated grana padano (substitute would be Parmigiano-Reggiano)
• 2½ C grated fontina

Grease a 9” x 13” baking pan with 1 Tb butter. Cover dried tomatoes with 1 C boiling water and soak for 20 minutes. Drain tomatoes, chop and set aside.

Make the béchamel sauce by heating 8 Tb butter in a 4 qt saucepan over medium heat. Add shallots and carrots; cook 5 minutes. Add flour, mix thoroughly and cook 2 minutes. Whisk in milk; bring to a boil and reduce heat to medium-low to simmer, whisking, until thick, about 20-25 minutes. Add nutmeg and season to taste with salt and pepper.

 

Bechamel sauce

Meanwhile, heat olive oil and remaining 3 Tb butter in a 6 qt pot over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms; cook 10 minutes. Add softened, dried tomatoes, chopped spinach, garlic, parsley, oregano, thyme, rosemary and tomato paste. Cook all for 3 minutes. Add canned tomatoes and cook an additional 8-10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Set sauce aside.

Shitake mushrooms

Chopped Cremini mushrooms

Mushrooms with the greenery

Add the tomatoes  

Heat oven to 375-degree F. Spread 2 C tomato sauce in baking dish. Cover with a layer of noodles – just touching but not overlapping. Spread 1 C béchamel over top; sprinkle with ½ C of each cheese and 2 C tomato sauce. Repeat layering 2-3 more times. Top with remaining noodles, tomato sauce, béchamel, and cheeses. Bake covered with foil on a baking sheet for one hour. Remove foil; raise oven to 475-degree F. Bake until golden, about 15 minutes more.

With the cheese and ready for the oven

OK, a little messy....but so gooooood!

Let the lasagna rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serving. It should cool completely before tightly wrapping and freezing for a future wonderful comforting meal. One could add additional vegetables: other greens, such as kale, or thinly sliced zucchini, which had been previously salted for 15 minutes to draw out the excess water.

I know this can be time consuming but it is so worth the effort. You will not be disappointed.  This lasagna pairs well with multiple wines. As with all pastas you should pair the wine to the sauce – in this case a béchamel and mushroom filing. I would serve with Cabernet Sauvignon, Chianti – of course, Zinfandel, or a Merlot. Serve with a lightly dressed mixed green salad.  Sublime!! 

Bon Appetit

Larue

Peanut Butter Blossoms

Peanut Butter Blossoms

Makes 12 large

Peanut Butter Blossoms

I loooove peanut butter cookies.  I have shared this recipe for years – and continue to get requests. It dawned on me to post it on my blog for ALL to have and share. It is worth shouting about on rooftops.  Yes, that good. There are really very few potentially controversial ingredients in the basic peanut butter cookie formula.

Your source of fat should be butter, not shortening. Butter will make your cookies taste, em, duh….buttery! Shortening will make them taste suspiciously vacant, flavorless in fact. Yes, shortening yields chewier cookies than butter does, because butter contains water and shortening does not. But you can make up for butter’s crisping tendencies by using brown sugar instead of white. (In the dough, that is; you will coat your cookies in white sugar). The moisture content of brown sugar results in soft, chewy, doughy cookies every time. Plus, its dark molasses flavor nicely complements the roasted notes of the peanut butter.

All you need for Peanut Butter Blossoms

Before baking you will dip your lumps of dough in sugar before baking.  This should really be SOP for more cookie recipes: It adds a pleasant sheen and a delicate crunch to the surface of the finished cookie – not to mention the sweet wallop for the taste buds. However, it is especially nice counterpoint to this dough, which is mellow rather than aggressively sweet on its own.

• 1¾ C all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ C butter
• ½ C creamy peanut butter
• ½ C light brown sugar
• ½ C granulated sugar + more for rolling
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla paste or extract
• Small Reese’s peanut butter cups, chocolate kisses – optional (but my husband says required!)

Heat oven to 350 degree F. Sift together flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside. Cream butter in mixer, slowly add peanut butter and both sugars. Mix well.  Add 1 egg and vanilla.  Beat well. Blend in dry ingredients gradually.

Mmmm....nice and creamy

Shape the dough into balls. Roll balls in granulated sugar and place on greased, or parchment lined, cookie sheet.  Put in oven and bake until lightly browned: approximately 8 minutes for small cookies, 10 minutes for larger.

Dough balls coated in sugar

The traditional peanut butter cookie has a crosshatched appearance….the indenting the top of each ball of cookie dough with the bottom side of a fork’s tines right after you pull them from the oven. Sometime in the 1930’s such marks became the international sign for “This is a Peanut Butter Cookie”. It is not required if you want to scoff at tradition and blaze your own path.  Personally, we think more goodliness is even better. 

How to add – is where the diversion lies.  Some prefer more peanut butter taste and squish in a small Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup – others prefer the Hershey kiss variety.  In either case, bake the cookie rounds, immediately after baking, press a Hershey’s kiss (or Reese’s) into the center of each one and gently flatten it slightly thereby creating a seal between chocolate and cookie. I return them to the oven for 2-3 minutes.

Such Hershey’s-kissed confections are known as “Peanut Butter Blossoms”. Now who knew that!

Love, love these treasures….

Larue

Puy Lentils & Burnt Eggplant

Puy Lentils & Burnt Eggplant 

Serves: 4

Puy Lentils & Burnt Eggplant

Imagine that….burning eggplants on purpose!  I have a collection of Middle Eastern cookbooks as well an abundance of eggplants in my garden. Burnt eggplants just kept popping up wherever I looked. I now know why. They are amazing. And how can you go wrong and overcook if it must be burnt to get where you want!

It turns out that a charred eggplant behaves much the same as a charred pepper: after collapsing, it releases an astonishing amount of liquid and its flesh gently pulls from its blistered skin. And peeling a charred eggplant is no different than peeling a charred pepper — if you are patient with both the blackening and the cooling, the process is easy. This technique produces creaminess without the help of oil, and the charring imparts a nice smokiness to the eggplant’s flesh. Burning the eggplant makes a huge difference in the flavor.

 

Eggplant from our garden

Lentils, like other legumes, are low in fat and high in protein and fiber, but they have the added advantage of cooking quickly. They have a mild, often earthy flavor. The best, most delicate varieties are the peppery French green lentils. Their unique flavor is attributed to the volcanic soil where they grow, sans fertilizer, which gives them their fine, mineral-rich taste. The climate in the Auvergne also contributes to their unique texture: a lack of humidity and abundant sunshine, courtesy of the surrounding mountains and volcanic deposits, ensures that the lentils dry on the plant all by themselves. Consequently, they have less starch so do not get all mushy and muddy when cooked.

 

Some of the good stuff going in this dish!

This recipe combines these two main ingredients in a new, exciting and flavorful way. It works as an entrée or a robust, healthy side dish.

• 2 medium globe eggplants
• 2 Tb high quality red wine vinegar (divided)
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 C small dark lentils such as du Puy or Castelluccio, rinsed
• 2 carrots, peeled
• 2 celery stalks
• 1 bay leaf
• 3 sprigs of thyme
• ½ white onion
• 3-4 Tb extra-virgin olive oil plus extra for finish
• 15-20 cherry tomatoes, halved
• ½ tsp brown sugar
• 1½ Tb chopped parsley
• ½ Tb chopped dill
• 1½ Tb chopped cilantro
• 2-3 Tb crème fraiche or plain Greek yogurt 

And now the fun begins: burning the eggplants. After testing this three different ways, rather than give just one – I thought options would be best as they all have their pros and cons. In all cases, pierce the eggplants with a sharp knife before beginning in order to avoid a potential eggplant explosion as it heats! :-)

The quickest, and messiest, is to cook the eggplants on a gas stovetop. Start by lining the area around the selected burner with foil to protect and ease cleanup. Put the eggplants directly on two moderate flames and roast for 12-15 minutes, turning frequently with metal tongs, until the skin is burnt all over. The flesh will be soft and smoky. Alternatively, one could put the eggplants on a foil-lined container and under a hot broiler. Be certain to watch carefully and turn them a few times. This will take longer – up to an hour. Lastly, one could put the eggplants directly over a flame at the BBQ in a fashion similar to gas stovetop. Try all three or choose your favorite.

Burnt eggplant

Remove the eggplants from the heat. Cut a slit down the center and scoop out the flesh into a colander, avoiding the black skin. Leave to drain for 15-30 minutes. After draining, season with salt, pepper and ½ Tb red wine vinegar.

Eggplant guts!

While eggplants are broiling, place the rinsed lentils in a medium saucepan. Cut 1 carrot and ½ celery stalk into large chunks adding them to lentils. Add bay leaf, thyme and onion half, cover with plenty of water and bring to a boil. Simmer on low heat for up to 25 min, or until the lentils are tender, skimming away froth from the surface sporadically. Drain lentils and remove carrot, celery, onion, bay leaf and thyme sprigs. Transfer to serving bowl. Add rest of vinegar, 2 Tb olive oil and plenty of salt and pepper; stir and set aside to keep warm.

Draining the lentils

Heat oven to 275 degree F. Cut remaining carrot and celery into ½” dice and mix with tomatoes, 1-2 Tb olive oil, sugar and salt. Spread in an ovenproof dish and cook in the oven for about 25 minutes, or until carrot is tender but still firm.

The great veggies that go into the final dish

How it looks when mixed together

Add cooked vegetables to the warm lentils, followed by the chopped herbs: parsley, dill and cilantro, and stir gently. Taste and adjust seasoning. To serve, spoon the lentils onto serving plates. Pile some eggplant in the center of each portion and top it with a scoop of crème fraiche or yogurt. Finish with a drizzle of your best olive oil. 

Now sit back and enjoy! This is both exceedingly healthy, was a new way to cook my wonderful garden eggplants and unique both in presentation and flavor. Give it a try. I did. Three times! Both the lentils and the burnt eggplant freeze beautifully if you get over exuberant in your cooking....

Larue

If looking for other options for your eggplants, see the additional recipes on my blog:

http://cookingwithlarue.blogspot.com/2013/01/spinach-lentil-feta-salad-with-sour.html Jan. 22, 2013

http://cookingwithlarue.blogspot.com/2012/10/curried-chickpea-lentil-and-swiss-chard.html Oct. 22, 2012

http://cookingwithlarue.blogspot.com/2013/09/sunchoke-soup-with-apples-lentils.html

Sept. 23, 2013

Adapted from “Plenty” by Yotam Ottolenghi