Delicious and Nutritious

Last night my sister and I tried a recipe we’ve wanted to try for a while. You can see a picture of it on my Instagram (username: stepheranne), but I thought I’d take this opportunity to share the recipe with you.

It’s basically just vegan lasagna, but the actual name of the recipe is “Raise-the-Roof Sweet Potato-Vegetable Lasagna” by Rip Esselstyn of the Engine 2 Diet. It can be found in the book Forks over Knives by Gene Stone, which features the research of Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr.

Ingredients:

1 onion, chopped

1 small head of garlic, all cloves chopped or pressed

8 ounces mushrooms, sliced

1 head broccoli, chopped

2 carrots, chopped

2 red bell peppers, seeded and chopped

1 can corn, rinsed and drained

1 package firm tofu

½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon basil

1 teaspoon rosemary

2 jars pasta sauce (kinds with minimal or no added oil)

2 boxes whole-grain lasagna noodles

16 ounces frozen spinach, thawed and drained

2 sweet potatoes, cooked and mashed

6 Roma tomatoes, sliced thin

1 cup raw cashews, ground

Directions:

1.     Preheat oven to 400°F.  Water sauté the onion and garlic on high heat for 3 minutes in a wok or nonstick pan. Add the mushrooms and cook until the onions are limp and the mushrooms give up their liquid. Remove them to a large bowl with a slotted spoon. Reserve the mushroom liquid in the pan.  Water sauté the broccoli and carrots for 5 minutes and add to the mushroom bowl. Sauté the peppers and corn until just beginning to soften. Add them to the vegetable bowl. Drain the tofu by wrapping in paper towels. Break it up directly in the towel and mix into the vegetable bowl. Add spices to the vegetable bowl and combine.

2.    Cover the bottom of a 9 x 13-inch casserole dish/pan with a layer of sauce. Add a layer of noodles. Cover the noodles with sauce. This way the noodles cook in the oven, saving time and energy. Spread the vegetable mixture over the sauced noodles. Cover with a layer of noodles and another dressing of sauce. Add the spinach to the second layer of sauced noodles. Cover the spinach with the mashed sweet potatoes. Add the final layer of noodles and a last topping of sauce. Cover the lasagna with thinly sliced Roma tomatoes.

3.    Cover with foil and bake in the oven for 45 minutes. Remove the foil, sprinkle with the cashews, and return to the oven for 15 minutes. Let sit for 15 minutes before serving.

Now we did a few things differently.  We didn’t add the corn because we forgot we used the last of what we had last week.  We also only had one jar of pasta sauce and it could have used more, so the recommended 2 jars is best. The sweet potatoes we didn’t have cooked quite well enough to mash them like we should have, but it wasn’t bad. However instead of the sweet potatoes having their own layer, we mixed it in with the rest of the vegetable mix.  The onions we basically minced instead of chopped and cooked a little longer with the garlic and mushrooms than the recipe calls for, but the flavors really came out well.  We also used fresh spinach instead of frozen and thawed/drained.

I would recommend cooking the sweet potatoes first to ensure they’re cooked well enough and can cool a bit before mashing them so that you don’t burn your hands like we did (haha!)  I would also recommend doing all of your chopping and cutting before you start any of the cooking. We were kind of chopping as we went and ended up rushing some of the steps as a result.  We also didn’t use quite all of the ground cashews, but now we have some for next time.  Also, you may not need quite so many tomatoes depending on how much you want since they just go on the top of the lasagna.  We only used 2 or 3.

The finished product was delicious! It’s a recipe we will definitely be doing again at some point and may even try different variations down the road. It does take time to make and is helpful when you aren’t doing it by yourself, but it’s definitely worth it.

Enjoy!