I can honestly say that I have never eaten lasagna before. My mother didn’t cook anything like that, and my grandmother only knew how to make soup, stew and doughnuts. And in the age of Google, I didn’t have the curiosity to learn how to do it until now, when, seized by a ferocious enthusiasm for cooking, I started documenting myself. Of course I couldn’t find a gluten-free and dairy-free lasagna, so I invented a vegetarian version for starters, with two types of vegetable cheese and sheets made by my own hands. It turned out to be the best lasagna I’ve ever eaten.
Ingredients
For the cream cheese:
- 100 grams of almonds soaked for 12 hours
- 2 tablespoons of sesame seeds
- One tablespoon of hemp seeds
- 200 grams of water
- A grated teaspoon of salt
- 2 tablespoons of yogurt starter
For sheets:
- 2 eggs
- One tablespoon (7-8 grams) of psyllium bran
- 2 tablespoons of tapioca starch
- 150 grams of millet flour
- A pinch of salt
- Tapioca starch for spreading the sheet
For the filling:
- 3 carrots
- A large bell pepper
- A piece of leek
- A large piece of zucchini
- 2 cloves of garlic
- A teaspoon of salt
- A teaspoon of oregano
- ½ teaspoon ground pepper
Above we put:
- 200 grams of chickpea cheese
Method of preparation
We start with the cream cheese. Most of the lasagna recipes on Romanian websites use bechamel sauce with flour fried in a lot of butter, it makes my liver hurts just thinking about this sauce. The mixture of bechamel, 3 kinds of cheese, meat, eggs and boiled dough make the classic lasagna an unhealthy bomb. I thought of replacing the sauce and cheese with a slightly fermented vegetable cheese sauce, which gives a good taste and soaks up the vegetables nicely. So we need to prepare this cream 6 hours before and leave it at room temperature. We mix the soaked almonds, peeled and washed well, the seeds, salt and water in the blender until we get a thin paste. We pour it into a ceramic or glass bowl, add the yogurt starter and mix well. If we don’t have yogurt starter, it also works with 2 tablespoons of lemon juice or a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar. We cover with a napkin and we do our things for 6 hours.
Next are the sheets. It’s pretty simple, it’s noodle dough. When I first made noodles, about 6 years ago, I thought it was a wonderful thing. As I said, it’s simple: soak the psyllium bran in a bowl with 50 grams of water. In another larger bowl, break the eggs, mix them well with a fork, add the soaked bran, salt and the 2 tablespoons of tapioca starch and mix until the psyllium lumps break apart. Then we add the millet flour, spoon by spoon, until we get a sticky and elastic dough. We dust the work surface with tapioca starch and start rolling out the 5 mm thin dough and cut out rectangles about 15 by 20 cm. I got 10 sheets. We put them aside too.
The filling. Clean and cut the vegetables and cook them in 3-4 tablespoons of coconut oil or duck fat. We put a few spoons of water, then the lid and leave for a few minutes, then crush the garlic on top, salt, pepper and oregano and let it rest while we put a pot of salted water to boil. When it starts to boil, put the dough sheets inside and when they rise to the surface (in about 2 minutes), remove them with a spatula and throw them into another saucepan with cold water. Now we pour half of the cream cheese (which has become slightly sour) over the vegetables, mix well and start placing the layers.
I used a cake silicone pan in which I got exactly 2 sheets for one layer. We put 2 spoons of the cream cheese on the bottom of the pan, then a layer of sheets, one of vegetables, repeat, in total 3 layers of vegetables and 4 of sheets, that is, the last layer is sheets. Put the rest of the cream cheese on top. We finish apotheotically with a layer of grated chickpea cheese, put 2 tablespoons of water on the edges and put it in the oven heated to 180 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes. I got 4 portions of excellent veggie lasagna, filling, light and tasty. A wonder.
