Easy Spinach Lasagna with Julie Sauce

It seems a bit shameless to call this a “recipe,” because it’s mostly assembling, putting together ingredients with bits and pieces of love and memory. But this lasagna recipe includes a new twist for me, something I’ll call “Julie Sauce.” Read on.

Normally, I make Mama Carbone’s marinara for pretty much any Italian dish that calls for a red sauce; the recipe is here. This recipe uses a tomato sauce (gravy, if you prefer) that is so easy you’ll swear it won’t be any good – until you make it.

My good friend and a total cooking genius, Julie Greenberg, relayed this sauce recipe and I watched her a bit skeptically while she made it during Nashville’s recent record ice storm. Forever, it will mean warmth and comfort to me, as the products of her kitchen always do.

Julie’s Sauce
Two large cans roma tomatoes
Half a large, yellow onion
Half a stick of butter
Salt to taste

Put the ingredients in a sauce pan; the entire half of onion goes in intact. Bring to bubbling, then turn down and simmer for 30 minutes. Remove onion. It’s done. That’s it. You can use whole or crushed tomatoes and, if you really like the onion, you can take it out, puree it, and add it back to the sauce. Try it both ways.

Now, on to the lasagna…

No-bake lasagna noodles
Pre-washed baby spinach
Roasted head of garlic
Fresh parsley
16 oz. ricotta cheese
1 egg
sliced mushrooms
finely grated parmesan
grated mozzarella
shaved parmesan for garnish
salt and coarsely ground black pepper to taste

Beat the egg and ricotta well; set aside. In a deep baking pan, start with a layer of sauce, add a layer of noodles, then a layer of the ricotta mixture. After that, you can add mushrooms or spinach, and parsley in any order you want. Just be sure that each layer contains sauce, lasagna noodles, and ricotta, with mozzarella and parmesan.

Here are some progressive pictures of the assembly, showing ingredients added (left to right in each shot) to layers. You do it your way.

That’s the roasted garlic you see in the image above.

There you have it, the finished lasagna! Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes covered with foil, then remove foil and bake a few more minutes until the top layer of mozzarella is bubbly and beginning to brown just a little. Serve with more Julie Sauce, garnished with shaved parmesan.

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Mexican Bean Salad with Blackened Sweet Potatoes

Here’s a summery, crunchy, spicy salad that is so easy to make. First, gather your ingredients:

One can black beans, drained and rinsed
Cooked white rice
Kernals of corn (fresh is best), two ears
Red and green bell pepper, chopped
Poblano peppers, chopped finely (to taste)
Chopped fresh tomato
Chopped red onion
Sweet potato
Salsa ~ we like Arriba’s chipotle roasted pepper
Lime juice
Chile powder
Hot red pepper
Garlic powder
Chopped cilantro to taste

The only real cooking in this recipe is for the sweet potato and the corn, and both can be done in the microwave.

Microwave the potato, peel it, cut it into chunks. Heat a non-stick skilled to high, then (after it is good and hot) put a little vegetable oil. Throw in the sweet potato, sprinkle with garlic powder and chili powder, and squirt some lime juice. Toss the potato chunks quickly while they blacken. Set aside to cool.

Microwave the corn in the shuck for 4 minutes; it’s easy to remove the shuck and silks. Let it cool and cut off the kernals.

Toss everything. Taste it to see if you want to add salt; you probably don’t need any. This is a gluten-free recipe, as long as you serve it with gluten-free corn chips.

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Lemony Parmesan Orzo Salad

This is a twist on all those great orzo salad recipes out there. Yours may be different; put in the things you like most from summer’s bounty.

Gather your ingredients:

dried orzo (I used one cup dry for two people and it was more than enough for a main dish)
extra virgin olive oil
grated good parmesan
cucumber, peeled and chopped
home-grown tomato, seeds and gooshy stuff removed, chopped
fresh Italian flat-leaf parsley, chopped
garlic powder
salt and coarsely ground black pepper
lemon juice
crumbled feta cheese
pitted greek olives

Cook the orzo according to package directions, drain, put in large bowl; drizzle some olive oil (not too much, just enough to coat the pasta) and put in a generous amount of grated parmesan. Let cool while you do the rest.

Chop the tomatoes, cucumbers and parsley and put them in a bowl with the lemon juice (sorry, you know I don’t measure anything) and a sprinkling of garlic powder to taste. When the pasta/parmesan mixture is room temperature, fold the veggie mixture into it. Salt and black pepper to taste. Chill. Before serving, add crumbled feta and garnish with pitted greek olives. Serve with a good, stout bread and olive oil with parmesan and pepper.

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Hearty Lentil Soup

When I first became vegetarian, soup was one of the first things I missed. Most soups that seemed fit to eat were made with stock. So, unless you ate tomato soup, you couldn’t be sure there were no animal products in the pot. As time went on, I learned to make soups with vegetable stock, but they were never as rich and complex as their, um, full-bodied cousins. Not until my friend and Soup Maven Julie Greenberg schooled me.

It starts with a mirepoix, that magic mixture of chopped celery, onion and carrots, sauteed in butter or oil. Heat a big soup pot on medium-high, then add oil or butter (butter burns more quickly, so watch it) and when that is hot, add the diced mirepoix. Stir and saute for 5 minutes or so, until the veggies are a little wilted. Add 2 quarts of vegetarian stock, and bring to a slow, rolling boil. Add a bag of dried lentils, some chopped garlic, and a half-teaspoon of Indian Five Spice, and simmer for about 30 minutes until the lentils are soft.

At this point, the lentil soup is ready to eat, served with cheese toast as shown or a pan of soft, fluffy, perfect cornbread. But if you want to kick it up a notch, stir in a jar of tika masala or korma sauce as “background.” People will think you slaved over this exotic blend of a soup.

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It don’t matter.

To get to our favorite beach in the Florida Panhandle, my husband and I drive the entire length of the great state of Alabama. In Clanton, just a wide spot in the road, there’s an eatery called the It Don’t Matter Restaurant. It looks like your basic meat-and-three; we’ve never eaten there because, as vegetarians, the Deep South is a mine field for us. But the place is always packed. Where else would you eat in Clanton, Alabama, you ask? Well, it don’t matter because there isn’t anyplace else.

As I’ve said many times on this blog, I don’t like to measure. I am the spawn of a long line of a-pinch-and-a-handful cooks, so that’s how I roll. One recipe that’s quickly becoming a favorite is what I call Mexican Lasagna. It’s different every time I make it, depending on what’s in the crisper. (If they were honest, they’d call it the Good Intentions Bin.) Click here for more about that. Next time, I’m going to try adding the Boca Soy Crumbles, which I use in my vegan chili recipe, because they are a very credible and tasty protein source.

And don’t bother measuring, because…you guessed it. It don’t matter.

P.S. The picture that goes with this post is from the last time I made it, before it went into the oven. Yours will look different.

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Mexican Lasagna

I’ve seen recipes for various layered Mexican dishes and decided I didn’t really need a recipe. Since I keep flour tortillas, black beans, canned corn, cheeses, cilantro and different peppers all the time, I just made a run through the fridge and pantry, started chopping, and gathered all the ingredients I had, before starting to layer them into some semblance of a lasagna. Something new I had just bought, that really made this special, is a chipotle salsa from Frontera. Let’s get started. Heat the oven to 350 and coat a loaf-size glass baking dish with oil; just a few drops on a paper towel, wipe the dish, and you’re ready. (You can make a larger version in a full-size lasagna pan. The pictures you will see here are for a loaf-size pan; I don’t measure anything if I can help it.)

Gather flour tortillas, grated mozzarella and cheddar cheeses, Frontera chipotle salsa, garlic powder, and chile powder.

Drain one can each of black beans, niblet corn, and fire-roasted tomato bits. Squash the tomato bits in a bowl with a potato masher, and strain again. Chop your veggies – red onion, scallion tops and ends, poblano peppers, roma tomatos, whatever you have – and remove the stems from a handful of fresh cilantro.

Begin layering with some of the strained fire-roasted tomatoes:

Next, add cut-up flour tortillas as you would lasagna noodles:

Next, add a layer of black beans and corn:

Then, add mozzarella cheese and continue to layer veggies, cilantro, tomatoes, chipotle salsa (one layer of dollops of this salsa is probably enough, as it is very hot), one more layer of tortillas, and a final layer of cheese.

Bake covered with tin foil for 50 minutes at 350, remove tin foil, and bake for 15 more minutes. Before serving, let the lasagna rest for 20 minutes. Slice into sections, remove carefully with a spatula (it’s going to be a bit gooshy). Top with a dollop of sour cream and garnish with some of the chopped scallions.

Bonus: Since I don’t measure, I ended up with some miscellaneous chopped ingredients after assembling this mexican lasagna. So, I threw them in a bowl, added just a little oil, red wine vinegar, lime juice and garlic powder and BAM! (sorry, Emeril) I have a corn-and-bean salad.

Toss in some chopped fresh avocado before serving with corn chips.

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Thai Noodles with Brussels Sprouts

Every so often, I come up with a vegan recipe by accident. Normally, I’ll eat a piece of cheese as big as my head. Eggs provide some extra protein, and I crave fish. Thus…ovo-lacto-pesco. For the following dish, I just happened to have the ingredients on hand, cooked them up, and then decided it would be just as good cold as hot. It was. Here’s what you need and, as usual, the proportions are up to you according to your taste and to what you have calling to you from the crisper.

linguine, or some kind of Asian noodle
brussels sprouts
red bell pepper
mushrooms
poblano pepper, or something hotter if you like
garlic clove, minced
hot red pepper flakes
lemon juice
tamari or soy sauce
lemon juice
vegetable oil
fresh cilantro
beer
brown sugar or molasses
toasted sesame seed

Cook the noodles to al dente, drain, set aside. Chop the veggies.

Cut off the hard ends of the brussels sprouts and cut a deep “X” in the end of each one. Parboil for 7 minutes, drain, dunk in cold water, and drain again after they have cooled. Cut  each sprout in half lengthwise and set aside.

Heat a skillet to medium-high and add a little vegetable oil. Quickly saute the veggies with hot red paper flakes, adding a little lime juice and a lot of tamari or soy sauce, as well as about a half a beer. (Don’t waste the other half; drink it.) Throw in the minced garlic and the sugar, turn the heat down to medium, and let the liquid thicken just a little.

Pour off the veggie mixture into a bowl.

While the skillet is still hot and has a little of the moisture left in it, turn the heat back up to medium high, throw in the brussels sprout halves, and quickly char them a bit. Add them to the bowl with the veggies. Add some sesame seeds if you want.

After the veggie mixture has cooled, pour it over the noodles, toss, and put in the fridge. Before serving, add lots of fresh cilantro (stems removed).

Serve, and enjoy.

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