I love lasagne. It’s a bit of a faff, but worth it in my opinion. The silkiness of the lasagne combined with the creamy white sauce and the rich tomato sauce… Wonderful.
I make a pretty mean meat lasagne, using half pork mince and half beef mince with a handful of olives chucked in – maybe I’ll share that another day, but today I’m going to give you my recipe for a vegetable lasagne full of colour. It has red peppers and tomatoes, orange sweet potatoes, dark green spinach and creamy white beans. I tend to use cannellini but butter beans would work well too.
I put a layer of my cheesy miso sauce on the top instead of a traditional white sauce and cheese combination, but you could make slightly more white sauce and use that instead, topping with a vegan cheese if you like (Bute Island is my favourite – which is Sainsbury’s and Tesco’s own brand if you’re in the UK).
Serves 4
Ingredients:
For the tomato sauce:
Olive oil, for frying
1 red onion, finely diced
1 medium sweet potato, chopped into chunks about the same size as the beans
1 red pepper, cut into bean-sized chunks
1 28oz tin of diced tomatoes (or 2 400g tins in the UK)
1-2 tbsp tomato purée
A splash of balsamic vinegar
1/2 28oz tin of cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (save the aquafaba to use as an egg replacer in another recipe – it keeps for about 3 or 4 days in the fridge)
100g frozen spinach, defrosted and the water squeezed out
1 1/2 tsp dried basil
For the white sauce:
30g vegan butter or olive oil
60g rice flour
550ml almond milk
For the lasagne:
1 packet of gluten-free lasagne (I use Catelli)
1 batch cheesy miso sauce (optional)
Method:
Steam the sweet potato until just tender – you don’t want it to get mushy.
Preheat the oven to 190ºc/375ºF.
Meanwhile, heat a large saute pan or sauce pan over a medium heat and add the olive oil. Once the oil is hot, fry the onion over a medium-low heat until the onion is soft and translucent.
Add the pepper and fry for a few more minutes until soft.
Add the tomatoes, tomato purée and balsamic vinegar. Turn up the heat and bring to a boil, let the mixture reduce for a few minutes before adding the spinach, beans and sweet potato and basil. Mix everything together and remove from the heat.
While the tomato sauce is cooking, make the white sauce.
Add the butter or oil to a medium saucepan and melt over a medium-low heat. Once melted, stir in the rice flour and add the milk a little at a time, stirring well with a wooden spoon after each addition.
Once about half of the milk has been incorporated, you can add larger amounts and whisk with a balloon whisk after each addition. Once all the milk has been added, turn up the heat to medium and whisk continuously until the mixture starts to thicken. Once it starts to get thick, turn the heat right down, add salt and pepper and leave it to cook for five minutes, whisking occasionally.
If using, make a batch of cheesy miso sauce.
To assemble, spoon a thin layer of tomato sauce on to the base of a baking dish, followed by a layer of lasagne sheets and a layer of white sauce. Repeat until all of the tomato sauce has been used. For the final layer, put a thick layer of cheesy miso sauce or white sauce topped with vegan cheese.
Put the baking dish in the pre-heated oven for 45 minutes.
If you are not topping the lasagne with vegan cheese, cover the baking dish with a lid or foil for the first 30 minutes of cooking time, then remove the lid and cook uncovered for a further 15 minutes.
The Mulberry Bush 