My First Easy Cheese/Meat-free Lasagna

Some recipes are waiting and waiting for you to be prepared and you still avoid doing it because not brave enough to just go on. It´s like that famous door that waits for you to be open and you spend the rest of your life in the front of it waiting someone to open up for you. 

No more waiting for me! Including in terms of recipe testing. When I want to do something and wish for it, I know now that everything is up to just me, the one and only in charge to make it happen.

Lasagna was one of those meals hard to be done at home. Not sure what was the psychological blockage about, but it was like this for a long time, until this Friday when I just put together all the ingredients and finally made it. 

The most important part of the preparation has to do with the cheese filling, as you need some experience in order to properly know what goes better for a tasty result. For instance, I´ve used ricotta chese, but I bet a cottage cheese or some labne with a less neutral consistency would have bring a stronger salty taste. Otherwise, it was not only a great fulfilling meal exprience for the main Shabbes meal, but also a cool kitchen project developed for and together with my son who helped intensively with the filling of the sheets. 

Next on the agenda is a meaty lasagna for whom I am trying to figure out the right ingredients right now.

Ingredients

125 gr mascarpone
2 beaten eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
125 gr. shredded yellow cheese
6 non baked Barilla lasagna sheets
1/4 red pepper, finelly minced
125 ml. tomato sauce, at room temperature
fresh dill, on taste - alternatively, you can use parsley
4 gloves garlic, finelly minced

Directions

In a bowl mix well the cheeses, the eggs, the salt, the dill and the garlic. Keep some cheese for the top of the lasagna. Pour the tomato sauce in a different bowl.

On a sheet of lasagna, add the tomato and the cheese filling. For the cheese filling, we used a cooking brush. Repeat the operation until you are on the last sheet. Add the rest of the tomato sauce - preferably have some extra to let the lasagna cook in its own sauce. On the last sheet, add the extra cheese and eventually some additional tomato layer. 

What I really liked about preparing this lasagna is that I figure out how many options you have for playing with ingredients, including when you are not mixing meat and cheese. You have a lot of options on the veggies side, for instance, by adding slices of fresh tomatoes, or aubergines, or onions or champignons, or corn, or even some fried potatoes - but it looks rather like a mousaka that I will try as well. 

In my variant of lasagna, there is no oil used and I loved it this way, but you can also add the oil if you want a greasy final result. A big lover of spices, this time I prefer to not add anything, but some oregano or za´atar goes good as well. 

For more tastier results, labne instead of ricotta and Greek cheese instead of the mozarella could help.

Let it heat in the oven at 250C. Serve it fresh, at the room temperature!

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Cooking time: 45 minutes

Bon Appétit!