January 23, 2013

SBD Vegetable Lasagna Recipe

My favorite meal of all time is Lasagna. Actually, I love anything Italian. It seems like whenever it comes to anything Italian my internal conversation goes something like this:

Red Sauce? Good.
Pasta? Good.
Cheese? Good.
Meat/Sausage? Even better.

Hahaha!

Something along the lines of Joey eating the triflle in this clip from freinds...


Haha! I love Friends.

Anyways, out of all the Italian meals, lasagna is my favorite and I can always count on blowing my diet if there is lasagna within sight. Since this is the case, I went out and looked at all my cookbooks and came across the South Beach Diet’s version of vegetable lasagna. I've made this a few times and with each time I feel the recipe gets better and better.  I have made some modifications to the original recipe because I wanted more zucchini in the lasagna as well as oregano in the ricotta cheese. Here is my version:

Ingredients:
  • 9 whole wheat lasagna noodles, cooked
  • 2 zucchinis, chopped
  • 1 tbsp. olive oil
  • 2 C. part-skim ricotta cheese
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tbls. dried basil
  • 1 tbls. dried oregano
  • ½ tsp. salt
  • ¼ tsp. pepper
  • 1 10oz. package of frozen spinach, thawed and drained
  • ¼ C. parmesan cheese, grated
  • 1 C. mozzarella cheese, shredded
  • 24 oz. spaghetti sauce of choice (I used Tomato Basil Classico Brand).

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spray a 9x13 glass casserole dish with cooking oil.

In a sauté pan, heat olive oil and sauté sliced zucchini for 5 minutes. You don’t want it too tender because it tends to lose its moisture when over cooked.

In a large bowl, place ricotta cheese, egg, dried basil, dried oregano, salt and pepper and mix until well blended.

Begin assembling your lasagna by placing 3 of the lasagna noodles into the casserole dish.  Next, cover your pasta with a 1/3 of your spaghetti sauce. Layer ½ of the ricotta cheese mixture onto your sauce followed by ½ of the spinach and ½ of the zucchini. Sprinkle ½ of the parmesan cheese on top. Continue the above sequence with the remaining ingredients (starting with the lasagna noodles). Cover the last layer of noodles with the remaining 1/3 of the pasta sauce. Finish by topping the lasagna with the mozzarella cheese.

Cover the casserole dish with foil and bake for 25 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 20 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool for at least 10 minutes.

I like to serve the final product with a simple salad. When you are all done the lasagna looks like this: