I designed this recipe to use up some ingredients lurking in the fridge and pantry. It turned out looking pretty fancy. I thought it tasted pretty much the same as non-vegan lasagna, but my sweetie pie disagreed. I realized this was probably because I was used to non-fat ricotta cheese. Either way, it’s very tasty and looks impressive. I’m also proud of the fact that there’s 3 different types of vegan cheese in this dish, all made from scratch.
Ingredients
5 whole-wheat lasagna noodles (cooked to al dente)
2 teaspoons olive oil
2 small zucchinis, chopped
1/4 teaspoon salt
7.5 oz. hemp ricotta cheese
¼ onion, finely diced
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Pinch ground nutmeg
2 cups tomato sauce (separated) (make your own or from a jar/can)
1/3 cup diced hemp mozzarella cheese
1/8 cup Parmesan replacer
Directions
Cook the pasta and lay the slices out so they will not stick together.
Pan roast the zucchini over medium high heat with the olive oil until lightly browned on all sides. Shock in cold water to stop cooking.
Add zucchini to medium bowl with hemp ricotta, salt, onion, black pepper, and nutmeg.
Pour enough tomato sauce in small casserole dish to cover the bottom.
Spread about 3 tablespoons or so of the filling onto a noodle. Roll it up and place in a small casserole dish. Continue with the rest of the noodles and filling until dish is full. Sprinkle with mozzarella and pour remaining tomato sauce over the top. Cover and bake at 375 for 45 minutes. Uncover, sprinkle with Parmesan replacer and return to oven uncovered for 15 more minutes until top is golden brown.
Let cool in pan slightly before serving.
Please tell me about the cheese.. did you use vegan cheese and add the seeds to it? I’m new and learning how to cook vegan and trying to learn about the different ingredients. Thanks!
Hi, Debbie. Thanks for the comment.
If you haven’t made the three different cheeses in advance, this recipe can be quite a production. (It’s well worth it in my my opinion, though.) Each cheese is 100% made from scratch and doesn’t use any pre-made vegan cheese substitutes. The Parmesan Replacer is the simplest recipe. You put 7 raw ingredients in a food processor and pulse until it resembles Parmesan sprinkles. It’s a pretty basic and flexible recipe that can be adapted for various applications.
The other two recipes involve cooking and are more complicated but still manageable. The Hemp Ricotta is the easier of the two. You start by making extra creamy hemp milk by grinding raw hemp seeds and some fat (I used coconut oil) up in a blender with water. Once you’ve made enough of that, warm it on the stove in a big pot until it bubbles and then add vinegar to make it curdle and a little salt for flavor. After it’s rested, you can strain the “whey” from the “curds” using some cheese cloth. Let the curds keep draining for an hour or so and that’s it. This process is very similar to making non-vegan ricotta.
While the hemp ricotta is made in the same way as non-vegan ricotta, the Hemp Mozzarella uses a unique process that results in a final product approximating the flavor and consistency of non-vegan mozzarella. This is done by heating hemp milk up on the stove with nutritional yeast (for flavor) and agar agar (which is like vegan gelatin). To get the texture right, you blend this mixture with some tofu (hemp or regular soy) and a tiny bit of olive oil and maple syrup for flavor. You pour the end result into a greased casserole pan and when it’s cooled, you can cut it out into whatever shape/size you need.
I hope that’s enough to get you started. Let me know if you have any more questions. See more detailed instructions at the respective recipe pages: Parmesan Replacer, Hemp Ricotta, and Hemp Mozzarella.