Planet Veggie

As I’ve reinstated my organic vegetable box delivery, I needed some recipes to make use of the vegetables that I don’t usually buy, e.g. courgettes and other green healthy things like that.  I stumbled upon the BBC Good Food website and what a great site it is.  It has a search function that lets you choose what type of cuisine, dietary requirements, no. of servings, difficulty rating and more and photos of each recipe accompanied by user reviews.

Splendid.

Courgette lasagne wouldn’t be my first choice, but I decided to trust the reviews and although The Meat Eater and I were both dubious as to how grated courgette would turn out, it was very nice.  Nicer than the photo would have you believe, it looks a bit minging in my photo, but there’s a better one on the recipe’s website.

Creamy courgette lasagne
Easy
Serves 4
Prep 10 mins
Cook 10 mins

Ingredients
9 dried lasagne sheets
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 onion, finely chopped
700g courgettes (about 6), coarsely grated
2 garlic cloves, crushed
250g ricotta
50g cheddar
350g jar tomato sauce for pasta

1. Heat oven to 220C/fan 200C/gas 7.  Put a pan of water on to boil, then cook the lasagne sheets for about 5 minutes until softened, but not cooked through.  Rinse in cold water, then drizzle with a little oil to stop them sticking together.
2. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large frying pan, then fry the onion.  After 3 mins, add the courgettes and garlic and continue to fry until the courgette has softened and turned bright green.  Stir in 2/3 of both the ricotta and the cheddar, then season to taste.  Heat the tomato sauce in the microwave for 2 minus on High until hot.
3. In a large baking dish, layer up the lasagne, starting with half the courgette mix, then pasta, then tomato sauce.  Repeat, top with blobs of the remaining ricotta, then scatter with the rest of the cheddar.  Bake on the top shelf for about 10 mins until the pasta is tender and the cheese is golden.

Cooking notes

I used 4 courgettes (not 6, but I added mushrooms to it), 3 lasagne sheets (that I didn’t pre-cook first) and heated the tomato sauce on the hob (as I’m not a fan of microwaves).  Although the recipe says it serves 4, we ate it between ourselves, although it could serve 3 if you served it with a side dish.