Recipe Review

I spend time every day reading recipes thanks to the magic of the Internets, but then stick to making my standards. Lately though I realized I should do rather than just be, so I've been trying to make a couple of recipes I read a week. Here's the first.

I've been reading Kalyn's Kitchen for several years but rarely use her recipes. Her recipes are health-conscious and usually look pretty good. She's from Salt Lake, and although she's a foodie, I can see the regional influence on her food from time to time (Not necessarily a bad thing). I noticed this lasagna recipe on her blog a few weeks ago and decided to make it.

I like lasagna, but don't make it all that often because it takes forever. I liked the fact that this recipe uses cottage cheese instead of ricotta and I had some I needed to use. Overall, the recipe was good. I halved it, and ate the leftovers for lunch. The sauce turned out great, with a really good flavor. My only complaint is that it wasn't filling enough. If I make this again, I'll make some more veggie additions to the sauce. It really needed a salad and a couple of pieces of bread or a healthy side-dish to go along with it.

(Credit: Kalyn for the image above)

Vegetarian Lasagna with Quick-Roasted Tomato and Herb Sauce
(Makes 8-10 servings, recipe created by Kalyn and adapted by Joy)

My adaptations are in italics.

5 cups cherry tomatoes, cut in half (or used diced Roma tomatoes) I ended up using Grape Tomatoes and they turned out great
2 T olive oil
1 T dried basil
1 T dried Turkish, Greek, or Italian oregano (I had some italian seasoning so I substituted that for oregano)
1 T ground fennel seed--I didn't have this and it was fine
1 cup plain tomato sauce (canned sauce is fine)
1/4 cup water
1 T finely minced garlic or garlic puree--(I upped this to 2 or 3 T--tasted great!)
1/2 tsp. salt
(2-3 T chopped fresh basil and oregano would be great added to the sauce)(I added fresh basil)
1 cup chopped Mushrooms
2 cups low-fat cottage cheese
2 eggs
3-4 cups grated low-fat mozzarella cheese (I used a 16 oz. package, which was not quite 4 cups) (I love cheese, but I didn't use this much. I probably used half this and it was still pretty cheesy)
10-12 dried lasgna noodles
olive oil or non-stick spray for spraying lasagna dish

Preheat oven to 500F. Wash cherry tomatoes if needed and cut in half. Place tomatoes in bowl and toss with 2 T olive oil, dried basil, dried oregano, and ground fennel. Roast tomatoes 30 minutes.

Remove tomatoes from oven and lower temperature to 375F. Scrape tomatoes with all accumulated juice and pieces of herbs into bowl, then add plain tomato sauce, minced garlic, salt, water, and chopped fresh herbs if available. In small bowl, beat eggs, then mix in cottage cheese.

Spray 9.5 by 13.5 inch glass casserole dish with olive oil or non-stick spray. Make a layer of uncooked lasagne noodles covering bottom of dish. (You may need to break the noodles to make them fit.) Spread half the roasted tomato sauce over noodles, then half the cottage cheese mixture and half the mozzarella. Top with another layer of noodles, sauce, cottage cheese, and cheese.

Cover the dish tightly with aluminum foil and bake about 1 hour 30 minutes.

While the tomatoes were roasting, I mixed up the tomato sauce mixture and the cottage cheese mixture. As soon as the tomatoes were done, I threw them into the tomato sauce, and then assembled the lasagna as directed above. Because I halved the recipe, I used a 8x8 glass dish instead.