Recipe: Pasta Free Lasagna

This recipe replaces the lasagna sheets with sliced courgettes and beef tomatoes. The meat sauce can be used in lots of other recipes. Its our development of what started life as a much more “chefy” recipe which involved lots of other stages.

As ever, items in italics are from our garden.

Ingredients (for 2)

  • 2 beef tomatoes (we used green velvet and pink Bulgarian but to be honest any beef tomatoes would do)
  • 1 Large Courgette
  • 400g chopped tomatoes
  • 2 tbsp home made tomato puree
  • 1 large Carrot
  • Sprig of Rosemary
  • 250g beef mince
  • 1-2 large onions
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • 1 stick celery
  • 100-200g mushrooms cut into fork sized pieces
  • dried oregano
  • 1/2tbsp caraway seeds
  • 100g grated mozzarella
  • 10g grated parmesan
  • 100g ricotta
  • 250ml beef stock
  • We served with roasted cauliflower but you can choose what you’d like to serve it with.


Pink Bulgarian and Green Velvet Tomatoes for Lasagna

Method

  1. Slice the courgette finely at an angle, slice the beef tomatoes, finely dice the carrots, onions and celery;
  2. Grate the garlic (or use pre-grated), finely chop the rosemary;
  3. Saute the onions witha little oil in a large non-stick frying pan until they’re soft (about 10 minutes);
  4. Add the beef mince and brown it all over;
  5. Add the garlic, carrots & celery and cook for about 5 minutes then add the caraway seeds, tomato puree, beef stock, tomatoes, herbs & mushrooms, season with ground pepper and simmer for about half an hour until the sauce has thickened.
  6. In a separate oven proof dish on top of baking parchment, layer the courgettes, tomatoes, season with pepper and dot the ricotta in amongst the tomatoes. Scatter the mozzarella and parmesan over the top and put into a pre-heated oven at 180C and bake for about 35 minutes or until it is brown.
  7. Spoon the meat sauce into dishes, top with the browned topping and serve with whatever veg you want.

Whilst the topping is separate from the sauce and they haven’t cooked together, this has the advantage that if (when) there’s too much sauce, you can keep it in the fridge to use another day.