Vegetarian Lasagna by Papa Juan (aka Jowo) 😇

Time taken: around 90 minutes prep. & 40 mins in the oven

Ingredients

Ingredients

Tomato sauce:

White sauce

Topping

Other:

• 1 large creuset dish or creuset pot
• 1 large and 1 small saucepan
• a whisk
• 1-2 boxes of lasagna sheet pasta

Instructions

Start off by chopping your onions, place them in a large pan with half of your olive oil and fry them on a medium heat. Only once they start turning golden should you add your garlic. This will prevent the garlic from burning.

Onions and Garlic 🧅🧄

Once the garlic that added has also started turning brown too, place the cooked onions and garlic into a large saucepan along with your tinned tomatoes.

Add your spices, salt, and a little sugar depending on how sour the tomatoes are. Be careful because it can easily be made too sweet. Better that you add spices, salt and sugar slowly as the sauce cooks, and tasting as you go. Gently heat the sauce and let it simmer with a lid over the saucepan.

Tomato sauce base 🍅

Chop all your vegetables into nicely sized pieces.

Chop your veggies 🔪

Stick them in a frying pan on a low heat with your remaining oliver oil. Stir occasionally. Once they are cooked "al dente", give them a blast of heat for a few minutes to ensure they get a nice golden brown colour. This adds a delicious caramelised flavour to your vegetables. Once done, add all of the vegetables into your tomato sauce and mix it all together. 🕺

The sauce now contains tinned tomatoes, onions/garlic, spices and vegetables. Let it cook for at least 30 minutes, but an hour is better if possible! Use a low to medium heat and keep a lid over the saucepan to prevent the sauce from becoming too dry. Let all the flavours can combine and taste it as it cooks incase it needs more spices. 🌶🧂😇

Fry your veggies 🍆🥕

The white sauce is quite easy, but the key is to take things slowly.

Place your butter in a saucepan on a low heat. Let it all melt and then add your nutmeg. Now, slowly start adding flour and mixing it into the butter with a whisk. Stop once you have a mixture with the same texture as mashed potatoes.

Next, slowly start adding milk to the mixture and making sure that the sauce has time to heat up again between each addition of milk! Once the sauce is quite thick, similar to ketchup, it's ready! It may form lumps at times, but just keep stirring it until the lumps disappear. Don't ever let the sauce boil!

White sauce

In a large bowl, add all the yogurt and crack in the two eggs. Mix it thoroughly until it's a consistent pale yellow colour!

Egg and yogurt topping 🥚🥛

Note: before you start layering, be sure to pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees celsius! 🌡

OK, we're all set! Now you should have your tomato and vegetable sauce, your white sauce, and your yogurt topping ready!

Next you'll want a large baking dish or creuset dish/pot for layering up your Lasagna!

To layer your Lasagna you should start with a thin layer of tomato sauce at the bottom of the dish. Then add a layer of Lasagna sheet pasta on top of that and gently press it down. Finally spread some white sauce over the sheet pasta with a spoon.

Simply repeat this process over and over ♻ tomato sauce -> pasta -> white sauce, until all your ingredients are used up! Aim to get between 5 and 7 layers in your Lasagna, and be sure to finish with a layer of pasta and white sauce at the top, the final layer!

Layering 🧱

Now that all your ingredients are used up. Pour your yogurt mix over the top of your Lasagna. But, make sure that your Lasagna is packed down well and ensure there are no gaps around the edge of your ingredients. We don't want the yogurt mixture to flow down into the edges of the Lasagna. It should form a pool on the top!

Finally, cover the whole thing with a mountain of cheese! 🗻🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🧀🗻

And that's it! Just cook it for about 40 minutes until golden brown in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees celsius! 👨‍🍳

Cook it! 👩‍🍳

If you are as messy of a cook as me, there will be a pile of dishes and cleaning to do. 😭😭😭

Washing dishes 🍽🍴