Lasagna is one of those meals that you whip up and you know you won’t have to worry about dinner for a couple of nights. It’s also one of those meals that allow you to load up on veggies! If you punch up the flavor, even the most anti-veg person will devour a serving or few.

 

Yields 15 lasagna rolls

 

Ingredients:

Box of lasagna noodles

5 Spicy Italian sausage

small yellow onion

half of a green bell pepper

1 large zucchini

3 large carrots

1 pack of frozen chopped spinach

pint of reduced fat ricotta

4 cloves of garlic

Garlic powder

Italian seasoning

Kosher salt

Crushed pepper

Your favorite tomato sauce

Your preferred shredded cheese

 

1. Preheat your oven to 375
2. Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil.
3. Boil the lasagna noodles.
4. Using a mandolin slicer, create zucchini ribbons and carrot ribbons
5. Defrost spinach
6. Brown your sausage or other ground meat (this could be a omitted for a completely vegetarian recipe)
7. Add chopped garlic, onion and pepper, cook until just softened, season with salt and pepper.
8. Drain your noodles, should be al dente
9. Remove the meat and veg from the pan and drain in a strainer or a paper towel
10. Drain spinach, season with salt, pepper and about 1 tsp garlic powder.
11. Season ricotta with 2 tsp garlic powder, 2 tsp Italian seasoning, 1 tsp kosher salt and a pinch of crushed pepper, mix to combine
12. Take one noodle and “paint” ricotta mixture using a spoon or a spatula
13. Lay carrot ribbons, sprinkle spinach, sprinkle meat mixture and top with cheese
14. Tightly roll the noodles up
15. Nestle a zucchini ribbon overtop, repeat until your pan is full. My pan was 13×9 and that fit 15 rolls. Lightly sprinkle kosher salt over your ribbon-wrapped rolls. 
16. Top with your favorite tomato sauce (I used 2 parts canned diced tomato and 1 part canned crushed tomato that I seasoned it up using my go-to’s: kosher salt, pepper, cumin, garlic, Italian seasoning, pinch of sugar and a dash of fish sauce).
17. Generously top with your preferred shredded cheese
18. Bake covered with foil for 45 minutes then uncovered until bubbling and the edges start to brown.

 

 

 

© 2016 by Alexa Mason. All Rights Reserved