Roasted Vegetable Lasagna

My sister Nora just emailed me asking for a good veggie lasagna recipe.   Here's basically how I make mine, but I never measure, so this is my best guess!

*UPDATE*   My sister Nora made this for a wedding and took pictures of the process!

Roasted Vegetable Lasagna.



To start:

One yellow onion
1 head of garlic or about 20 whole cloves
1 bag of California or Normandy frozen vegetables. Really good, preferably organic. The veggies should be in nice spears; not chopped. Any blend with carrot, broccoli, cauliflower. It's nice with red pepper, too. You can certainly do this with fresh, this just saves money and time and works just as well.
a couple tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper.

Chop the onion to roughly the same size as the frozen veggies.   Toss the veggies, whole garlic cloves and the onion in the olive oil and season.  Roast at 425 or 450, until the veggies are caramelized and the garlic soft.  (about 25 minutes)

Let it cool enough to rough chop.

Now you need:

• A big jar of your favorite marinara 
• A box of no boil or whole wheat noodles
• A mix of great cheeses, about three cups (asiago, mozzarella and a sharp cheddar would be my choice, but whatever you want!)
• 1 16 oz. tub of ricotta (low fat is fine)
• 1 large egg
• 1 can of sliced olives.
• salt and pepper

Mix the ricotta, and the sliced olives.  Fold in the chopped veggies, and taste for seasoning.  Add salt and pepper to taste before folding in a beaten egg for stability.

Now build your lasagna with a layer of sauce, noodles, veggie mixture, sauce, cheese, noodle.   It should make three layers, but this is an imperfect world.  Finish with a layer of cheese.

I find I always run out of sauce- a jar isn't quite big enough.   Most of the time if this happens, I open a small can of unseasoned tomato sauce, add it to to the dregs of marinara in the jar, and shake it up with pinch of italian seasoning or just basil.  It works just fine; you've seasoned all the other layers.   This is, of course, great with homemade sauce, if you're lucky enough to have some around.

I often roast the veggies with whole herbs and pick them out.   Feel free to sprinkle them with dried oregano before roasting, too.   

Bake, covered in foil, at 400 for about 40 minutes.  Take the foil off and put it back in to bake until the top is golden, and the noodles are perfectly cooked- that's another 15-20 in my oven.