Vegan and Gluten Free

When you think of lasagna, you don’t necessarily think vegan, or gluten free, but that’s exactly what this is. This vegan, gluten free lasagna uses butternut squash noodles instead of pasta. Loaded with vegetables, it is as delicious and filling as regular lasagna.

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Cooking With Friends Adds Flavor

A few weeks ago I went to visit my girlfriend in Boise, Idaho. Myra and her husband are living there for a year and have fallen in love with Boise. Myra and I both love to cook and primarily cook and eat plant based. She’s the person who first introduced me to Isa Chandra Moskowitz, my favorite vegan cookbook author.

While in Boise, in addition to exploring the city and enjoying the beautiful fall foliage, we cooked, baked sourdough bread (using my Easy Sourdough Bread Recipe), and enjoyed a lot of wine and laughter!

Myra had been given a new kitchen gadget for Christmas that she had never used. So of course we had to give it try. The Kitchenaid Vegetable Sheet Cutter Attachment attaches to a Kitchenaid stand mixer and creates thin sheets of zucchini, apples, cucumber and other fruits and vegetables. In this case, we decided to try it with butternut squash, to replace lasagne noodles for vegan lasagna.

Butternut Squash Noodles

After peeling the butternut squash, we cut off the solid end to use for the noodles. Following the Kitchenaid instructions, we inserted the squash into the sheet cutter. The Kitchenaid vegetable sheet cutter attachment worked great and we ended up with a long, beautiful strip of butternut squash!

If you don’t have the vegetable sheet cutter attachment, you can use a mandoline vegetable slicer instead. I’ve done this as well, and created circles of butternut squash to use as noodles. When assembling the lasagna, slightly overlap the circles in the pan.

This Lasagna with Butternut Squash Noodles recipe is adapted from the Lasagne Marinara with Spinach recipe in Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. As I’ve mentioned Isa Chandra Moskowitz is one of my favorite cookbook authors. I have many of her cookbooks as you may have seen in my post Kitchen Gifts For Friends Who Love To Cook.

In Veganomicon, Isa makes all of the components for the dish homemade, which is what Myra and I did on my visit. The dish tastes amazing, but can be time consuming.

In order to save time, my recipe calls for store-bought marinara, vegan cheese (ricotta and mozzarella) and frozen spinach. If you are not concerned about the lasagna being vegan, regular ricotta and mozzarella can be substituted.

The spinach will need to be defrosted and thoroughly drained before using. An easy way to do this with minimal clean up is by using a potato ricer. Make a cut in the bag of spinach, place in a mircowave safe bowl and defrost in the microwave. Once defrosted, put the spinach into the potato ricer in small batches and press.

Lasagne or Lasagna

You may have seen two spellings for lasagne, even in this article. The reason is because they are actually two different words.

Lasagne, with an ‘e’, refers to the actual noodles themselves and is plural.

The word lasagna is the singular of lasagne, or, only one piece of noodle. Lasagna, with an ‘a’, also refers to the complete dish, with noodles, sauce, etc.

But enough of the grammar lesson for the day… let’s cook!