Courgette and ricotta lasagne
You might not think that a courgette and ricotta lasagne would be a patch on a full-on meat one.
Wrong.
I don’t know quite know how, since there are very few ingredients, but this combination produces such a delicious creamy and flavourful vegetarian lasagne. It’s also inexpensive and feeds the five thousand! And in summer is perfect for those courgette gluts!
- Prep: 15 mins
- Cook: 20-25 mins
- Servings: 4-6
Ingredients
- olive oil
- 1 very large onion finely chopped (not a red one), could even use finely chopped leeks.
- 1 giant clove of garlic, finely chopped
- 6 courgettes, topped, tailed and coursely grated in a food processor
- 250g of ricotta cheese
- 200g of strong Cheddar cheese, grated
- 9 sheets of lasagne, use the type that doesn’t need pre-cooking
- 500ml of passata
- teaspoon of sugar
- sea salt
Nuush clients: Please apply the portion sizes stated in your account and divide the recipe so that you make only as much you need.
Instructions
Heat the oven to 200 degrees.
Gently fry the onion and garlic until the onion becomes translucent then add the courgettes and cook until softened but still very green.
Add the ricotta and most of the Cheddar (keep some for the top) and season with sea salt to taste (it needs a good amount). Give it a good stir to mix.
Now mix the passata with a glug of olive oil, the sugar and some salt, and add it to the base of a lasagne dish, except for a couple of spoonfuls to go on top. Place three sheets of lasagne on top, side-by-side, then add a layer of the courgette mix. Add two more layers of lasagne and courgette mix finishing with the courgette mix as the top layer.
Blob some of the passata over the top, not a complete coating, just small blobs! Then ad the rest of the Cheddar.
Bake for 20-25 mins and serve with a big salad then go for a lovely walk.
Nutrition Info
Courgettes
You might not put courgettes at the top of the ‘superfoods’ list but that would be a tragedy as they have a really broad range of nutrients even if not as massively stuffed with one or the other as something like broccoli.
Their top one is copper; copper is needed to make collagen, that vital thing that holds lots of bits of us together! It also helps to convert carbohydrates into energy, as well as incorporating iron into red blood cells. Copper is a co-factor for an enzyme called superoxide dismutase, which is one of the major antioxidant enzymes in your body – a co-factor means a kind of helper.
Courgettes are also an excellent source of manganese, which is great for bones and skin and again is a co-factor for that superoxide thing I mentioned above 🙂
And let’s not overlook their brilliant amount of fibre, essential if you want happy gut flora!
Cheese
Cheese is not only gorgeous to eat but provides some important nutrients including phosphorus, calcium and vitamin B12. Phosphorus forms part of every one of our cells, so is pretty important! It’s actually quite abundant in the diet so you don’t have to OD on cheese – sorry 🙂
Calcium is not only good for teeth and bones but helps to balance the PH of the blood as well as assisting with nerve signals and muscle function. B12 performs a lot of functions but its main claim to fame is red blood cell production.
Find your new natural
When the lasagne content of my blood gets low I get mean.
Garfield
Portion Guidelines
Instead of living with the bore of weighing food, counting points or calories and tapping everything you eat into a phone you can use nature’s custom-designed tool – your hands!
