Holiday Meals: Making a 'Kicked Up' Vegetarian Lasagna

There is nothing like a meatless, yet tasty version of an American favorite. In my home Lasagna has always been a tradition for the holidays. One restaurant I went to had the most scrumptious lasagna I've ever tasted. This changed my whole outlook on how lasagna should be created. I am not saying that mine is not good, but that lasagna taught me how to kick up the recipe into 'notches unknown to man' as Emeril Lagasse would say. The best way to begin is by cooking the noodles until soft.

I don't mean cooking it in water alone, but a vegetable soup mix that is full of flavor. While you wait for the noodles to soften a little, you need to chop up some vegetables. That restaurant used a small amount of celery, tomato, broccoli, zucchini squash, summer squash, eggplant, carrot, spinach, onion, and mushroom on top of each layer of pasta. My version is to cut them small and use enough vegetables to make it a stand out in the ricotta cheese. After all, it will make the ricotta easier to spread. The next part you should do is to combine tomato puree, tomato sauce and Morningstar Farms Griller Burger Style Crumbles. For the sauce you use can use a garlic and mushroom combination to bring extra flavor.

You can also consider using some cheesy French Fried Onions crumbled up into the meat mixture. Once the noodles are softer, drain it. Spices has a habit of sticking to things, and the noodles absorbed it. Take a rectangular glass pan, and put some of the sauce at the bottom. Do not be stingy with this, because you want to be able to taste the tomato flavor from all sides. Drizzle some olive oil on top of the sauce to bring out the flavor. Next you layer the noodle on top of the sauce, and reserve some for the end. Then, you put the sauce, ricotta and vegetable, and shredded mozzarella cheese.

To kick this recipe up further, you can use a cheese combination of cheddar and mozzarella on top. You repeat this layering until you get to the top. Make sure you reserved some sauce to put on top of the last layer of noodles. The next item to put on top is the shredded cheese. Use this opportunity to crumble some plain or seasoned croutons with some cheese of your choice. Drizzle the top of that with olive oil for flavor , bake , serve and enjoy.