vegetable dish Archives - Proud Italian Cook

I know it’s winter, believe me we’re still recovering from The Blizzard of 2011, and now it’s freezing out but I’ve had a craving for zucchini, maybe it’s because I’m longing for warm weather again but until those days arrive Whole Foods happened to have some beautiful organic zucchini that was on sale the other day, so I guess this lasagne was meant to be!

I have a little problem though, I always buy entirely too much produce for just two people to consume so I’m always on the lookout for ways to use it all up and in this case Zucchini Lasagne solved my problem!

This lasagne is filled with zucchini, layers of ricotta, mozzarella, romano and parmesan cheese, a generous dose of roasted garlic bechamel and a simple basil marinara, a nice piece of this with a wonderful Italian salad will satisfy all your senses!

I sliced all my zucchini about 1/4 of an inch thick then salt and peppered both sides and sauteed each piece in a little bit of olive oil to acquire a nice golden color.

Lasagne is all about the layering, as far as I’m concerned, the deeper the pan the better! I was able to get four nice layers from mine, the key is to let your lasagne rest for about 30 minutes before you cut into it to insure the perfect slice.

I’m normally not a fan of the no boil pasta noodles but I had a box of Barilla so I though I’d give it another try, this time I soaked my noodles in warm water and that seemed to make a big difference, I think I saw Lydia doing that on her cooking show once, so between the soaking and saucing up of the noodles really good, (dare I say) we couldn’t tell the difference! I may just be a semi-convert now!

I alternated between the marinara and the bechamel sauce spooning some onto each layer, into my basic bechamel consisting of butter, flour and milk I squeezed a bit of roasted garlic and a nice handful of parmesan cheese. After spraying my baking dish with olive oil the layers went like this;