Vegetable Lasagne

This is a first for me - writing a recipe on my blog, not something I ever expected to do! But today I actually invented a dish and it was so yummy that I had to share it! I am normally a follow-a-recipe kind of person but today I dabbled!

To be fair I was looking on the Good Food site at recipes for vegetable lasagne but I didn't fancy any one of them so I took what I had read and made my own up!

I don't know if it is low fat or very healthy but that's not something I worry about terribly, I do need lots of fresh vegetables though otherwise I feel like pants!

So here it is!

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 Courgette
1 Red Pepper
1 Aubergine
320g Chestnut Mushrooms
260g Bag Spinach
5 Garlic cloves
500g Sieved Italian Tomatoes Passata
300ml Creme Fraiche
2 Sprigs Rosemary
2-4 Sprigs Thyme
Handful Basil
Dried Oregano
Nutmeg
Cheddar cheese or parmesan or both!
1 Pack of fresh lasagne sheets.
Olive Oil

Instructions

Preheat oven to gas mark 7 (or your equivalent in electric or fan)

1. Chop up pepper, courgette, aubergine and mushrooms to smallish chunks. Finely chop rosemary and thyme leaves. Chuck the whole lot plus the garlic cloves into a roasting tin and drizzle in some olive oil. Mix it all up to ensure it's all covered in oil and herbs and whack in the oven for 25 minutes.

2. When the vegetables are nearly done, prepare the rest of the ingredients - Pour passata into a small saucepan with a handful of ripped up basil and a big sprinkle of oregano and heat gently. In another pan (I didn't say there would be little washing up now did I!) put all the rinsed spinach in with only the water that clings to its leaves and heat gently with some grated nutmeg until it all squelches down into the pan. Grate the cheese.

3. Take the vegetables out the oven and turn it down to gas mark 6.

4. In a big oven dish suitable for a lasagne (!), put all the spinach in with a sprinkle of salt and pepper (drain with a slotted spoon). Place a layer of lasagne sheets on top (mine took 2). Then put on half the vegetables and spread around (take out the garlic cloves!). Pour half the passata mixture over the veg. Salt and pepper. Then another layer of lasagne sheets. Repeat the last layer with all remaining ingredients. On top of the last layer of lasagne sheets, dollop all the creme fraiche on and spread around. Then chuck as much or as little cheese on the top!

5. Bake in the top of the oven for 20-25 minutes.

6. Eat - nom nom!!

I found the bottom layer of spinach to be so yummy that I might make a simple spinach and mushroom lasagne next time!

I also discovered that it was so full of flavour that I could probably only use half the creme fraiche and a tiny sprinkling of parmesan. I usually cover food in cheese to make it more yummy but I didn't need to in this case!