Vegan tomato lasagna with aubergine
Lasagna is one of my favorite dishes! This version is vegan, gluten free, super easy to make and extremely delicious!
Vegan lasagna recipe with eggplant
Makes 4 generous servings. Time: 1h
- 1 eggplant
- 1 packet of lasagna sheets
- 5 tbsp olive oil
- salt and pepper to taste
Leek-carrot-tomato sauce
- 1/2 leek onion
- 4 carrots
- 100 g spinach
- 1 can of crushed tomatoes (14 oz)
- 2 tbsp tomato puree
- 1 vegetable bouillon cube
- 1/2 tsp herb salt
- 200 g vegan cream cheese (I used one that is oat based)
- 1 garlic clove
Cashew melted cheese
- 1/4 cup raw cashews
- 1 cup of hot water
- 2 ½ tablespoons of tapioca flour
- 1/2 teaspoon nutritional yeast
- ¾ teaspoon of sea salt
- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
- Prepare the eggplant: Start by cutting the eggplant (aubergine) in 1 inch thick slices and sprinkle both sides generously with salt to let it sweat. This will extract the water and bitter taste from the eggplant. Let the salt sit for 15-20 minutes while moving on to the next step.
- Make the leek-carrot-tomato sauce: Wash and cut the leek onion in slices. Use a carrot peeler to shred thin slices of the carrots. Fry in a pan on medium heat with crushed garlic, leek and spinach. Fry for about 5 minutes.
- Add the vegetable bullion cube, crushed tomatoes, cream cheese and the tomato puree. Stir and remove from heat.
- Cook the eggplant: Use a strainer to press and remove all the water from the egg plant. Wash the eggplant with water to remove the salt. Fry the eggplant in olive oil on medium-high heat for about 2-3 minutes on each side.
- Assemble the lasagna: When the eggplant is ready, start assembling your lasagna by putting layers of pasta sheets, carrot-leek tomato sauce and eggplant. Repeat this and make 3-4 layers.
- Make the melted cashew cheese: Put all ingredients for the cashew cheese into a high speed blender and blend for about a minute until creamy.
- Pour the blended cashew mixture into a small saucepan and cook, stirring constantly over medium heat until the mixture thickens and looks like melted cheese. Let cool slightly and spread over the lasagna. See this video for further instructions.
- Cook the lasagna in the oven for 30-40 minutes. (Depending on which pasta sheets you're using, I used gluten free pasta made from green lentils)
- Enjoy!
This sauce is delicious and very easy to make. You can just boil some gluten free pasta to eat the sauce with if you're in a rush! I always use a soy-free cream cheese just to avoid the estrogen-like chemical in soy products. Read more about that here.
This super stretchy melted cheese is really all you need in you're repertoire as a vegan! It's actually soy-free and goes perfectly on everything from pizza to pasta!
