Lasagna with Zucchini noodles

Hello everyone, Jess here. Happy Sunday! Today for Sunday dinner we’re enjoying a bounty of local food in this dish! It’s a traditional favorite, lasagna! The non-traditional part is that we are replacing the pasta with zucchini and/or summer squash. I got this idea from Allrecipes and adapted it a bit. Let’s get to it!

First, start with your favorite sauce recipe. I used a pound of Springdell sweet Italian sausage (casings removed), 2 cloves of garlic, one diced onion, a sprig or two of chopped fresh basil, fresh oregano, a bag of frozen heirloom tomatoes from last season (thawed and extra water drained), a small can of tomato paste, and a summer squash for good measure.

After browning the meat and onion, I added the rest of the ingredients and simmered until it looked like this.

For the lasagna, you need:

Tomato Meat Sauce (as made above or as you like it)
small container of ricotta cheese (or larger if you like it a little more cheesy)
3 sprigs parsley, chopped
2 medium zucchini, sliced lengthwise (with a mandolin slicer if you have one)
2-3 eggs
mushrooms! maybe 8 ounces? (I used oysters and shiitakes)
2 cups mozzarella cheese
Freshly grated Parmesan

A quick note about the zucchini- a few of the recipes have you salt your zucchini and drain it in a colander before using. I personally found out the hard way that this is an important step. If you skip the salting and draining, you’ll likely find a bitterness that develops from the zucchini in the next day leftovers. The salt helps to minimize this bitterness (the same works for removing any bitterness from eggplant slices as well). The other benefit to salting and draining your slices is that you’l have much less liquid to siphon out of your final dish. If the salt on the slices seems like too much, you can wash some of it off before proceeding. Either way, if you’re thinking of skipping the step to save time, I encourage you to reconsider, as it could throw off your leftovers.

QUICK 2019 UPDATE- even better than salting and draining your zucchini is this- roast your ribbons and mushrooms (if using) on parchment paper first (400 degrees for maybe 15-20 minutes). Then pat your ribbons dry. The flavor is even better, and the liquid in the final product is reduced quite a bit.

You can even make a 20 minute weeknight version of this lasagna if you leave the egg out of the ricotta mixture.

Oh and pop it under the broiler for a couple of minutes before serving. This browns up the top layer of cheese so nicely! Ok, back through the time machine to where we left off…

Meanwhile, as the salted zucchini ribbons were doing their thing, I was simmering my sauce, I stirred some chopped parsley and 2 eggs in with about 1/2 of of the ricotta.