Author Notes
I've had many terrible vegetarian lasagnas in my day, folks. I just knew I could come up with something better than thick white sauce and sodium-filled paste slathered between lasagna noodles. This quick, hearty, and healthy vegetarian lasagna is filled with avocados, tomatillos, tomatoes, and black beans. —Mary Catherine Tee
Ingredients
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2 tablespoons
olive oil
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1
onion, chopped
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2
garlic cloves, minced
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2 teaspoons
cumin
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6
tomatillos, halved
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2
ripe tomatoes, quartered
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1
jalapeño, deseeded
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1 teaspoon
salt
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2 cups
black beans, cooked or canned
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2
avocados, scooped from their shells and roughly chopped
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2 1/2 (+/-) cups
mozzarella
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12 ounces
cottage cheese
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1
egg, lightly beaten
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1 teaspoon
garlic powder
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1/2 teaspoon
onion powder
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1 packet
lasagna noodles
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lemon wedges
Directions
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Bring a large pot of salted water to boil and cook entire box of lasagna noodles for 8-ish minutes in boiling water. Drain noodles and rinse with cold water so they stop cooking.
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While the noodles are cooking, preheat the over to 375 degrees. Pour olive oil in skillet and sauté the chopped onions for about 5 minutes over medium heat, or until translucent.
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Meanwhile, add halved tomatillos, quartered tomatoes, seeded jalapeno, and a generous pinch of salt in the bowl of your food processor. Turn on the low setting and mix until the ingredients are the texture of salsa.
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Add garlic and cumin to the skillet with the onions and cook for a couple minutes more. Add tomato-tomatillo sauce and black beans to the onions and garlic. Stir and reduce heat to simmer.
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Mix cottage cheese, avocado chunks, one lightly beaten egg, 1/2 cup of mozzarella, garlic and onion powders, salt and pepper, and 1/4 cup fresh cilantro or parsley.
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Now, it's time to assemble the lasagna! Prepare a 9x13 baking dish with olive oil or cooking spray. Ladle about a cup of sauce in the bottom of the pan and distribute evenly. Lay 3 lasagna noodles on top. Cover noodles with about a cup of sauce. Cover sauce with about 1/2 cup of avocado-cottage cheese mixture, spreading evenly. Sprinkle with a handful of mozzarella.
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Layer 3 noodles on top of mozz and repeat--sauce, cottage cheese-avocado, shredded cheese--three more times, ending with noodles. Reserve a little extra sauce to spread over the noodles and top with copious amounts of mozzarella cheese and sprinkle with fresh cilantro or parsley.
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Cover pan with foil and bake for 30 minutes. Take foil off of pan and bake 5 more minutes, or long enough for the cheese on top to melt and bubble.
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Serve warm with a squirt of lemon juice.
I’m an old soul. My favorite Saturday morning activity is watching birds on the feeder while drinking strong, black coffee out of my favorite hand-thrown mug. My favorite place to kill time is in antique stores. The less organized the better. I like full-bodied red wines and bitter IPAs. I live for feeling the warmth of sunshine and hearing the stillness of freshly fallen snow. I can thank my stint in Alaska for that. I have salt water in my veins, having grown up in Eastern NC, and (shhh…don’t tell any of my Mainer friends this about me) I prefer blue crab over lobster.
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