Vegan & Gluten-Free Recipes by Allyson Kramer (2024)

So, this may not be the most glamorous food I have posted, but let me start with a word in its defense. This stuff is freaking incredible. I mean it. Sure, the sauce isn’t a brilliant bright red since it uses avocados and red wine (kinda pinkish orange), but once you taste it, you simply will not care how it looks. I promise.

The noodles I used were gluten free and I highly recommend them if you swing that way too. They are made by Tinkyada… or Pasta Joy… the word “Ready” also appears on the box too…??? So I’ll provide a picture down below as to not confuse you guys myself any further. They are the best GF noodles I have ever tasted. Hands down. They taste just like regular noodles!

The major grocery chain store (with limited selection) near my house carries these noodles in basic varieties: macaroni, shells, spaghetti. But, they do not have the lasagna style noodles. Therefore, these may be a tad hard to come by for some folks.

This weekend we made a special trip to Whole Foods to obtain mass amounts of Daiya (if you’re not in the know, all Whole Foods in the U.S. are now carrying Daiya!), and they had some of these wonderful lasagna noodles there too. Hooray! So, it is only fitting that I do a celebratory blog post dedicated to the fusion of these two indulgence foods.

The recipe I am posting is more for the sauce, as the rest is just assemblage. But I couldn’t just do a post for sauce (even thought it rightfully deserves its own post). And combining the noodles with the sauce, veggies, tofu , tempeh and Daiya makes one seriously good lasagna that I just had to share.

Warning- this may take up a good amount of your day, but after that you can refrigerate it and move on with life.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Sauce:

• 3 medium sized tomatoes
• 1 15 oz. can of tomatoes (drained) -if you’re curious as to why I used both canned and regular, I didn’t have enough of either to use just one- so I combined them, and I liked the result ;)
• 1 cup red wine, I used “2 buck chuck” Cabernet Savignon
• 2 ripe avocados
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 small yellow onion, quartered
• 3 tsp salt

Tofu Ricotta:

• 1 block extra firm tofu, very well drained
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper

Other ingredients:

• 1 box lasagna noodles, gluten free or regular
• 1 zucchini
• 3 large portobello caps
• 1 block tempeh, crumbled ( I used veggie flavored)
• 8 oz of Daiya vegan cheese
• a little more red wine for sauteing the mushrooms

Directions:

First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees and get a 9 x 13 glass pan ready. Don’t grease it, just have it “ready”. Next, in a large (pretty tall) pot, boil your noodles according to package directions.

While noodles are boiling, prepare your sauce. All you have to do is take all of your “sauce” ingredients and mix until smooth in a food processor. You may need to do this in two batches if you have a small food processor. Mine is average sized and it all fit well. Set aside. This will make a lot of sauce… but you will need every last drop. :)

Next, make your tofu ricotta. Gently crumble the very well drained tofu into a medium sized bowl. Add lemon juice , pepper, and salt and mix it all together. Set aside.

Your noodles may or may not be done at this point. If they are done, drain and rinse with cold water, and set aside in long separate strips. I did this on two Silpat mats and there was no sticking to be found.

Next, very thinly slice your zucchini. It doesn’t have to be as thin as the zukes in my picture. I used a spiralizer to cut mine- you can easily use a knife or a vegetable peeler to slice yours. Also, slice up your portobello mushrooms and saute them in a little red wine until soft. Set the un-sauteed zukes and the sauteed mushrooms aside.

Okay, now it’s time to assemble. I layered mine like so… you can be creative with how you layer yours if you want.

From the bottom up:

1. Bottom of pan
2. Sauce
3. Noodles (4 covered the bottom of my pan well)
4. Tofu Ricotta
5. Daiya
6. Sauce
7. Noodles
8. Crumbled Tempeh
9. Zucchini
10. Mushrooms
11. Daiya
12. Sauce

And, we end up with it looking like this:

Then I covered it with one more layer of noodles, some more sauce and some more Daiya. And it looked like this:

At this point, I covered it very lightly with aluminum foil and baked for about 70 minutes. Next, I uncovered the lasagna, added even more Daiya and then continued to bake it in the oven for about 8 more minutes. To get the top nice and crispy, broil it until golden brown.

That’s it! After it is done it should look like this:

After it cools for a bit (and you cut it up), it will look like this:

Alright, now go make yourself some. Or bookmark for later… you’ll be happy you did. :)

Share with friends!