Pastaless Veggie Lasagna

Okay, this was a masterpiece. A masterpiece that I was eating for 4 days straight and I was sad to see go when I finished it. It tasted sinful, but was extraordinarily healthy. I give you the pastaless lasagna. Constructed from veggies, pasta sauce and ricotta, this lasagna tasted amazing and was really pretty too. I based it on a recipe off of this website: http://mymansbelly.com/2012/02/27/meatless-dinner-recipes-easy-vegetable-lasagna/, so credit where credit is due I did not think of the gorgeous spiral pattern on my own. But I think I pulled it off without a hitch :) It took awhile to make, but wasn't difficult. I poured tomato-basil sauce into the bottom of a roasting tin. Then, basically, I thinly sliced 4 veggies, eggplant, zucchini, red capsicum, and red onions. I then layered them around the pan using ricotta as the glue (see below). Plain ricotta is boring so I mixed in herb seasoning and garlic salt to give it some flavor. This was brilliant because it really spiced up the dish and made it flavorful. Something I noticed as I was layering was that the veggies would slide down as I added more and more layers so I had to prop them up and squish them together to get the max veggie coverage in. Also I started to run a bit low on ricotta so had to use less and less as I went on. I had way too many veggies left at the end so I ended up roasting them for later. I love roasted veggies and was able to use them later in the week so it worked out fine for me. After my lasagna was layered it looked like a flower (below)! I added the finishing touch, some drizzled olive oil with garlic salt, and then popped it into the oven at 190 degrees Celsius for 45 minutes. After that time I took the lasagna out and sprinkled it with shredded parmesan. Then popped it back in for another 10 minutes. After that it was ready to eat, though I let it cool before I took a slice. It was soooooooooooooooo good. I cannot emphasize enough how amazing this dish was. the sauce and ricotta mixed just so, the veggies were roasted just enough to get a nice smoky flavor but were still firm enough to hold the shape. Pieces were not very pretty, the cheese and sauce spluched out, but the taste made up for it!

Thoughts on this Dish:

• Thought #1:Amazing!
• Okay, now here are some things I learned. I sliced the eggplants first and then salted them and let them sit on trays covered in aluminum foil for an hour an a half. I did this because they have a lot of moisture in them so the salt drew this out and made it so that moisture wouldn't go into the dish.
• What I didn't realize is that zucchinis have that as well… so my dish was a bit more watery than what I was expecting. Next time I'll do the same thing with the zucchini 
• Also a bit less olive oil drizzle might help with the wateriness too
• This was a great thing to heat up and eat as leftovers, it kept really well in the fridge and tasted fresh out of the microwave. 
• This made enough for 4 very filling meals, bigger pan if I'm serving more people.
• This was such a guilt free dish, the most unhealthy thing in here is the ricotta, and per serving it's not bad at all :)

I cannot emphasis enough how much I loved this dish, so happy I came across the recipe on Pinterest and really pleased that I could pull it off so well.